Romulus My Father Belonging

A person’s identity is often reflected and shaped through one’s own personal understanding of where they belong in a society. A sense of belonging is driven by both the external and internal factors that exist around them. Raimond Gaita’s biographical memoir Romulus, My Father and Margaret Atwood’s poem “Further Arrivals” clearly demonstrate similar concepts of how a person’s sense of belonging may differ. Both texts construct related understanding of the harsh experience of migration to Australia, the struggle to find their own identity and pursuit to find their home, wherever that may be. Belonging to the people around us as well as our surroundings remains closely connected to one’s identity and sense of purpose and inevitably belonging
In the chronologically constructed memoir Romulus, My Father, the characters individual pursuit to find their home is explored by Gaita. Throughout the novel, Gaita is constantly referring to his home at Frogmore, where he spent most of his childhood. However, for his father, Romulus, the tough Australian environment and way of life was a place where he could not comfortably adapt, “He longed for the generous and soft European foliage … seemed symbols of deprivation and barrenness.” For Romulus, the only place he believed to be his home was in “Markovac, a village in Yugoslavia.” Nonetheless, he is obligated by his own good will to fulfil his life in Australia for the wellbeing of his family. Gaita uses symbolism to represent his connection to what he perceives as his home. The motorbike reflects the patriarchal relationship as well as the love and trust he shared with his father, and their surrounding environment. The motorbike gives Gaita and his father the freedom they enjoyed earlier in their life, before they were engulfed in family heartache. A person’s individual hesitance to connect to a place is also
However, for others, it can result in isolation, insecurity and in some cases, suicide. Whether or not a person connects to their new surroundings, also depends on the conditions of where they came from. It is through the combination of visual imagery and the constant use of negative connotations that Atwood presents the place in which the character has immigrated from; “we left behind one by one the cities rotting with cholera”. Atwood clearly illustrates that the place in which this immigrant in particular has come from, is a disease-stricken country. The repetition of “one by one” emphasizes the separation of the characters acquaintances. This shows that they had to face the harsh immigration process alone, and with little to no support, possibly being the reason as to why she is afraid to open up to her new environment and surroundings, “I have not come out yet.” The character is portrayed, through the monosyllables as scared and fearful to literally speak her normal, everyday vocabulary. Similarly, the immigration process for Gaita’s mother, Christina, was also one which she experienced alone. Although she had her son, husband and friends that she had made on her journey to Australia, she had left behind her home, her sister, her friends, and her childhood. Gaita accentuates his understanding of his mother’s hardship, “a troubled city girl from Central Europe, she could