Belonging

Understanding nourishes belonging… A lack of understanding prevents it. Individuals in society belong to different communities, with this comes and understanding and acceptance of others similarities and differences. Within society understanding of each other promotes healthy relationships and strengthening of the community. The idea that understanding nourishes belonging and the lack of understanding prevents belonging is shown through the play “The Crucible” written by Arthur Miller. The text shows the destruction of a community due to its hysteria, which is caused by members of the community accusing one another of practicing witchcraft. The events of this play are based in Salem in 1962 when a group of girls were caught ‘conjuring spirits’. Being a strict puritan community this was frowned upon, as the play progresses fingers are pointed at one another by individuals in hope of saving themselves. Miller bases his play on themes such as exclusion, lies and hysteria to show the lack on understanding that the community has for each other creating the scene of everyone feeling like they don’t belong. Also, Armin Greders picture book “The Island” relates to the concept of lack of understanding preventing belonging. This story also explores the idea of exclusion and how the community will reject the idea of trying to understand someone who they think is different. It also explores the idea that the when the community refuses to understand who the foreigner is they don’t see that he is actually the same as them. “The Crucible” explores the nature of belonging in a community that is full of tension as people hide their true beliefs and who they really are in an effort to belong. If an individual denies their essential beliefs and principles, they deny their true self. The court of Salem asks Proctor to sign his name that he admits to lying. He is also asked to name other names of people in the community. When he refuses he shows that he will not give his name away to the community in order to belong again. He shows that everyone who gives their name doesn’t belong to themselves anymore, but to a community that doesn’t understand what is happening, and that is not belonging at all. Proctor keeps his name and belongs to someone that really understands, himself. “I have confessed myself! Is there no good penitence but it be public' God does not need my name nailed upon the church! God sees my name; God knows how black my sins are! It is enough.” This shows that Proctor chooses not to sign his name and belong, rather than ignore his own conscience. Although this excludes him from the community is being true to himself. The idea of understanding helping with the concept of belonging is shown in Armin Greders picture book “The Island”. This book presents the idea of exclusion when the natives of the island find a foreigner that they need to look after. What is shown is the lack of understanding of the people for the man who they think is ‘different’. If they took the time to understand him the people would see that he is human just like them. Also within this idea it may be seen that the people have a lack of understanding to someone slightly different because they have always excluded people of different colour, size etc so they have never been able to understand how to help them belong. This is shown when all of the people are deciding what job the newcomer can do. None of them actually let the man try these jobs because they are not willing to understand his skills. Therefore the man is given no job based on the assumptions the people give him. Both these texts “The Crucible” and “The Island” show that understanding nourishes belonging while a lack of understanding prevents it. It is shown mainly on through the concept of exclusion in “The Crucible” with the ‘blame-game’ and “The Island” through rejection.