Assignment 1 “Heroes of the Frontier”

In the first fifty pages of the book the sense of home seems pretty terrible for Josie, since her husband is a bit of an asshole and she seems to be an alcoholic. This isn’t a good environment for the kids so Josie decides to take the children to Alaska since thats the farthest place she can go thats still within the country.  Since her and her husband are divorcing, Josie is taking her kids to Alaska and even though he’s moving to Florida with his new girlfriend, she still feels the need to get outta town and get as far away as possible. Because of this it seems that she feels like she’s at home as long as she’s with her children. This will probably come into play later on in the book. As for her children, they’re young so they don’t really have a deep understanding of home, other than it’s the house where live. Them being taken away from their father and moving hundreds of miles from where they started their lives must feel almost like a vacation for the children since they’re driving around Alaska in an RV which is just a small house on wheels that they call the chateau. Chateau means a large house or castle, which is very ironic since they’re now living in an old RV that Josie bought off of a man right after landing in Alaska. Taking this into consideration, the overall sense of home for the family doesn’t seem like a very happy and welcoming place right now. Josie packing up the kids, leaving her husband, and going to live in the frigid Alaskan frontier in an RV that is the exact opposite of its name is not the best feeling in the world and Josie knows this. This stimulates her drinking even more and her children are left to play with only each other. Even if this wasn’t enough, the very beginning of chapter three says “But this was not yet the land of mountains and light. What they’d seen so far was just a place. (Eggers 36)” This pretty much blatantly says that, at least Josie, isn’t satisfied with Alaska and was expecting greater and far more adventurous things from their new “home.”