The Home Quotes in Red Mars

How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Line)

Quote #7

It was strange to walk the square of hallways, remembering the pool, Maya's room, the dining hall—now all dark, and stacked with boxes. Those years when the first hundred had been the only hundred. It was getting hard to remember what that had been like. (5.9.107)

We often associate home with a place, but the novel doesn't seem to go that route. Every place in it changes, and what starts out as a home for the First Hundred doesn't ever seem to stay one.

Quote #8

People who had lived in cities all their lives went to Mars and moved around in rovers and tents. The excuses for their ceaseless travel included the hunt for metals, areology, and trade, but it seemed clear that the important thing was the travel, the life itself. (6.3.2)

Just because you've lived somewhere your whole life doesn't make it a home. To borrow the cliché, home is where the heart is—or Martian rover in this case.

Quote #9

"But look, the most successful women among you are modest and deferent at all times, they are scrupulous in honoring the system. Those are the ones that aid their husbands and sons to rise in the system. So to succeed, they must work to enforce the same system that subjugates them. This is poisonous in its effects. And the cycle repeats itself, generation after generation." (6.3.50)

Frank's argument brings up a good point: what we consider the home and proper home behavior is often dictated to us by our culture. But why do we need to listen to culture's idea of what makes a good home?