Belonging In Immigrant Chronicle, And On The Road
Belonging Essay – “Who we are and how we belong is a choice”
When we construct an identity for ourselves, we are constantly shaped by our choices. To where and how we belong is ultimately one of those choices, through which we develop our sense of self. In this development of ourselves, we often search for a feeling of belonging to culture, places, and groups, but are hindered from constructing a sense of self by barriers to belonging such as racial and cultural prejudice, violence, hypocrisy, and oppression. If and when these barriers are overcome, the individual is allowed to grow and belong on a more universal level. “Immigrant Chronicle” by Peter Skrzynecki and “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac both show this sense of the construction of …show more content…
identity in terms of belonging to place and culture. In contrast, “The Kingdom of God is Within You” by Leo Tolstoy portrays this sense of universal belonging in relation to the responsibilities of the individual, and the situation of the parents of Skrzynecki perfectly exemplifies the political and social enigmas about which Tolstoy was writing. Major themes related to belonging that are expressed and explored in the three works are connections culture, place, and groups. Each of these concepts will be discussed
Culture and heritage are important vehicles through which the individual must make their choice to construct their sense of self, and relates to all three texts. Skrzynecki himself feels difficulty constructing a sense of self, because he needs to overcome the barrier of being caught between two worlds – the culture of his parents, Poland and Ukraine, and the Australian culture in which he is living. Similarly, the protagonist of “On the Road”, Sal Paradise feels a disconnection to mainstream American culture due to many aspects of American life which creates a clash with his sense of self. Therefore, each of these protagonists has a barrier to belonging that is between them and their cultural heritage: Paradise through lifestyle, and Skrzynecki through dislocation. As a contrast, the doctrine of Tolstoy in “The Kingdom of God is Within You” espouses a deliberate alienation from national culture and nationalism, as the system of government is held as evil, and any participation in the system continues the cycles of violence. This is exposed in the lines “All men, then, bound together by state organization, throw the responsibility of their acts on one another, the peasant soldier on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on the nobleman who has been appointed governor, the governor on the nobleman or son of an official who is minister, the minister on the member of the royal family who occupies the post of Tzar and the Tzar again on all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and peasants.” We understand that Kerouac’s and Skrzynecki’s protagonists have a desire to create a sense of self because Skrzynecki asserts that his ultimate goal, in his search for belonging is to create this identity, as illustrated in “Postcard”, where he writes “What’s my choice/ To be?” The enjambment of these lines coupled with the use of rhetorical questioning allows the reader to empathise with the poignant question. Kerouac, also, writes of his protagonist when in a railroad motel in Denver, “And that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was”, suggesting his dislocation through his loneliness from mainstream American culture, symbolised by the overindustrialisation of his surroundings – a railroad track. Both Paradise and Skrzynecki eventually choose a cultural belonging, thus overcoming their barriers from belonging. In contrast, “The Kingdom of God is Within You” is more closely focused on a goal of creating a place to which all people can belong through the choice of the individual to embody the teachings of Jesus – the Kingdom of God. Sal Paradise chooses New York City after experiencing a connection to the culture of Mexico, expressed symbolically by the weather in the passage; “For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me. The atmosphere and I became the same.” Skrzynecki, however, ends his collection with a possible resolution to his problem of cultural identity, though it is tenuous. The closing lines of “Postcard”, “On a river’s bank/ A lone tree/ Whispers:/ ‘We will meet/ Before you die’” suggest through the usage of imperative language that he “will meet” Warsaw before he dies, and can therefore create a sense of cultural identity. However, as this has not yet been fulfilled, the reader is left wondering whether this will come to be, and if therefore Skrzynecki will be able to choose how to construct his sense of cultural identity. However, it is these barriers, dislocation for Skrzynecki, hypocrisy and violence for Tolstoy, and industrialization and exploitation for Sal Paradise which prevent the individual from belonging. Ultimately these barriers must be overcome, and are for Sal Paradise and somewhat for Skrzynecki allowing for a construction of identity, but not yet for Tolstoy, not allowing for the creation of the utopia about which Tolstoy was writing. Place, as aspect of belonging relates to two of the three texts. Place is a firm connecting point for both Skrzynecki and Paradise, and it is this connection, or disconnection, to important places which assist the protagonist in constructing their identity. In “Migrant Hostel” Peter Skryznecki shows his isolation from Australian society. “A barrier at the main gate/ Sealed off the highway/ From our doorstep - / As it rose and fell like a finger/ Pointed in reprimand or shame”. He creates this sense of isolation through the usage of the metaphor of gate as a barrier from belonging to Australia, which through the personification of the gate as a finger creates a sense of undeserved shame. The gate is a physical barrier for him to belong to Australian society, and as he has no part in Australia he does not feel an emotional connection to Australia. He also feels disconnected to Poland, simply due to his existence on the opposite side of the world, but he does feel a connection to his home, exposed in the poem “10 Mary Street”. Peter here describes himself with the metaphor “Like a hungry bird”, one which rings with connotations of freedom, thus suggesting that his home at 10 Mary Street is one of the only places where he can truly be free and is able to construct a sense of belonging to self. Whilst in “Immigrant Chronicle”, Skrzynecki has difficulty connecting with the places he feels could help him construct his identity, in “On the Road”, the protagonist Sal Paradise and his friends travel so as to find his sense of self, by searching for a place to belong. They travelled the American road looking for places to belong, but only found experiences, never really finding a place to call home. When they reached Mexico however, Kerouac writes; “We had found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic”. The ‘magic land’ was symbolic of what they had been searching for on their entire journey, a place with a culture that was an experience for them, which helped them to grow as people. Place is something about which the individual very much has power over, and the choice of belonging to a place shapes the identity of the individual. When being dislocated from the place, the protagonists overcome it, so as to build themselves as individuals.
Finally, a connection to a group of people – friends, family, or otherwise – that creates a strong sense of belonging is important as it is through relationships with others that each of the three texts portray the strongest sense of belonging, allowing for the creation of identity.
In “Feliks Skrzynecki”, the poet writes “His Polish friends/Always shook hands too violently,/ I thought… Feliks Skrzynecki,/ That formal address/ I never got used to.” Here the poet is establishing a disconnection to culture through the people, whom behaved in a manner that he never got used to. This said, in “10 Mary Street”, Peter very much feels a sense of connection to his Polish heritage, but it seems ironically to be his connection to other migrants, his parents’ friends, which allows him to construct a sense of self. His dislocation from culture is because he has an inability to relate to this ideal nation about which his parents talk, except through the friends of “10 Mary Street” who “drink to freedom/ Under the White Eagle’s flag”. This cultural belonging through relationships with individuals allows Skrzynecki to construct a sense of belonging to self. “On the Road”, too, speaks primarily of a friendship between Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise, and they feel a strong sense of connection to one another; however, they both feel isolated from other important figures in their life. Dean is constantly searching for his absent father, and Sal is searching for relationship in the context of romantic love, expressed in the lines “’I want to marry a girl,’ I told them, ‘so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old. This can’t go on all the time – all this franticness and jumping around.” He expresses in these lines an explicit plea for love through the usage of the novel’s characteristic first person, informal, internal monologue style, also expressing simply Sal’s desire for consistency, and a steady home to rely on, through the relationship with his wife. In contrast, “The
Kingdom of God is Within You” is about a sense of belonging to the brotherhood of man. It establishes that every human being is connected by a connection to Jesus Christ, and that there should be no authority on earth except for that which ties us together, Jesus. Tolstoy provides the allegory; “People talk of the time when all men shall profess what is called Christianity (that is, various professions of faith hostile to one another), when all shall be well-fed and shall be united from one end of the world to the other by telegraphs and telephones, and be able to communicate by balloons, when all the working classes are permeated by socialistic doctrines, when the Trades Unions possess so many millions of members and so many millions of rubles, when everyone is educated and all can read newspapers and learn all the sciences. But what good or useful thing can come of all these improvement, if men do not speak and act with what they believe to be the truth.” To describe a commonly held view of utopia, but utilizes undercutting to immediately provide the problematic elements – that is, until people no longer act with the hypocrisy of claiming identity as a Christian but not embodying the teachings of Christ, nobody will be able to connect with one another. It is this barrier of hypocrisy which must be overcome for the individual to truly belong to self. Skrzynecki feels dislocation from place, which bars him from belonging, and Paradise does not feel he belongs to anything, both of which are overcome so as to allow the protagonist to create a sense of self, and therefore belong to self.
In conclusion, belonging can be considered a choice, but it is more importantly our choices which eventually shape who we are and to where we belong. We may choose to identify with cultures, as in the work of Skrzynecki. We may search for a place to belong, like the protagonists of Kerouac, or we could identify with groups of people and empathise with them, as all of the texts portray through an empathetic format, providing the reader an ability to identify with the text. Ultimately, our choices of actions allow us to or hinder us from belonging, and the same can be said of our impact on others. The context of Tolstoy’s work, “The Kingdom of God is Within You”, or what it was protesting, is the military culture of Tsarist Russia and Europe. The events of the following years, including the rise of Bolshevism, eventually lead to the events of World War Two, which is what displaced Skrzynecki’s parents. These texts show that you choose to belong, and you choose to act. Your choices not only affect who you become, but also affect people close to you, and it is those close to you to whom you truly belong, who help you to make those choices for the better.
When we construct an identity for ourselves, we are constantly shaped by our choices. To where and how we belong is ultimately one of those choices, through which we develop our sense of self. In this development of ourselves, we often search for a feeling of belonging to culture, places, and groups, but are hindered from constructing a sense of self by barriers to belonging such as racial and cultural prejudice, violence, hypocrisy, and oppression. If and when these barriers are overcome, the individual is allowed to grow and belong on a more universal level. “Immigrant Chronicle” by Peter Skrzynecki and “On the Road” by Jack Kerouac both show this sense of the construction of …show more content…
identity in terms of belonging to place and culture. In contrast, “The Kingdom of God is Within You” by Leo Tolstoy portrays this sense of universal belonging in relation to the responsibilities of the individual, and the situation of the parents of Skrzynecki perfectly exemplifies the political and social enigmas about which Tolstoy was writing. Major themes related to belonging that are expressed and explored in the three works are connections culture, place, and groups. Each of these concepts will be discussed
Culture and heritage are important vehicles through which the individual must make their choice to construct their sense of self, and relates to all three texts. Skrzynecki himself feels difficulty constructing a sense of self, because he needs to overcome the barrier of being caught between two worlds – the culture of his parents, Poland and Ukraine, and the Australian culture in which he is living. Similarly, the protagonist of “On the Road”, Sal Paradise feels a disconnection to mainstream American culture due to many aspects of American life which creates a clash with his sense of self. Therefore, each of these protagonists has a barrier to belonging that is between them and their cultural heritage: Paradise through lifestyle, and Skrzynecki through dislocation. As a contrast, the doctrine of Tolstoy in “The Kingdom of God is Within You” espouses a deliberate alienation from national culture and nationalism, as the system of government is held as evil, and any participation in the system continues the cycles of violence. This is exposed in the lines “All men, then, bound together by state organization, throw the responsibility of their acts on one another, the peasant soldier on the nobleman or merchant who is his officer, and the officer on the nobleman who has been appointed governor, the governor on the nobleman or son of an official who is minister, the minister on the member of the royal family who occupies the post of Tzar and the Tzar again on all these officials, noblemen, merchants, and peasants.” We understand that Kerouac’s and Skrzynecki’s protagonists have a desire to create a sense of self because Skrzynecki asserts that his ultimate goal, in his search for belonging is to create this identity, as illustrated in “Postcard”, where he writes “What’s my choice/ To be?” The enjambment of these lines coupled with the use of rhetorical questioning allows the reader to empathise with the poignant question. Kerouac, also, writes of his protagonist when in a railroad motel in Denver, “And that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was”, suggesting his dislocation through his loneliness from mainstream American culture, symbolised by the overindustrialisation of his surroundings – a railroad track. Both Paradise and Skrzynecki eventually choose a cultural belonging, thus overcoming their barriers from belonging. In contrast, “The Kingdom of God is Within You” is more closely focused on a goal of creating a place to which all people can belong through the choice of the individual to embody the teachings of Jesus – the Kingdom of God. Sal Paradise chooses New York City after experiencing a connection to the culture of Mexico, expressed symbolically by the weather in the passage; “For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me. The atmosphere and I became the same.” Skrzynecki, however, ends his collection with a possible resolution to his problem of cultural identity, though it is tenuous. The closing lines of “Postcard”, “On a river’s bank/ A lone tree/ Whispers:/ ‘We will meet/ Before you die’” suggest through the usage of imperative language that he “will meet” Warsaw before he dies, and can therefore create a sense of cultural identity. However, as this has not yet been fulfilled, the reader is left wondering whether this will come to be, and if therefore Skrzynecki will be able to choose how to construct his sense of cultural identity. However, it is these barriers, dislocation for Skrzynecki, hypocrisy and violence for Tolstoy, and industrialization and exploitation for Sal Paradise which prevent the individual from belonging. Ultimately these barriers must be overcome, and are for Sal Paradise and somewhat for Skrzynecki allowing for a construction of identity, but not yet for Tolstoy, not allowing for the creation of the utopia about which Tolstoy was writing. Place, as aspect of belonging relates to two of the three texts. Place is a firm connecting point for both Skrzynecki and Paradise, and it is this connection, or disconnection, to important places which assist the protagonist in constructing their identity. In “Migrant Hostel” Peter Skryznecki shows his isolation from Australian society. “A barrier at the main gate/ Sealed off the highway/ From our doorstep - / As it rose and fell like a finger/ Pointed in reprimand or shame”. He creates this sense of isolation through the usage of the metaphor of gate as a barrier from belonging to Australia, which through the personification of the gate as a finger creates a sense of undeserved shame. The gate is a physical barrier for him to belong to Australian society, and as he has no part in Australia he does not feel an emotional connection to Australia. He also feels disconnected to Poland, simply due to his existence on the opposite side of the world, but he does feel a connection to his home, exposed in the poem “10 Mary Street”. Peter here describes himself with the metaphor “Like a hungry bird”, one which rings with connotations of freedom, thus suggesting that his home at 10 Mary Street is one of the only places where he can truly be free and is able to construct a sense of belonging to self. Whilst in “Immigrant Chronicle”, Skrzynecki has difficulty connecting with the places he feels could help him construct his identity, in “On the Road”, the protagonist Sal Paradise and his friends travel so as to find his sense of self, by searching for a place to belong. They travelled the American road looking for places to belong, but only found experiences, never really finding a place to call home. When they reached Mexico however, Kerouac writes; “We had found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic”. The ‘magic land’ was symbolic of what they had been searching for on their entire journey, a place with a culture that was an experience for them, which helped them to grow as people. Place is something about which the individual very much has power over, and the choice of belonging to a place shapes the identity of the individual. When being dislocated from the place, the protagonists overcome it, so as to build themselves as individuals.
Finally, a connection to a group of people – friends, family, or otherwise – that creates a strong sense of belonging is important as it is through relationships with others that each of the three texts portray the strongest sense of belonging, allowing for the creation of identity.
In “Feliks Skrzynecki”, the poet writes “His Polish friends/Always shook hands too violently,/ I thought… Feliks Skrzynecki,/ That formal address/ I never got used to.” Here the poet is establishing a disconnection to culture through the people, whom behaved in a manner that he never got used to. This said, in “10 Mary Street”, Peter very much feels a sense of connection to his Polish heritage, but it seems ironically to be his connection to other migrants, his parents’ friends, which allows him to construct a sense of self. His dislocation from culture is because he has an inability to relate to this ideal nation about which his parents talk, except through the friends of “10 Mary Street” who “drink to freedom/ Under the White Eagle’s flag”. This cultural belonging through relationships with individuals allows Skrzynecki to construct a sense of belonging to self. “On the Road”, too, speaks primarily of a friendship between Dean Moriarty and Sal Paradise, and they feel a strong sense of connection to one another; however, they both feel isolated from other important figures in their life. Dean is constantly searching for his absent father, and Sal is searching for relationship in the context of romantic love, expressed in the lines “’I want to marry a girl,’ I told them, ‘so I can rest my soul with her till we both get old. This can’t go on all the time – all this franticness and jumping around.” He expresses in these lines an explicit plea for love through the usage of the novel’s characteristic first person, informal, internal monologue style, also expressing simply Sal’s desire for consistency, and a steady home to rely on, through the relationship with his wife. In contrast, “The
Kingdom of God is Within You” is about a sense of belonging to the brotherhood of man. It establishes that every human being is connected by a connection to Jesus Christ, and that there should be no authority on earth except for that which ties us together, Jesus. Tolstoy provides the allegory; “People talk of the time when all men shall profess what is called Christianity (that is, various professions of faith hostile to one another), when all shall be well-fed and shall be united from one end of the world to the other by telegraphs and telephones, and be able to communicate by balloons, when all the working classes are permeated by socialistic doctrines, when the Trades Unions possess so many millions of members and so many millions of rubles, when everyone is educated and all can read newspapers and learn all the sciences. But what good or useful thing can come of all these improvement, if men do not speak and act with what they believe to be the truth.” To describe a commonly held view of utopia, but utilizes undercutting to immediately provide the problematic elements – that is, until people no longer act with the hypocrisy of claiming identity as a Christian but not embodying the teachings of Christ, nobody will be able to connect with one another. It is this barrier of hypocrisy which must be overcome for the individual to truly belong to self. Skrzynecki feels dislocation from place, which bars him from belonging, and Paradise does not feel he belongs to anything, both of which are overcome so as to allow the protagonist to create a sense of self, and therefore belong to self.
In conclusion, belonging can be considered a choice, but it is more importantly our choices which eventually shape who we are and to where we belong. We may choose to identify with cultures, as in the work of Skrzynecki. We may search for a place to belong, like the protagonists of Kerouac, or we could identify with groups of people and empathise with them, as all of the texts portray through an empathetic format, providing the reader an ability to identify with the text. Ultimately, our choices of actions allow us to or hinder us from belonging, and the same can be said of our impact on others. The context of Tolstoy’s work, “The Kingdom of God is Within You”, or what it was protesting, is the military culture of Tsarist Russia and Europe. The events of the following years, including the rise of Bolshevism, eventually lead to the events of World War Two, which is what displaced Skrzynecki’s parents. These texts show that you choose to belong, and you choose to act. Your choices not only affect who you become, but also affect people close to you, and it is those close to you to whom you truly belong, who help you to make those choices for the better.