Belonging

“Understanding nourishes belonging… a lack of understanding prevents it.” Demonstrate how you’re prescribed text and ONE other related text of your own choosing represents this interpretation of belonging. As a community people are expected to belong with this comes an understanding of differences and respecting others, this understanding of belonging brings people together and forms relationships. The idea that understanding nourishes belonging and the lack of understanding prevents belonging is shown throughout the text study “The Crucible” written by Arthur Miller due to exclusion, lies and hysteria these factors have broken the community and forced hatred on individuals who have either taken into account other peoples ideas and understandings. “The Island” written by Armin Greder is another text, which relates to the concept of “understanding nourishes belonging and a lack of understanding prevents it.” The community needed to be more accepting ‘foreigners’ differences and need to respect the individual, towards the foreigner the lack of understanding acceptance and belonging created the individual to be isolated from the community and also with the villagers understanding of belonging and fitting into their community accepting people who were different created a sense of fear towards them. Through the text study “The Crucible” written by Arthur Miller explores the destruction of a community by hysteria, caused by members of the community accusing one another of practising of witchcraft and devil worshipping. The events are based in Salem in 1692, when a group of girls fell victim to hallucinations and seizures. This behaviour in the strict puritan society was attributed to witchcraft. This lead the girls and other villagers to accuse the innocent people of the village with the concept of consorting with the devil. The religious Massachusetts government jailed local villagers for witchcraft and eventually 19 people were hanged. “The Crucible” explores the complex nature of belonging in a community this demonstrates the simmering the tension that exist within the group. The play highlights the fundamental centrality of being true to self. If individuals compromise themselves by denying their essential beliefs and principles they betray their most essential self. Proctor sacrifices his life in order to break from belonging to the community and to belonging to himself. “The Crucible” reveals to responders that despite the urgent need to belong to the group, the imperative to belong to self is more important. It is the conflict between order and freedom. The aspect of belonging described in the text is that of an individual who decides not to belong because they cannot morally comply with the conformity this require. Proctor’s moral choices require him to refuse and accept the status as imposed by the majority he must choose to either ‘belong’ and ignore his conscience or to not ‘belong’ and be true to himself. The decision is arrived only after a number of personal crisen in which he is challenged to choose between his loyalty to his community, his wife and his friends and ultimately choose between his life and name. The idea of belonging in “The Island” written by Armin Greder is presented by the idea of exclusion, the islanders who belong to the community understand that if they accepted someone different visually seen by his nakedness and small in size (vulnerable) (not like them) he will be feared within their community, so instead they to accept him in the easiest way which was by ‘throwing’ the individual into a goat pen. (A prison) Both these text “The Crucible” by Arthur Miller and “The Island” by Armin Greder both show that understanding nourishes belonging and a lack of understanding prevents it, both texts display this through the understanding of differences, the understanding of respect and the understanding of acceptance and both text also showed that the idea of excluding something or someone out of their community will draw the community closer together.