Belonging_Creative

BELONGING CREATIVE WRITING - HSC The lights around the city blink and abundance of colours as the many tall buildings towered over Carlos with a disgruntled tone. He shuffled throughout the city across paths and paved roads. His shoes scuffles softly, quiet against the hum of the faceless voices echoing throughout the city centre. Carlos didn’t like coming here, there were too many people, but he had to come and pick his son up from school. He was a bit early. A man with fiery red hair shouted fiercely into a tiny mobile phone. Carlos cowered as he approached. Many faces passed by, each more cold than the last. He sat at an empty table, his beads firmly clutched against the chest. He tried to move the chair away from the table a little bit, but it only swivelled on its axis, fixed. The table too, bolted down into the cold and frosty concrete, immovable and unforgiving. Carlos gazed about his feet waiting for his son to leave to leave St Martha’s College. The statue of the Virgin Mary stood tall and cold over Rahall as he walked passed. The escalator carried laughing and chattering groups from the school, each carrying their religion homework in opines hand and fries in the other. As Rahall took off his green and gold school hat, he caught sight of his father and grinned. The chilliness of the city just become more moderate as Carlos was enveloped in Rahall’s warm hug. The city that was feared just moments ago felt like home. Early the next morning Rahall closed the squeaky wooden Dorr behind him and sat silently in the last row. The church bench beneath him scold. Thin steaks of coloured light seeped through barley lighting the timber floor. Rahall sat alone in the back corner. Rahall wasn’t listening to the service, He has to be there as the usual routine of the school schedule. In his mind the priest roared from behind the sparrier. H3 closed his eyes and imaged he was back at Mexico, the remembrance of watching the sun set with his friends and family, the warmth and comfort of being with his mother. He gently opened his eyes and saw the priest was still roaring on. Everyone formed a line in the aisle. The morning light shone more brightly, from he high stained glass window above the alter. It illuminated the front of the church. Rahual remained at the back in the darkness. The final hymn ended. A familiar step drew his attention, it was Carlos. He was now able to go home. When they got home, Carlos went to his usal squeky wooden chair. It was ont he old green carpet, with the shiny gleaming of yellow sunlight that radiated throughout the window onto it. The morning fresh air with scent of freshly wet cut grass breezed in, gently caressing the hand sewn curtain in the window. BELONGING ESSAY – HSC Everyone needs to belong. How far has your study of Belonging demonstrated this idea' In Your response, refer to your prescribed text and at least ONE other related text of your own choosing. Our need to belong to a group has and always will be crucial for human survival and it is this experience that allows the individual human identity to form and flourish. We all have a natural desire to belong and so we seek out those who are similar to us, to connect with. Through feeling attached we feel secure, valued and accepted by other as social human beings. Humans are deeply social creatures and social isolation is exceedingly threatening to out wellbeing, it can leads to isolation, alienation and a sense of rejection. These human experiences are expresses through the poetry of Peter Skrzynecki’s Immigrant Chronicles, Shawn Tan’s graphic novel The Arrival and Armin Greeder’s short story The Island. Belonging is a vital component, that is crucial for human development, without a sense of attachment we become increasingly isolated, alienated and have feelings of rejection. Skrzynecki explores the notion that many second generation migrants are questioning where they fit in, that sense of truly not belonging to either culture, this is articulated through the poem ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’. It chronicles the poet’s inability to connect to his polish heritage, while acknowledging and even envying his father’s continual sense of connection to the culture of his past. His father sense of connection is expressed through the simile ‘fingers with cracks like the sods he broke’, this shows his father connection with the land and his culture and how he maintains his heritage by continuing to grow vegetables as he had in Poland. Further exploration of the poet’s discontent is explored through the juxtaposition of Skrzynecki and his dad. It establishes the poets lost identity, he expresses his lack of individuality through the phase ‘happy as I never have been’, which reinforces the lack of connection the poets feels towards his father and his culture. In the last stanza, the poet explores how he has forgotten his first polish words and learnt Latin. This is ironic as he has lost his polish culture and learnt a dead language Latin, this emphasises his dislocation and his inability to connect to his polish culture of his Australian culture and truly find his sense of identity. Another text that looks at the difficulty in migrants finding a place to belong is The Arrival. In this graphic novel no words are used, the effect is to position the reader to experience the world through the migrant characters. There is no guidance to how the image might be interpreted and thus the reader must search for meaning and familiarity and experience the confusion and uncertainty about what the text mean. This mirrors the central characters confusion and loss of identity in a world where everything is so bizarre and concealed. It also explores the effects of dislocation and subsequent inability to make a connection and find a sense of identity. The main character, a refugee is unable to communicate to the residences of his new city and thus unable to make a connection with them. This is established through the depiction of unfamiliar surroundings, peculiar animals, undecipherable language and foreign customs. These are used to create a climate of displacement and exclusion. The need to belong to a community where you can move freely ad have social and emotional bonds is the basis of human life. It is this need that motivates the central character in The Arrival. The visual metaphor of the dragon’s tail that weaves in and menacingly through the old town is a faceless threat that provides the drive for relocation. Similarly Skrzynecki’s ‘Migrant Hostel’ explores this desire for a place to belong, which motivates the immigrants to seek a new life in Australia. Skrzynecki uses bird imagery to characterise the migrants. They are described through the simile ‘like birds of passage sensing change’. Migrating birds are driven by instinct to find home as ‘birds’ imply images of freedom. The association of birds and migrants suggest the human drive to seek out the familiar, home, safety, secure and desire to follow the natural rhythm of life. All these instincts are frustrated by their detention in hostels. The contrast between the immigrants constrained circumstances and images of freedom emphasises the powerlessness of being held in this state of limbo where they neither belong to their past or their future. Further exploration of the frustration felt by migrants, from being prevented from starting their new life in Australia is expressed through the language of separation and shame. The initial image is one of enforced separation, ‘a barrier’, ‘sealed off the highway’. This is symbolic of the migrant’s experiences of being prevented from continuing their journey towards a new home and therefore a new sense of belonging. The highway is a metaphor for the future, added to this is the images of shame formed in the metaphor for the gate barrier at the hostel, “as it rose and fell like a finger pointed in reprimand or shame’. This extended metaphor captures the sense of authority and punishment that results for the migrants. They are made to feel unwelcome, their “otherness” is emphasised by the imprisonment in the hostel. Without the right to seek out their own place and purpose in the new community they are prevented from establishing their new identities as Australians. This results in their feelings of humiliation and rejection. Social isolation is threatening to human wellbeing. Skrzynecki experiences of being an outsider negatively impacted his sense of self worth, expressed as ‘darkness’ in St Patrick’s College. It explores the life of the poet at a catholic school where he didn’t feel he belonged and he couldn’t connect with the school values. This is established through the imagery of the, statue of the Virgin Mary on the top of the school. This is used as a symbol of the school values and “Her face was covered by clouds” which symbolises how distant the poet feels from the school and its values. At the end of the poem the Virgin Mary is still watching him, this represents how he feels he is being judged and the repetition of “unchanged by eight years” is used to emphasise his inability to belong and fit in. The use of the simile “like a foreign tourist” is used to reinforce the poet’s feelings of distance and dislocation from the school. The choice of the photograph album style and layout indicates The Arrival is about exploring notions of connections and sense of identity. Photograph albums are collections of images that record our connections with family and place. They are a collection of pictures of one’s history and where one fits in and who we are. The glossy realistic photo illustration of the man with his suitcase in a confused encounter with an alien looking creature introduces the reader to the theme of a migrant experience and the sense of bewilderment and strangeness that are related to displacement. Multiple portraits on the end papers reinforce the idea that the experiences in the text are universal, that we all experience a loss of self worth and confidence when we don’t feel welcome and are unable to make connections. This desire to belong it essential for our sense of identity, as seen in the texts the implications of belonging on our sense of self and identity is crucial. Through belonging come connectedness and a sense of security and attachment through knowing our identity. A lack of belonging can lead to isolation, alienation and a sense of rejection.