Belonging

Belonging is not always a good thing. What disadvantages are there for individuals and society in belonging' Individuals don’t always benefit from belonging. Despite being a part of something bigger, one may not necessarily belong because they are insecure and don’t feel completely comfortable with themselves. The sense of not belonging could contribute to individuals losing sight of themselves, especially if they don’t have family to rely on and look to. The Simple Gift by Steven Herrick, Darren Aronofsky’s film Black Swan and the poem Drifters by Bruce Dawe portray these through various language and filmic techniques. Being a part of a group does not always equate to belonging. Caitlin, from The Simple Gift, is an example of this. The audience is already under the impression that Caitlin disagrees with the wealth she is brought up in and taught to by her parents. Her condescending tone when describing her school, lacing sarcasm on the words “Discipline”, “Charity” and “Honesty” emphasizes how much she dislikes private school and would rather be in a public one with her friends. However, as the story progresses and her friends, Petra and Kate’s characters begin to take a small shape, it can be seen that Caitlin is actually not as comfortable with her friends as implied at the beginning of the novel. After detailing her plans with Billy for the next day, she is surprised to hear Kate, a friend she believed to have known well, confess, “I had sex once”. By default shock, Caitlin and Petra “stared at Kate”. A short, yet specific action describing Caitlin’s reaction to her friend’s story suggests that even though she has a group of friends she, at first, can relate to, she does not really belong to them as she begins to feel uncomfortable by the small revelation. Caitlin can also be interpreted to being insecure with herself, as she doesn’t fully belong to her family nor friends. Because she disagrees with the materialism she grew up in, she is unsure of herself and her own values and beliefs. Upon meeting Billy, she slowly grows confident enough to accept who she really is; a person who will not be defined by her family’s money, limiting her from the friendships she can create. As her relationship with Billy blossoms, Caitlin states, “Billy has become the diary entry of my days.” By objectifying Billy into a diary entry, she establishes herself and comes into her own with the help of a friend who has become monumental in her life. A parallel can be drawn with Black Swan, in which protagonist Nina Sayers is at first insecure with herself as a dancer. Pressure from herself to be casted as the Swan Queen in her ballet company’s Swan Lake, along with the pressure from her overbearing mother, is the reason for this. A recurring theme of the film is paranoia, where Nina feels another dancer is aiming to land the role of Swan Queen, stealing it from her. In a scene where she is returning home after rehearsal, Nina passes by a girl who, through hallucination, is herself. A tracking shot is used, following Nina as her “twin” walks past. A close-up shot is then used to capture her facial expression, which emotes fear and confusion. The camera shot utilized in this scene exemplifies the insecurity Nina struggles with in order to maintain her spot in the company, making audiences aware that she does not fully belong to the company for she would not be afraid; this is a parallel to how Herrick writes Kate’s confession as the deal-breaker to Caitlin’s discomfort with her friends. The symbolism of a duplicate in this scene connotates that everyone has two sides of themselves that belong to two very different groups; fearful Nina belongs to her low self-esteem, while confident “Nina” belongs to her imagination. In The Simple Gift, a part of Caitlin belongs with her friends, and another part belongs with Billy. Towards the end of the film, when Nina believes she has given the “perfect” performance as the Swan Queen, she grows as a more confident person, secure with herself the way Caitlin has also grown. Both characters’ development was caused by someone else: Billy for Caitlin’s and Nina’s rival for Nina’s. Despite being a part of something bigger, one may not necessarily belong because they are insecure and don’t feel completely comfortable with themselves, as seen with Caitlin of The Simple Gift and Nina of Black Swan. Without family, individuals may get lost on their path to achieving a sense of belonging. Old Bill from The Simple Gift is shown to be this by how he is characterized. In the chapter ‘The Hobo Hour’, Old Bill is first and foremost seen as a hobo. He has “long grey hair and beard”, drinks and is a smoker trying to quit. With descriptive language, the image of Old Bill is painted: “grey beard stained with smoke...hair long and swept back...face lined”. The technique of imagery informs the readers that he doesn’t belong to society because he is described a stereotypical homeless man: dirty, unkept and with some sort of habit or addiction. Later, Old Bill speaks about his fall, a metaphor of his life after the tragic loss of his daughter Jessie, and subsequently his wife. The metaphor of the fall gives a quick indication as to what may have happened to his daughter, which was that she, in fact, fell out of a tree and passed away. This is seen in the quote “...my sweet and lovely Jessie, fell and I fell with her and I’ve been falling ever since.” The quote reiterates how Old Bill has lost sight of himself because he neither had his daughter not wife to guide him back onto the right track, as the “pub...beer...clothes” is where he landed, and hence does not belong. By giving him a back-story, readers are able to empathize with Old Bill, understanding why he is like this and that he needed someone in his life to help him be in the state he was in after his loss, but because he had no one beside him at the time, he “fell”. Drifters is a poem that also has major theme of family and belonging, much like Old Bill’s story. While the most obvious concept of not belonging in the poem is seen from the fact that family is constantly packing up and movie around, there is also the concept of feeling as though you do, or don’t, belong to your family because you’d rather stay at where you are than to leave, and vice versa. For example, “the oldest girl is close to tears because she was happy here”, but “the youngest girl is beaming because she wasn't” is a contrast that portrays ignoring personal wishes in order to belong with the family and agreeing with the father’s wishes to move elsewhere. Like Old Bill not belonging to society, the oldest girl, for a short time, does not belong to her family’s excitement as she is the only one on the verge of tears while everyone else is “wildly excited”. The isolated atmosphere Dawe creates for the oldest girl is similar to how Old Bill is ostracized from the locals of Bendarat because he has no family, but instead of the oldest girl having no family, she just doesn’t belong to hers. Both texts’ theme of belonging to family but not belonging to a certain place shows that the sense of not belonging could contribute to individuals losing sight of themselves, especially if they don’t have family to rely on and look to, or if they disagree with their wishes. The ideas of insecurity and belonging to family are the drawbacks for individuals in terms of belonging. Caitlin and Old Bill in The Simple Gift, Nina in Black Swan and the constantly-moving family in Drifters have shown these concepts via language and filmic techniques. Pressure to fit in an environment where they clearly stand out, Caitlin and Nina exemplify how belonging is not always a good thing, as they initially lose sight of themselves. Old Bill and the ‘drifters’ portray the importance of family in achieving a sense of belonging as Old Bill becomes a homeless man after losing his daughter and wife, and the drifting family don’t have a physical location to belong to, but rather they belong to one another.