“Home Soil” centers upon the experiences and the guilt of
a Ukrainian American, the narrator, and his son, Bohdan. The narrator committed a war
crime in Ukraine during World War II, and he still replays “that scene in … [his] mind
almost forty years after it happened” (paragraph 33). His son Bohdan, who has lost his
Ukrainian roots (he prefers to be called “Bob” rather than “Bohdan” [paragraph 4]), has
undergone some similar but undisclosed experience in the Vietnamese
War.
The story itself takes place on a Sunday, the first
section being in church (paragraphs 1–36) and the second at the narrator’s home. The
parallel experiences of father and son reach a climax in paragraph 36, when the narrator
speaks of the impossibility of finding inner peace even though he is leading a totally
peaceful and successful life.
The son’s tears (paragraphs
40–42) show that he feels the same loss of inner peace. Interestingly, there is no
solution to the existence of guilt. As much as the narrator can say is “I don’t die.
Instead I go to the garden” (paragraph 37), an action that suggests the irrevocability
of inhuman actions and the permanence of guilt.
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