Out of Africa The Home Quotes

How we cite our quotes: All quotations are from Out of Africa.

Quote #7

KAREN: You don't have to go. You want to go.

BROR: We've got to live here.

KAREN: They have made it plain they don't want you.

BROR: I'll have to show them where we stand.

KAREN: I'm not so fond of their empire. I'd have you shot for it.

Bror was Swedish, and Karen was Danish. Sweden and Denmark were officially neutral powers, but there was some question as to the loyalty and German sympathies of Bror and Karen during WWI. Bror's worried about that, and if they want to stay in Africa, he feels that he needs to make a public show of loyalty by joining the British men at the front. It's a political move, designed mostly to keep their home.

Quote #8

FELICITY: You've been round and about. Someday, I'd like to run my own show the way you do.

KAREN: Is that what I do?

FELICITY: You don't seem to need us much.

Karen really does live an isolated life. Most colonials come into town to socialize, but Karen often sets herself apart. She wasn't fond of crowds, and she was more interested in taking care of her farm. To someone like Felicity, this wild and free approach would be very attractive.

Quote #9

KAREN: I stayed in the room where I was born in Rungstedland, and tried to remember the colors of Africa. There was only the medicine and walks with my mother along a deserted stretch of beach, and this room in my mother's house. Denmark had become a stranger to me and I to her. But my mother's house I came to know again. And knew I would come back to it sick or well, sane or mad someday. And so I did after Tsavo.

The place that Karen had grown up in was no longer home to her after Africa. But during her long year of treatment, it became familiar again.