Idea of Belonging

The idea of belong is an important and funda workforcetal value in our lives. Belonging most commonly emerges from experience and notions of identity, relationships, acceptance and understanding. The sense of belong is represented in various ways throughout texts such asAncestor by Peter Skrzynecki and China Coin. Each of the texts has a considerable range of ideas on how belonging is created though personal experiences and notion of acceptance and understanding.In Ancestors Peter Skrzynecki expresses a detachment from ancestors resulting in a lack of belonging in terms of relationship and understanding. Being separated from his heritage, the speaker experiences a kind of guilt about not being attached to his parents culture, but in addition a sense that this issue will have to be resolved, even if doing so may involve some distress and turmoil. The use of active utter in the poem shows there are no passive voice verbs at all his need to do something about the problem of belongi ng.The bearded, faceless men represent the shadow/spirit of his ancestors but the speaker may similarly be actually referring to photographs he has seen of these ancestors standing shoulder to shoulder which also depicts the virtuoso of these ancestors and the force they create is firm in his mind and forces him to find out what his roots are. The eyes never close shows that the moment is still and may be evidence that he is in a dream partly based on looking at such photos. A questioning tone also carries on throughout the poem.This questioning is about his identity though examination of the past which is represented by the ancestors, creating a sense of reflection and investigation on his relationship to his ancestors. But we can see that throughout the poem Skrzynecki is refusing to explore the past of these ancestors because he is afraid of the tainted, torturous past which stops him continued searching for a home To what star do their footprints lead? This not only evokes h is fear of the past but also shows that his uncertainty about re-rooting to his ancestral culture.The ancestors neer speak implying that those ancestors communicate to you in some other way. The poem is mainly a nightmare about the idea of ancestry/belonging, and Skrzynecki uses the blood allusion in The run up tastes of blood to show that the root is in our blood which connects us to our ancestors. However, the speakers sense of alienation from his ancestors has blocked his ability to belong and find the relationship between him and the ancestors. Blood therefore limits our understanding of our past, which is what we originally belong to. Comparing to Peter Skrzynecki, Leah in The China Coin chooses to belong with her mum and her friends and being affirmative and happy. At beginning, Leahs relationship with her mum Joan was strained since she refers to her as the evil aunt Joan,evil aunt is a technique of metaphor,it shows nagetive feelings Joan is a technique of 3 rd person wh ich shows the space between Leah & Joan.Espicially when Leah is lost during the student protest and result in a huge arguement with JoanIts your rotten China. presents again a big difference from Both Joan and Leah,through the violence on your and from China with the describtive word rotten Comparing to Peters relationship with his school and folk museum, Leahs realtionship with her mum at first was even more unstisfactory . But instead than running away and belonging to someone else,Leah has stayed with her mum and tried to fix this relationship.When she decides to end the conflict with her mother and rebuild the relationship,saying Its overLeah took Joans hand and squeezedweve been through a lot,ehThe action of squeezing echoes they are becoming closer. While Leah decided to belong to her Chinese culture,she also finds a second home. Even though Leah is reserved,the warmth and acceptance of this family draw her in,its also for the first time Leah was thinking of Joans family as her family. further more,Leah again builds relationships with family members Ke, Linan and uncle Tong.When the other half of the coin falls from the croll. Leahs reaction is positiveLi-Nan impoverished her pounded her on the back and called her sister The symbolism of the strong hug and approval by Li Nan shows her acceptance into this family. Leah also build a peculiar(prenominal) relationship with her cousin Ke. When Joans in the hospital,Ke becomes the only one who Leah can depend on. She decides to build a relationship with him in order to belong with him. Since then,Ke refers to Leah with the word agree,This typical Australian word presents Ke accepted Leah and her clture.Also mates a very positive word. It shows a positive relationship with community thats what it exactly represents here. Comparing to Peters homeless, Leah both(prenominal) physically and mentally chooses to belong,therefore,she gets a positive and good result. Each of the texts shows us a strong will to be long and we can see that the ways people achieve belonging emerge from all these elements. Therefore it can be said that the texts have provided a wide range of ideas on belonging that financing the statement that a sense of belonging can emerge from experiences and notions of acceptance and understanding.