Ready Reference Treatise: Homecoming

By Raja Sharma

The characters of the Tillerman children in “Homecoming” are inspired from the author’s childhood experiences. She had been almost deprived of the privation. She molds most of the characters in this novel on the basis of her experiences during her childhood.

She was the second of the six children. Her parents were fairly well off. They were able to send Cynthia Voigt to study at an expensive private school in Wellesley, Massachusetts near their family home in Boston.

It is said that her elder sister was more graceful than Cynthia Voigt. Although she had a happy childhood, she felt a kind of competition with her older sister. When she was in ninth grade, she started following publication. However, her dream was realized after several years.

Ready Reference Treatise: Homecoming
Copyright
Chapter One: Introduction
Chapter Two: Plot Overview
Chapter Three: Characters
Chapter Four: Complete Summary
Part One
Part Two
Chapter Five: Critical Analysis

• Language: English
• Publisher: Raja Sharma
• Release date: May 14, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311684882

Raja Sharma

Raja Sharma is a retired college lecturer.He has taught English Literature to University students for more than two decades.His students are scattered all over the world, and it is noticeable that he is in contact with more than ninety thousand of his students.

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Ready Reference Treatise: Homecoming

Copyright

Ready Reference Treatise: Homecoming

Raja Sharma

Copyright@2015 Raja Sharma

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Chapter One: Introduction

Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt is a very successful young adult novel. It was first published in 1981.

Cynthia Voigt has written seven novels in the Tillerman Cycle. Homecoming is the first of these novels. The story was later adapted into a film for television.

Cynthia Voigt has established herself as a very popular children’s author in the United States of America. She is also very popular all over the world.

The characters of the Tillerman children in Homecoming are inspired from the author’s childhood experiences. She had been almost deprived of the privation. She molds most of the characters in this novel on the basis of her experiences during her childhood.

She was the second of the six children. Her parents were fairly well off. They were able to send Cynthia Voigt to study at an expensive private school in Wellesley, Massachusetts near their family home in Boston.

It is said that her elder sister was more graceful than Cynthia Voigt. Although she had a happy childhood, she felt a kind of competition with her older sister. When she was in ninth grade, she started following publication. However, her dream was realized after several years.

The rejection of her manuscript made her believe that the script was not good enough to be published. She finally majored in English at Smith College. She spent one year in New York City.

After her marriage, she moved to New Mexico. Her first daughter was born in New Mexico. Cynthia Voigt began to teach her daughter herself. From there, she and her husband moved to Annapolis, Maryland. Voigt began to teach in public and private schools there.

Unfortunately, she and her husband divorced. Several years after her divorce, she remarried. She got pregnant again. While she was pregnant with her son, she began to give more time to her writing.

While teaching the middle school students, she got interested in young adult literature. One day, she found that her daughter was raptly reading her first manuscript. She immediately realized that she had written something interesting.

Her novel Homecoming was successful but its sequel Dicey’s Song won the award of the Newbery Medal. Her life got filled with name and fame.

During an interview, she once said that she sees both her family and her teaching as playing at least as major a role in her life as her writing.

There are several views from some critics that her books are appropriate for young readers because of the intensity of writing and subject matter. During her Newbery Medal acceptance speech, the author said that young readers are much tougher than most adults imagine. She said that she highly respected literature because it engages the imagination and sets to work the intelligence, filling the spirit.

Voigt does want her work to be questions and she wants to challenge her readers to question conventions. In the same acceptance speech she said that she is delighted not only because she learns from her characters during the process of writing, but also because her readers send their comments and discuss with her and teach her several things about her work.

Voigt mentioned that writing is a process through which she involves the world and her inner self in conversation.

Chapter Two: Plot Overview

The novel is set in the very early 1980s. The story revolves around four siblings, between the age of six and thirteen. Their mother abandons the children one summer afternoon in their car next to a shopping mall at Connecticut while they were on an aborted trip to a family member in Bridgeport.

When the children realize that their mother is not coming back and they are