Raimond Gaita’s memoir, Romulus My Father demonstrates how an individual’s interaction with others and the world around them can enrich or limit their experience of belonging to an environment. Gaita uses first person throughout the book, not only to express his experiences but to articulate both his mother and fathers experiences of belonging to their surroundings also. Romulus is a migrant to Australia who ‘always considered himself Romanian.’ Gaita often expresses Romulus as being at odds with the environment, never reconciling to the Australian landscape, whose foliage and vegetation “seemed symbols of deprivation and bareness.” This statement is symbolic of how he feels towards Australia and demonstrates how Romulus chose to only see the negative aspects of his surrounds and focused more on his desire to be back in Europe amongst “soft and gentle foliage”. These two simple descriptions of different landscapes are instantly juxtaposed and express Romulus’s feelings of loneliness in Australia
Raimond Gaita’s memoir, Romulus My Father demonstrates how an individual’s interaction with others and the world around them can enrich or limit their experience of belonging to an environment. Gaita uses first person throughout the book, not only to express his experiences but to articulate both his mother and fathers experiences of belonging to their surroundings also. Romulus is a migrant to Australia who ‘always considered himself Romanian.’ Gaita often expresses Romulus as being at odds with the environment, never reconciling to the Australian landscape, whose foliage and vegetation “seemed symbols of deprivation and bareness.” This statement is symbolic of how he feels towards Australia and demonstrates how Romulus chose to only see the negative aspects of his surrounds and focused more on his desire to be back in Europe amongst “soft and gentle foliage”. These two simple descriptions of different landscapes are instantly juxtaposed and express Romulus’s feelings of loneliness in Australia