Summary of the story:
The story ’Going Home’ is about a young man who’s turning twenty-one. He lives in Great-Britain but his parents have aboriginal roots. The story is told from when he was sixteen years old till his twenty-first birthday. This young man goes by a couple of names: Billy Woodward and William Jacob Woodward. Those two names symbolize the two sides he has as a ‘white’ aboriginal. When he is the ‘son of his parents’ and when he talks to other aboriginals, he’s called Billy. When he’s among white people, being a regular teenager in Britain, he goes by the name William Jacob. At 18 years of age, he gets picked up by a big football team and moves away from home. Besides football, he also likes painting pictures and is very good at it. He tries to live like a white man, even though he is black, repressing his past. From time to time he stumbles into some aboriginal family of his, and is being very ashamed of them. He thinks that they are all drunken and disgusting individuals. Even though he looks at his people with revulsion, he wants to go home and visit his family for his twenty-first birthday. He expects them to celebrate him, though he hasn’t been home for three years. He didn’t even come home when his father died in an accident. Billys’ family lives far away from the city in an old aboriginal-camp.
When the day arrives, he drives out to the old camp in his new fancy car. He had sold some pictures to afford this car. He picks up Darcy, an aboriginal-man, on the way out there, whom he spent the rest of the trip with. When finally he arrives at his family’s’ camp, not all of them are happy to see him. Carlton and Rennie, his brother and cousin, greet him very politely and are happy to see him. Rennie gives Billy a nice gold watch as a present, and they exchange laughs. Billy’s mother is very disappointed in him because he didn’t show up for the funeral. Later that evening Carlton and Rennie decides to go buy some beers, so they borrow