they all just went away

“They All Just Went Away” is an essay written by Joyce Carol Oates. In her detailed, well written, and entertaining story, she describes her childhood fascination with abandoned houses, as well as her relationship with a dysfunctional family, the Weidels (the broken-down, white-trash household), that lived in a “house”, not too far from the authors own “home”.
To consider one main theme in this essay proves to be a bit difficult to analyze; though, I think there were two messages that came across to me while reading this essay: the author is trying to describe to the readers that every home, at some point in time, will become a house. Families will eventually break apart, causing a home to become an abandoned house, using the Weidel family as an example. The author states, “the house contains the home but is not identical with it. The house anticipates the home, and will very likely survive it, reverting again simply to house...