Belonging_Essay

Inclusion and estrangement Belonging is a complex multi-faceted concept which reflects the individual’s inherent desire for a sense of connection with others, whilst simultaneously maintaining his or her personal identity and, through this, achieving harmonious and balanced relationships. To quote Cicero, “We were born to unite with our fellow men, and to join in community with the human race”. However, this utopian ideal does not occur often and disconnection often occurs as a result of a relationship being undermined by a lack of connection with others. Such concepts are explored in Skrzynecki’s “Immigrant Chronicle” poem “Feliks Skryznecki” which not only explores his connection with his Polish heritage but also deals with his son’s estrangement from that heritage while “Migrant Hostel” by Peter Skrzynecki explores a group of people who have not been allowed to integrate with society and, instead, are estranged from Australian culture through these hostels. These ideas are also developed in Alice Walker’s short story “the flowers” which explores the idea that society does offer a sense of belonging so long as one accepts that such inclusion comes at the cost of acquiescence to limited social roles. Alienation is a common experience for immigrants displaced from their cultural and social milieu into a foreign environment. This is explored in Peter Skrzynecki’s poem “Migrant hostel”. The poet describes the unsettlement that occurs within the migrant hostel with “Sudden departures from adjoining blocks”. This lack of settlement is epitomised by the use of the extended metaphor “birds of passage”, which compares the plight of these migrants to that of migratory birds that not only travel large distances but also live in a state of disorientation and uncertainty. This estrangement was further fuelled by the cramming of different races who were “partitioned at night by memories of hunger and hate”, demonstrating the lack of care given by the government. The effect of these experiences are condensed by the repetition and the emphasis of the line “For two years” and the paradox “to pass in and out of lives that had only begun or were dying”, which demonstrates the damage caused by the estrangement of migrants for long periods of time within the migrant hostels. However, alienation from society, unlike in “Migrant Hostel”, is not necessarily forced and does not necessarily lead to dire consequences. This is shown through the poem “Feliks Skrzynecki”, also by Peter Skrzynecki, which depicts an individual who chooses to remain separate from mainstream society, even refusing in part to comply with its values and expectations. This is demonstrated in the character Feliks Skrzynecki, who is shown to reject the Australian paradigm and, instead, isolates himself within the Polish milieu. This is emphasised by the lines “Kept pace only with the Joneses Of his own mind’s making”. In other words, his identity is kept independent of ‘the Joneses’, a synecdoche for Australian society, but rather upon his desire to maintain his cultural identity as a Polish migrant. Despite disassociating himself from the mainstream society, Feliks is able to find a sense of inclusiveness through his garden which he “loves like an only child”, this simile demonstrating his dedication to his garden that he sweeps its paths “ten times around the world.” On the contrary, the poet, who does connect with mainstream society, finds that he could not completely identify with either culture. This was, at first, hinted by the line “that formal address I never got used to”, which shows the poet is unaccustomed to Polish culture. The poet also managed to forget “my first polish word”. Despite this, the poet is estranged from Australian society as demonstrated by the “curse that damned… a department clerk who asked … “Did your father ever attempt to learn English'” His dissatisfaction with the fact he could not identify with either culture is shown by the painful recognition of his father being “as happy as I have never been”. Alice Walker’s short story, “The Flowers” provides interesting insights into the notions of both inclusion and estrangement. While Myop and her family are not harassed by the white community of the time, they are relegated to a “sharecropper cabin” and a rural, self-subsistence life. Despite this, Myop attempts to “make each day a golden surprise that caused excited little tremors to run up her jaws”, a synecdoche which demonstrates how Myop experiences an intuitive sense of inclusion with nature, similar to Feliks Skrzynecki’s connection with his Polish heritage. However, her idyllic ideas of life are corrupted and are foreshadowed by a shift towards a more gloomy tone and the use of pathetic fallacy such as “strangeness of the land” and “gloomy cove”. Her discovery of a lynched Ku Klux Klan (KKK) victim was highlighted by “stepped smack into his eyes” – this act ensuring her estrangement from the social norms of white society. When Myop “lays down her flowers”, she shows her adult respect for the dead and the fact she considers herself as a member of the same race. Walker describes the result of being excluded by the dominant paradigm by describing a noose “spinning restlessly in the breeze”. The change in her perception of belonging is highlighted by the line “And the summer was over”. This depiction of a change of views as a result of a different paradigm explains how and why Feliks is strongly associated with his Polish culture and alienated from Australian culture. These three texts demonstrate the complexity of belonging. They demonstrate examples of inclusion and estrangement and show that these two concepts are more ambivalent than many would think. Both Feliks and Myop find a sense of inclusion within their own community with Feliks overcoming the problems of displacement to maintain his links to his Polish culture and with Myop’s overcoming the problems of a discriminating white society to establish an ongoing sense of connection with her racial heritage. On the other hand, the poet, Peter Skrzynecki’s sense of belonging remains unresolved while the migrants in their hostels are not allowed to integrate with mainstream society.