Belonging Romulus

* How Gaita’s choice of language, imagery and relation biography genre convey meaning about the concept of belong and shape your response. * How his choices have been influenced by his strong sense of belonging to his father, his alienation form his mother, his coming to terms with his relationships and his sense of self * How Gaita represents belonging through representations of people, their relationships, ideas, the landscape, events and society’s response. * How his assumptions about belonging have influenced his representation.

* How the individuals’ perceptions of belonging or not belonging in the biography can vary and are shaped by his or her personal, cultural, historical and social context. * How you perceive the world through Romulus my father and related texts * Perception refers to the interplay of recognition and is influenced by our preconceived ideas, memories, experiences and senses. It can alter and even distort how we view the notion of belonging. * How Gaita’s and you perspectives are shaped by personal, cultural, historical and social contexts * Child of migrants

* Mental illness
* A difficult and fraught childhood
* Professor or moral philosophy
* The connections between texts through the concept of belonging * Compare and contrast
* Connect through the thesis or line of argument

Aspects of belonging:
* The potential of the individual to enrich or challenge a community or group: Christine, Lydia, Hora * Represent choices not to belong, or barriers which prevent belonging: mental illness, attitudes, values * The way attitudes to belonging are modified over time:

* Romulus becomes more detached and isolated after his experiences with women * Christine realizes what she has lost
* Gaita detaches form his mother

My personal response:
* The possibilities presented by a sense of belonging to or exclusion form the text and the world it represents (PERSONAL CONTEXT) * May be influenced by the different ways perspectives are given voice in or are absent from a text – Christine?

Form:
* Relational biography using the outward-turning form of the memoir to focus on the author’s parents, and in particular on the figure of his father. * “I thought of it as a tragic poem”
* Spare, stripped-down prose – not over descriptive
* Economical use of language

Barriers which prevent belonging:
* The Australian landscape is an evocative metaphor for belonging, identity and alienation * “Although the landscape is one of rare beauty, to a European or English eye it seems desolate, and even after more than forty years my father could not become reconciled to it. “ * pg 23 – landscape

* pg 169- prisoner
* “When she was two hundred metres or so from the house, alone, small, frail, walking with an uncertain gait and distracted air. In that vast landscape with only crude wire fences and a rough track to mark a human impression on it she appeared forsaken.” * “For the first time in my life I was really alive to beauty…” *

Displacement:
* Europe and the migrants are in dislocation. They are physically and mentally imprisoned in this remote, foreign land and the Australian landscape conflicts with their European sensibility. * “Those were the days before multiculturalism-immigrants were tolerated, but seldom accorded the respect they deserved.”

Alienation:
* The migrant experience:
* Labour camps, split families, an alien way of life, trying to fit in * Prejudice and racism
* Language barriers
* “As soon as my father arrived at the camp…he asked…whether there were any other Romanians.” * “A troubled, intense, passionate and cultured city girl from Central Europe, she showed from the beginning signs of a psychological illness that would prove tragic. It was foolish for my father and me to hope that she could settle in a derelict farmhouse in a harsh landscape that aggravated her torment. “ – Harsh emotive tone created from use of diction ‘derelict’, ‘harsh’, ‘torment’ communicates with the reader creating a sense of connection with the text, character and reader. Emotive diction and word choice created a tone, affecting the reader, allowing them to feel a connection to the character and text.

Relationships:
* The significance of relationships in shaping our view of world, others and self. * Raymond’s “extended family” contribute to his growing up and sense of self and identity * “Hora…my father’s dearest friend and a second father to me.” * “When Hora was a Frogmore he and my father often talked into the early hours of the morning, the kitchen filled with cigarette smoke and the smell of slivovitz.” * Our values, attitudes, personality and experiences shape the way we relate to others

Notions of identity:
* Romulus’ ‘character’ is already strong like steel at the age of thirteen * He is fearlessly courageous in his defence of principle and has the inflexibility of a moral ‘innocence’ which, in the end, breaks under the shocks of life. * He is driven mad by the failure of human life to meet his exacting demands. * Christine is artistic, temperamental and sensitive.

* Gaita’s representation of his mother is distant and limited. “It’s true the book doesn’t describe hoe things looked from my mother’s point of view. That is partly because no one knows.”

Notes from the marking centre:
* Candidates who clearly understood the purpose of their texts were able to demonstrate conceptual understanding and respond personally. * High range responses used key terms in particular to their focus area to create their own these and displayed an ability to evaluate and analyse. * Understanding of key concepts and ideas

* THESIS
* ORTS THAT CONNECT WITH CONCEPTS
* Must demonstrate understanding of key concepts and ideas of belonging from the rubrics and through your response to the texts * Develop theses or lines of argument
* Choose texts that connect with concepts

These or lines of arguments:
* We spend our lives trying to belong to self, place or others, not realizing that it is our perceptions and attitudes that enable us to belong or not belong. * When we begin to understand the forces that drive us to belong we develop empathy for others and personal insight. * The relationships we have with self and other shapes our perception of belonging.

Extended response:
* The question must drive and shape your response.
* Your thesis or line of argument must be developed and sustained. * Integrate your discussion of the ideas and the textual features and details of your texts using your thesis to shape the analysis. * Select texts of own choosing that connect and contrast with how the concept of belonging has been explored and represented. * Your personal response to how belonging is represented and how your way of thinking has been challenged is valued! * SYNTHESIS AND EVALUTATION!!!!!!!!

* COULD BE ANY FORM

Furthering a thesis or line of argument
* When your cultural identity is marginalized you can feel dislocated and displaced, and believe that you do not belong to your culture or the dominant culture * A migrant in a new land can be isolated by language, culture, and the absence of family ad friends. Gaita’s father in Romulus mf is isolated initially by the slow acceptance of migrants in Australia in the 1950s and by the mental illness of his wife, but through work and friendship he finds his place

* The western culture is so powerful and pervasive that many young people reject their cultural identity believing that this is the only way that they can ever belong. Botj in Johnson’s film ‘Yolngu Boy’ rejects his Yolngu culture believing that it is the old way; however, he loses his dignity, self-respect and eventually his life. * Many indigenous people are caught between two worlds: the world of their ancestors and the world of the colonisers and belong to neither. Singer and poet Archie roach acknowledges the conflict, but he is a powerful advocate for the aboriginal culture and the need to respect and embrace that culture. As we grew up we felt alone cause we were acting white yet feeling black ‘took the children away’ –Archie Roach

* NEED TEXUTAL EVIDENCE

Migrants arriving by boat into Sydney photograph by David Moore Through composition of the subjects, it is portrayed that belonging is made up of stages. Reading from left to right the audience feel movement as the woman on the left is waving, as though she feels a connection to the place, the man in the middle is reaching up and out, portraying the longing to belong, but then the woman and man on the right show that they don’t want to belong.

Shaun tan- the lost thing
The red tree
Picture books:
* Way home
* Tales from outer suburbia
* The arrival
* My place
* The island
Graphic novels:
* American born Chinese(yang)- Jin wang, a lonely Asian American middle school student who would do anything to fit in with his white classmates * Sacco’s Palestine
* One night the moon
* Winton’s ‘The turning’