Area of Study:Belonging, Assessment Speech Essay

Submitted By eliskamarczan
Words: 847
Pages: 4

Good Afternoon,
Obstacles preventing a true sense of belonging can be multifaceted and extremely diverse depending on context and circumstances. A lack of connections will undeniably thwart a genuine sense of acceptance or belonging for an individual and can be a diminishing, destructive experience. The poems ‘Migrant Hostel’ and ‘St Patrick’s college’ from Peter Skrzynecki’s anthology Immigrant Chronicle 1975, along with the picture book ‘The lost thing’ by Shaun Tan, explore the concept that forming and sustaining connections with others enriches and nourishes the soul, whereas isolation and ostracism diminishes the individual.
In ‘Migrant Hostel’ Skrzynecki aptly displays the intense human desire to seek out and form connections, in order to nourish and enrich the soul. The base, intrinsic, and fundamental human need to find relations and connections is evocatively demonstrated through personification and metonymy in; ‘Nationalities sought/ each other out instinctively’. Skrzynecki again demonstrates the imperative to sustain connections and commonalities in ‘Years and place-names/ Recognised by accents,’ the aural imagery of ‘accents’ is an example of cultural expression that can unite individuals pertaining to that demographic, which will in turn nourish and enrich the individual. As such it can be seen that it is a natural human desire to form and sustain connections, as this enhances and nurtures the soul.
‘The Lost Thing’ palpably and profoundly demonstrates the diminishment of the individual and the human spirit that can result from a lack of sustained connections. In an early, double paged, textured and montaged graphic of isolation, the nameless, faceless and anonymous ‘Thing’ is separated from society and juxtaposed with the sea of identical umbrellas surrounding him, which become symbolic of the connections the Thing is unequivocally isolated from. The melancholy, reflective narration of this image is childish and simplistic; the ‘lost thing’ is described as having “a really weird look about it- a sad, lost sort of look”. This simplicity and minimalism serve to emphasise the strength of meaning behind the image, and reinforces the diminishment of the individual due to its lack of connections and relations. So, it can be seen from ‘The lost thing’ that a lack of formulated and sustained connections can serve to diminish the individual.
‘Migrant Hostel’ emphasises the detrimental effects a lack of connections can have on the human spirit. The severe lack of stability that can occur from disconnection is conveyed in, ‘No one kept count/ of all the comings and goings-’; the juxtaposition, coupled with the enjambment of the first line, portrays and highlights the diminishing and detrimental effects that being unable to form connections can have on the individual’s spirit. Skrzynecki’s juxtaposition is continued in, ‘Arrivals of newcomers… sudden departures from adjoining blocks/ that left us wondering’; and is intensified with the high modality language, which demonstrates the instability that can occur when an individual does not form and sustain connections, and by extension a sense of acceptance and understanding from others.
A society unwilling to accept others will create disconnection and ostracism for an individual trying to find acceptance and understanding. The boy’s parents make assumptions of the lost thing, based on their perceptions of it, and create a firm disconnection between the thing and themselves, as a part of the unaccepting and uncaring society.