The Importance Of Home In The Emigrants, By Karl Oskar

A great difference can be seen between the way Karl Oskar regards their new home, and the way Kristina sees it. Kristina is very homesick and cannot accept that Sweden is no longer home and that she will never return: “Here was away for Kristina – Sweden was home […] Home – to Kristina, this encompassed all that she was never to see again.” (p. 248). As mentioned before, she constantly compares her surroundings to the landscape in Sweden. She thinks of the rosebushes and the apple tree that used to grow outside her window in Duvemåla, and of how twilight lasts much longer in the evenings in Sweden (p. 360). With these memories of nature come memories of her first home. This confuses Kristina, because she does not understand why she longs for these trees and bushes if they are present in America too, and often …show more content…
In The Emigrants, the characters know only one home, and therefore the landscape only represents what they know. It includes both positive and negative aspects of this home, but as time goes on and life gets harder for them, the negative aspects outweigh the positive ones, and the home only becomes a place for leaving. At sea, the characters are stuck in an in-between landscape, where they are neither in the place they left, nor the place they are traveling to. The landscape reflects this in a way that the ocean is all around them, not offering the characters anything but emptiness. There is space, but it is not for them to use. There is water, but it is not for them to drink. They are moving, but they are confined to a small space. In Unto a Good Land, the landscape reflects both the old home and the new home, and the element of comparison is added. The landscape becomes the representation of the home in Sweden, but it can never become exactly that. This impacts the characters differently. Where Kristina experiences an emptiness, Karl Oskar sees growth and