As depicted in the text, war destabilizes and fragments ordinary peoples’ lives: “When gunshots rang through town and chaos ensued the day that war came into her life, she had turned around to look at her home before running away.” Gun shots are figurative of the scarce peacetime which renders her home insecure. Beholding the home before fleeing is an pointer of the materiality of the home in her lifetime.
In particular, Kadie’s unconscious aspiration is to return to her home after war: “She had returned home because she could not find complete happiness anywhere else. She had scoured refugee camps and the homes of kind strangers for some sort of joy that didn’t need entertainment, something she knew existed only on the land she now stood upon.” Her home cannot be switched with the strangers’ and refugee homes. Her homecoming is the out-and-out remedy which can address her unconscious plea. Thus, her life can be complete once she resumes the life which she was habituated to prior to the warfare.
