Summary and structure
Here, you can read the summary and structure of “Heart is Where the Home is” by Thea Astley.
Summary
When Australian policemen come to Bidgi Mumbler's camp to take away all the Aboriginal children, Bidgi’s daughter-in-law Nelly runs away with her son Charley. While on the run, Nelly remembers how the policemen took the daughter of her cousin, Ruthie, a week before and how other women were tricked a year prior by the authorities, ...
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Structure
Although “Heart is Where the Home is” represents a chapter from the novel It's Raining in Mango, it can also be read as a standalone story due to it being structured along the lines of a traditional complete plot.
The story accounts a single, self-contained event. It follows an Aboriginal mother’s attempt to save her boy from being taken by state authorities and institutionalised, as part of a federal act, enforced between roughly 1905 and 1969 in Australia.
Title
The title of the short story is inspired by the popular proverb “home is where the heart is” but the author changes it to indicate the exact opposite. Instead of home being the place where you long to be or where you feel you belong, the author suggests that people’s idea of home is inevitably linked to their origins.
The title is closely connected to the end of the short story as Nelly refuses to leave her Aboriginal tribe and move in with the Laffeys, ...
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Beginning
The story starts with a brief exposition, setting the time and context. The events take place during the enforcement of the law which enabled state authorities to remove Aboriginal children from their tribes:
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Middle
The middle of the short story follows Nelly as she runs through the forest to hide, constructing the rising action through tension points and backstories.
Through a backstory we find out Nelly has decided to run away because she remembers the daughter of her cousin Ruthie being taken away and the devastating effects it had on the mother:
She knew what was going to happen. It had happened just the week before at a camp near Tobaccotown. Her cousin Ruthie lost a kid that way.
‘We'll bring her up real good,’ they'd told Ruthie. (p. 63, ll. 1-4)
This backstory is mixed with present events, in which the tension increases as Nelly tries to escape the policemen who are chasing her: “Her baby held tightly against her chest, she stumbled through vine and over root, slashed by leaves and thorns, her eyes wide with fright, the baby crying in little gulps, nuzzling in at her straining body.” (p. 64, ll. 11-14)
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Ending
The ending of the short story includes a longer falling action and the resolution. In the falling action, the policemen leave, having found no trace of the Aboriginal child, and Nelly and the Laffeys gradually calm down:
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