Finding Langston

“I wish it were home I was rushing to.” 

Although this reflection by Langston refers to the fact that he’s urgently trying to get away from school, not get home, it is also an inadvertent admission that he does not consider his new apartment home. Having recently moved to Chicago, he still thinks of home as the small Alabama farm where he has lived all but the past two months of his life. Langston wishes he could rush back to Alabama, but as will become apparent, he keeps this wish a secret from everyone, especially his father.

“Nothing here belongs to us, just whoever pays the rent.”

This is Langston’s assessment of the small apartment he lives in with his father, and it betrays the sense of alienation he feels as he begins a new life in Chicago. Just as nothing belongs to them in the apartment, Langston feels he does not belong in Chicago, where the sights, sounds, and people are unfamiliar and, from Langston’s perspective, inhospitable. Because the city seemingly lacks all the comforts of home, Langston imagines it cannot be a real home for “whoever” lives there. He will start to reconsider this judgment as he gets to know Miss Fulton, who is proud to say she was born in Chicago and her parents “still live at Forty-Fifth and St.