Belonging_Essay

Good morning everyone. Today I am going to talk about my notions of Belonging”. The meaning of “Belonging” is feeling comfortable and happy in a particular situation or with a particular group of people. Belonging can be related to “culture”, “language”, “background”etc. When you are belonging to something, you will feel safe. I will use Peter Skrzynecki’ s poems “ Immigrants at Central Station, 1951”and “St Patrick’ s College”, the poem “The Stranger” by Santo Casella, and the novel “Looking for Alibrandi”by . “Immigrants at Central Station, 1951”is a depressing poem. Peter used many negative words to show how he did not want to belong to the new country, like “cold”, “silence”, “slaughter”and “guillotine”etc. Also, he used metaphor like “The air was crowded”, “Sank into our thoughts --- but we ate it all”. These techniques emphasize the difficulty of this experience. It creates a strong image to the responder. This is similar to “St Patrick’s College”. The metaphor “Uncertain of my destination” emphasize Peter finds no connection or valued catholic education. He feels disengaged from education. His religions education does not contribute to his sense of belonging. It’s also can give a strong emotion to the responder. This is further reinforces by “our lady’s outstretched arm …… face overshadowed by clouds”. This foreshadows a problem for Peter in this religions environment. His lack of acceptance for this school makes finding his identity very difficult. An element of this is captured in the novel “Looking for Alibrandi”. Josie also finds it difficult to belong to a rich private school with only Australian girls. She is a Italian Australia. Actually she prefers to be Australian, but that make she always annoying. She lives with her mother and grandmother, but her grandmother is bad of English, also their perspectives are different. Josie always feels she doesn’t belong to her family because their cultures are different. The character of the poem “The Stranger”rejected by his old world, not accepted by his new world. Like “Peter also stand between his polish background and Australia”. And me, stands between China, Australia and Japan. So I can understand their feeling. This problem always makes me confusing. But in my opinion, , accept two or three culture is better than we are going to choose one side of it. If “Belonging”makes us annoying, and we could not change anything, then we should try to change our mind, change our perspective, do not be too inflexible. Then we can belong to everything.