Cynthia Voigt’s Homecoming has the reputation of being a Waltons-like uplifting story of the family unit being the mechanism for overcoming all manner of economic difficulties imposed by external circumstances. (Coincidentally, The Waltons was initially introduced to viewers in a TV-movie titled The Homecoming.) While the story does end notably ambiguous in its presentation of a happy ending, the reality is that the story is a very dark portrait of what was then, what was before, and what has remained one of America’s greatest shames: the lack of proper to attention to consideration and treatment of mental illness.
Literally everything that happens to the Tillerman siblings results from systemic failure on the part of American society at every level to recognize the causes and symptoms of mental illness, much less appropriate anything close to the funds necessary to provide proper treatment. This is a story that literally begins with a mother abandoning her young children in a parking lot of a mall. Things continue spiraling downhill relative to the issue of mental illness from point onward.
As the abandoned and homeless kids become stragglers struggling to find money and food, a few strangers are moved to offer assistance, but basically they are ignored. The only governmental entity that takes any notice is law enforcement which, predictably enough, only finds their situation concerning due to suspicions of criminal activity.
Eventually, the siblings reach their destination: the home of an Aunt Cilla whom they have never met. She’s dead, but is reluctantly taken in by her daughter Eunice. In the eyes of the majority of Americans, Eunice is a devout Christian, if a bit of a fundamentalist in her adherence to her Catholic doctrine of faith. Take away the Christian component, however, and it is difficult to describe Eunice in any other way that mentally ill in the behavior she exhibits in her worship of an unseen entity she cannot prove actually exists. This section becomes an indictment of the way that religion is justified for not treating behavior that would clearly be considered a mental illness otherwise.
Eunice acts at least as intellectually disturbed as young Maybeth whom she freely labels as “retarded” and their mother eventually turns up in a catatonic state in an asylum. Maybeth’s brother Sammy may possibly be exhibiting traits of kleptomania or he may simply be a thief-in-training. When they finally track their grandmother, she is emotionally distant and cold from everyone, having alienated herself into isolation from society. The suggestion is being made that mental illness in the family may have a genetic origination. At the same time, however, the very same connections can also be interpreted to suggest that mental illness results from environmental conditions. The point being that nobody knows what links the mental health issues of this family together since no serious research is being done. And why is that? Because, as the story also strongly suggests, it is the family’s duty to take care of their own and it is society’s expectations that families will take on this responsibility.
