The Importance Of Home In Mason's Shiloh

Mason, who is the author of Shiloh, provides an important element of setting that helps signify the deteriorating relationship between Leroy Moffitt and his wife Norma Jean as well as the mood and essence of the story. Throughout the story, the author mentions the characters’ home. In Leroy’s world, home would represent togetherness, love, affection, and comfort because he would now spend time with Norma and feel secure. Ultimately, this would display a sign of a growing relationship. Ironically, home represents peculiarity and discomfort for Norma. According to the passage, “They never speak about their memories of Randy, which have almost faded, but now that Leroy is home all the time, they sometimes feel awkward around each other” (Mason
The setting described above would display a mood of sympathy because the readers know the relationship is becoming brittle, and the readers know that Leroy is doing his best to make the relationship better. The mood would also be hopeless because readers would foreshadow a dissolving relationship. Towards the end, Leroy takes Norma out to Shiloh to spend some personal time. According to the passage, “Mabel is talking about Shiloh, Tennessee. For the past few years, she has been urging Leroy and Norma Jean to visit the Civil War battleground there” (Mason 49). So basically a civil war occurred in Shiloh. A civil war is a war within a country so it represents the war or conflict between Leroy and Norma that is chaotic. At the end, they stand near a cemetery and Norma says, “ ‘I want to leave you’ ” (Mason 54). The cemetery represents the dead and dissolution of the relationship and how they will live their own ways. The last sentence of the story states, “The sky is unusually pale-the color of the dust ruffle Mabel made for their bed” (Mason 55). The sentence represents doom and no hope for Leroy to resolve the conflicts that have occurred between the