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In Tangerine, what does Paul's mom say about the house she grew up in?

Although Paul's mom says almost nothing, directly, about the house she grew up in, her comments in the chapter titled "Thursday, August 31" strongly imply that she grew up in a very small and/or very run-down house in a poor neighborhood:



Mom suddenly got very serious. "Paul, I'm talking as somebody who never, ever lived in a nice house growing up. Or even lived anywhere near a nice house. This is not a joke to me. Your house is your family's biggest investment. And you have to protect that investment."



The home that the Fisher family has moved into in Tangerine is clearly very nice, representing the upper middle-class lifestyle that the family enjoys. There's a guardhouse at the front of the neighborhood, everything is newly built, and each of the boys gets his own room in the house.


By contrast, Paul's mom was definitely not raised in such luxury when she was a child. This comes up in the novel because Paul finds it strange that his mom is so worried about the smell of the muck fires near their home, as well as the uniformity of the mailboxes all along their street. Paul sees no reason to care much about these things. But his mother understands that it's details like these that can lower the property value of a home. She treats the situation with such seriousness because, more so than her sons, she understands the need to ensure that the family's investment in the house remains a smart one.


Why is this important to consider? It tells us a lot about Mrs. Fisher as a character in this story. She's serious, shrewd, and proactive about maintaining the stability of her relatively luxurious life.

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