Out of the Dust The Home Quotes

When the migrant boy stops at the Kelby home, Billie Jo doesn't see a dirty, tired kid who's been forced to leave his family to find work—she just sees someone lucky enough to get away, and wants to make a home somewhere else herself, just like him. In reality, she's blind to how good she really has it compared to him, Livie, and other folks who "get" to leave town.

Ma's absence changes Billie Jo's view of her, causing her to accept the things she once found hard to handle, like Ma's minimal communication style. Now she seems to wish she had been more content with home as it was.

Billie Jo's first Christmas without Ma shows that home is more than just a physical location—it's the little things, like family traditions and favorite recipes. Not having Ma's cranberry sauce is a painful reminder that home will be something quite different without her.

With Ma gone, a big piece of what home has meant to Billie Jo is chipped off—or, if we want to go with the dust metaphor, been blown away. The uneasy communication between her and Daddy, combined with Ma's absence, makes the idea of staying at home even more intolerable than it's ever been.

Ma's death forces both Billie Jo and Daddy to redefine what home means to them, causing strain in their communication. Their mutual struggle with this shows that although we only see Billie Jo's perspective, Daddy is in just as much pain as she is.

Grief isn't the only thing invading the Kelby home—in the worst storm of the book, mounds of dust blow into their house, overtaking everything important to them. Billie Jo is especially upset about how it's covered her mother's grave and piano, the few things she has left to remember her by. The Dust Bowl's natural condition is a layer of external pain added on top of the internal conflict of Ma's death.

Realizing how hard Daddy has been trying to keep things afloat in Ma's absence is a huge breakthrough for Billie Jo—she's been so focused on herself and her own needs that her grief has made her selfish. Leaving home makes her able to see that she bears equal blame for the cold relationship between them.

How many times have you gotten something you really wanted only to find that it wasn't as great as you thought it would be? Billie Jo finally gets her wish to leave home, but realizes that it wasn't all she's cracked it up to be. In reality, even with the dust, the drought, and her grief, her home is still the only one she has.

Sometimes we get so obsessed with thinking about how much better things could be that we forget how good they already are. Billie Jo realizes after getting away that her home is a part of her she can't escape, no matter how hard life has been.

The fact that home is the last thing on Billie Jo's Thanksgiving list demonstrates the importance of the lesson she's learned. Rebuilding her relationship with Daddy and seeing him find happiness in his relationship with Louise has reminded her of how crucial her home is to her identity.