ABSTRACT
In The Poetics of Space, Gaston Bachelard asserts that the house image “shelters daydreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace” (1964: 6). Jack Zipes, pointing out that the writings of Bloch and Tolkien are similar in their “longing for a true home,” also refers to the Marxist idea of communality:
Meaning cannot be achieved by a human being alone. The dependence on other beings must be acknowledged if the individual is to raise himself up and stride forward in an upright posture toward home, which, as we know, is the beginning of history, a realm without alienating conditions (1979: 148).
