Rationale

No matter who you are or where you come from, everyone wants to belong. It seems to be engraved in our DNA to join groups and even assimilate with others if required. Belonging gives a person a sense of identity and security in their lives. It gives us a place to grow spiritually and allow us to shape our identity and nurture those changes. Shakespeare's As You Like It and J.K. Rowling's novel Harry Potter and the Philosophers Stone juxtapose the two worlds available to humans, belonging and failing to belong. My montage is structured to juxtapose the two worlds and show the need for each of us to belong or fail and live lonely. The salient image in the montage is the image of the yellow duckling jumping up after the black ones on the ledge. The black ducklings have their back turned to the yellow one and are walking away from it. The image is used as a metaphor to show how people strive to belong to a group, any group even if they know they don't truly fit in. It shows the desperation for one to have company and security, as the saying says: "safety in numbers". From the salient image the vector lines take the viewers eyes left and right and up the page. The first image on either side of the salient is and image of a forest, on the lonely side is a decayed forest, the other a thriving forest with a trees in an arc inviting a person through to a happier and more welcomed life. This juxtaposes the lives when one belongs or doesn't. Further up the vector lines on the left is a lone boy sitting behind prison bars, it shows the confinement and restrictions in one's life if they fail to belong to anything. It displays the feelings that Rosalind of As You like It and Harry have as they suffer through life in a place they don't belong. Juxtaposing this is an open field where one can run and jump and be happy and enjoy themselves. It represents a pastoral and harmonious life without restrictions in the Forest of Arden and in the Magical World. Above all the images are the two chains. The feeling of belonging is a link in the chain of life, for a chain to work all the links are required. Without the sense of belonging, the link in the chain, one's life can operate, the required satisfaction of belonging is not found and one is left to suffer, lonely and in a dark world.