Belonging Essay
Generic Essay:
For individuals to feel a sense of acceptance and belonging to place, people around them need to accept them as they are. Belonging to a place occurs through our interactions with people around us. The failure to understand or accept an individual’s uniqueness prevents this sense of belonging from developing. Texts that explore belonging to a place through connections to people are Peter Skrzynecki's poems, "Feliks Skrzynecki", "10 Mary Street" and "Migrant Hostel", the short film, “Be My Brother” directed by Genevieve Clay and from the website, http://www.byronbodyandsoul.com, the online article, “Making sense of this place” by Susanna Freymark. Each of these texts encourages the responder to reflect not only upon the importance of belonging to a place, but also on the way in which understanding and acceptance by others impacts on one's ability to form this connection.
In the poem, “Feliks Skrzynecki”, Peter Skrzynecki describes the sense of belonging achieved by his father through his attachment to his Polish friends. Feliks’s friends are a source of understanding as they share common memories, experiences and traditions. Together they “reminisced about farms where paddocks flowered…Horses they bred, pigs they were skilled in slaughtering.” The positive connotations expressed in these lines allude to the immigrants’ shared experiences and heritage, and the solace which Feliks derives from the connection with his Polish friends further nourishes his sense of cultural belonging. \
Peter, however, does not feel this same sense of inclusion as he does not understand the Polish culture or the behaviour of his father’s friends. This is demonstrated in his reference to how they, “Always shook hands too violently” and the “formal address /I never got used to”. This same sense of lack of understanding and alienation also exists between father and son. Peter’s allusion to “Hadrian’s Wall” in the lines, “Watched me pegging my tents/ Further and further
For individuals to feel a sense of acceptance and belonging to place, people around them need to accept them as they are. Belonging to a place occurs through our interactions with people around us. The failure to understand or accept an individual’s uniqueness prevents this sense of belonging from developing. Texts that explore belonging to a place through connections to people are Peter Skrzynecki's poems, "Feliks Skrzynecki", "10 Mary Street" and "Migrant Hostel", the short film, “Be My Brother” directed by Genevieve Clay and from the website, http://www.byronbodyandsoul.com, the online article, “Making sense of this place” by Susanna Freymark. Each of these texts encourages the responder to reflect not only upon the importance of belonging to a place, but also on the way in which understanding and acceptance by others impacts on one's ability to form this connection.
In the poem, “Feliks Skrzynecki”, Peter Skrzynecki describes the sense of belonging achieved by his father through his attachment to his Polish friends. Feliks’s friends are a source of understanding as they share common memories, experiences and traditions. Together they “reminisced about farms where paddocks flowered…Horses they bred, pigs they were skilled in slaughtering.” The positive connotations expressed in these lines allude to the immigrants’ shared experiences and heritage, and the solace which Feliks derives from the connection with his Polish friends further nourishes his sense of cultural belonging. \
Peter, however, does not feel this same sense of inclusion as he does not understand the Polish culture or the behaviour of his father’s friends. This is demonstrated in his reference to how they, “Always shook hands too violently” and the “formal address /I never got used to”. This same sense of lack of understanding and alienation also exists between father and son. Peter’s allusion to “Hadrian’s Wall” in the lines, “Watched me pegging my tents/ Further and further