My thesis is an analysis of the idea of home as it is made manifest in Long Day's Journey into Night by Eugene O'Neill, Curse of the Starving Class by Sam Shepard and August: Osage County by Tracy Letts. All three plays are in the canon of American Family Drama and the characters have a particular interest in the dysfunction of their homes. The mother characters especially feel the need to alter the state of the home (and sometimes the house as well) in order to find a stable sense of self identity. My thesis argues that the home these people so desperately yearn for is something that they already have. It is in a perpetual cycle of chaos and vulnerability, as well as through the struggle for independence and codependence that the family members connect and find home.