Home as a motif for Lydia in Beetlejuice
Because Sapien is awake in the unholy hours and has decided to unburden her knowledge on all of you people
So this is mainly coming off of the back of listening to the Beetlejuice soundtrack again and fawning over the Dead Mom lyrics because DAMN
So the first mention of home is in the first introduction to the Deetz family beyond Prologue: Invisible and refers more explicitly to the old house. āDead Mom loved that house!ā/āMy whole life is in that house!ā Both lines are said by Lydia during her bid to try and provoke Charles into seeing her and acknowledging both her own and his own grief. What I find interesting is the use of the personal pronoun āmyā over āourā. Along with her later expressions of misplaced hatred towards her father, this creates an image of Charlesā emotional incapability towards approaching grief that paints him out of the picture of the life before Emily died in Lydiaās mind. Because he cannot cope with the painful memories attached to that house, or any external stimuli that remind him of Emily (probably a contributing factor to why he begins to shun Lydia from his life ā sheās the spit of Emily in character).
Okay, so now weāve broached the topic of first introduction, we can get into the good stuff!! Dead Mom!! So, we have all of Lydiaās angsty hours going on during this song, but after the belts the song softens. She claims āYouāre my home, my destinationā in relation to her deceased mother. āHomeā, in this instance, refers to the abstract concept of where/with whom you feel most safe, most protected, most comfortable. This is how home is perceived in every instance of its mention throughout the play. For Lydia? Home is Emily. The only person who really understands her and accepts her exactly as she is. And Emily is dead. She has no home, adrift in the āabyssā before she ever reaches the Netherworld. Additionally, thereās a lovely bit of foreshadowing here with āmy destinationā, subtly nodding towards Lydiaās impromptu vacation in the Netherworld in pursuit of her dead mom.
So, without doing a lot of research into the script of Beetlejuice, the next reference of the motif I could find was the song Home. Which, of course, is riddled with the word. This is the song that, in my humble opinion, shows Lydiaās character development in the most clear and concise manner.
The first time she mentions the word: āBack at home you donāt exist, so here I am in the abyssā. This is the first and only I think time that she refers to the house in Winter River as home (rather than referring to a person, as she usually does). This may just be a choice for lyrical flow, but I find it interesting, as it emphasises that Emily is NOT there and so therefore home is not home.
We get some nice metaphors for depression sprinkled within the already gut wrenching performance. And the parallels between āIām probāly talking to myself hereā and āTired of talking to myself hereā are amazing. Sheās so weary of the world and itās cruelty, so so tired.
āI donāt know which wayās homeā; āShow me the way back homeā; āIs there a way back home?ā These lines come in chronological order, and their development is particularly interesting to me. The first iteration has a double meaning: firstly, the more explicit plea of āIām lostā, both in terms of direction and without Emily; secondly, that she canāt find her mom, and therefore doesnāt know the way back into her arms. She doesnāt know which wayās home. But then the wording changes. āShow me the way back homeā, to me, sounds like an open cry for help although sheās still talking to Emily in particular sheās not fussy. Home is no longer pertaining to Dead Mom, but is instead a reference to the human world and the life she left behind (indicated by the line āNo light above and thereās no hope belowā).
So Iām moving āIs there a way back home?ā down here because I feel like this could be lengthy. This has so many interpretations, I love it! So, firstly, letās start with the surface connotations. The first and foremost implication being her questioning whether or not actually leaving the Netherworld is a possible scenario for her and her father (especially since Juno is after both of them). Thatās on the surface. Now, deeper, youāve got this idea that Lydia has yet to find Emily in the deep dark pit of the Netherworld. Is she even there? Would she ever find her? Is there a way back to the woman she considers home? Who knows? Thereās a further idea about a happy family that Iād like to touch on. This idea of home could include Charles. A happier, more open Charles who wasnāt so insecure (because I have a gut feeling Lydiaās actually a daddyās girl) and a time when Mom was alive and they were all happier. That memory of having an unbroken family is also home, supported by the next reference of āThereās no home without you in itā.
Now we have the bit where Charles and Lydia make up before going back into song.
āIām gonna go back home / Adam, Barbara, Delia, and Dad / Itās messy but theyāre all that I haveā Lydia finds her homes in people rather than places, and in this case sheās accepting that Emily cannot be her home anymore though she promises not to forget her and that she has to move on to make more meaningful relationships with others who care about her. āItās messy but theyāre all that I haveā will always be one of the most beautiful lines in the entire musical, because it demonstrates how far sheās come. Yes, theyāll have to work on it. Yes, it will be tough. But theyāre there for her no matter how disjointed and how difficult it is for them to communicate. She has found herself a new home.
Now! Onto the finale!! Jump in Line!! The very very last line of the entire musical is āIām hoooommmeeeeā from Lydia. Now, thank you to @barbara-lazuli for bringing this to my attention but there is a parallel I hadnāt noticed in this line. The very first lone of the entire musical is the ensemble: āDaylight come and me wanna go....ā The line cuts off before home. Flash forward to the very last line of the musical. The ensemble sings the same line, only it ends with Lydia singing the āIām homeā part. At the start she was incomplete, ill at ease with grief and depression, adrift in an ocean far from home; however, with help, support, patience, and love, Lydia has found a new place, a new family to call home.
In conclusion, Sapien has spent 2 hours writing this and is tired as anything. Come back next time for Sapien overanalysing the motif of invisibility and how it creates a wonderful parallel for Beetlejuice and Lydia. Please enjoy. :)
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