Homecoming Theme Analysis

In “The Half-Skinned Steer,” the elderly Mero Corn returns home to his family’s ranch to attend his brother Rollo’s funeral. While driving from Massachusetts to Wyoming, Mero recalls past events that compelled him to leave home as a young man. As the story progresses, however, it becomes clear that Mero didn’t escape completely; his choices and memories have kept him tethered to home, a place that has exerted its influence over his entire life. Mero never reaches home in the story—the story suggests that Mero dies while trudging through a snowstorm. The story thus concludes, somewhat ironically, on a note of unfinished homecoming. In the end, Mero cannot return to the place he has for six decades defined his life against. In Proulx’s story, the idea of “homecoming” thus proves elusive, even as home itself is presented as having an inexorable influence over an individual’s identity.

Proulx begins the story by describing Mero’s reasons for leaving home in his twenties. Mero rode “the train out” of Wyoming and never returned because he believed that the ranch would not provide any meaningful opportunities, and this pushed him to look for a new life elsewhere. Mero also “pulled away” when his father’s girlfriend arrived and his brother Rollo fell for her charms. Mero was repulsed by his brother and father’s mutual infatuation with the woman, and realized that staying on the ranch would mean his life would “go on” monotonouslyto Mero, then, the ranch was a place of claustrophobic tedium. Based on these rationales, Mero left the ranch to “find” new “territory.” He went to war, married multiple times, and worked odd jobs. He retired briefly before getting into “local politics,” another role he eventually left. Mero’s initial escape has seemingly turned into a lifelong cycle of avoidance. One could read Mero’s need for escapism, exemplified by the constant changes to his career and marital status, as the inevitable consequence of a pattern started by his initial departure from the ranch.

Mero is proud to have escaped from his past, yet his identity seems to have been formed in direct rebellion to his upbringing—indicating that he never really escaped his home’s influence. For example, Mero recalls how the sight of a bloody steak in a restaurant repulsed him and prompted him to become a vegetarian. Recognizing that this choice is particularly unusual as he grew up on a ranch, Mero describes himself as a “cattleman” who has “gone wrong.” Mero emphasizes proudly that his vegetarianism contradicts his upbringing, ironically illustrating that he still thinks and cares deeply about his roots. In fact, Mero believes his choices make him superior to his family. When Mero hears that an emu has killed his brother, he emphasizes how he “could have” escaped the emu’s attack, and credits his likely escape to the time spent on his “Exercycle” and to a diet of “green leafy vegetables.” Mero claims his healthy lifestylea clear reaction to, and departure from, the life he would have led as a meat-eating or alcoholic cattlemanmakes him a more capable man than his brother.

As Mero approaches the ranch, memories of home overwhelm him, indicating their hold on his identity even after decades away. He describes how “the shape of the ranch” awakens “in his mind,” and how he “could recall” the various objects he built for the ranch with his own hands. Mero clearly still feels a sense of ownership, despite his insistence that he has escaped the ranch for a new life. He highlights the “eerie dream quality” of the situation, acknowledging how the ranch has remained a strangely potent place for him. In fact, the ranch seems “clear and sharp in his mind.”

At the same time, however, Mero knows the ranch cannot possibly be the same as when he left it: the ranch has changed ownership and shifted business models in his absence, and the home he remembers no longer exists. When he considers the idea of stopping at “Banner’s place,” for example, he realizes that Bob Banner “would have to be 120 years old” to greet him now; the neighbor he knew in childhood has passed away, changing his home’s context. As such, Mero cannot truly return home, as the place he remembers has transformed in his absence. With his brother also dead, the potential for closure has passed. Mero’s feelings of familiarity reveal his belief that some basic essence of home remains, but the fact that he fails to find the ranch at all suggests he is mistaken.

Mero continues to drive homeward, but the engine of his car cuts out, and Mero understands that he is likely going to die. He claims that it is “almost a relief” to have “reached this point,” and seems happy that he never truly returned to the ranch, joking to himself that he may instead “find the mythical Grand Hotel.” Mero acknowledges that he will never complete his homecoming: he is content to remain trapped both physically and figuratively in a sort of limbo between two worlds, as he never truly left home yet is unable to return. Home is ultimately a complicated and rather paradoxical concept in the story. It is both an indelible part of an individual’s character and a concept that largely exists only in one’s mind.