Belonging

Belonging is a vital and fundamental aspect in everyone life, in which belonging to family, a group or a cultural community are what we often see. Generally, belonging can be feelings or thoughts of the people with some common things. One of the particular texts that we can easily find some examples about belonging is the novel “The China Coin” by Allan Baillie, in which the composer has used stream of conscious narrative, dialogue, metaphor and first personal pronouns and few other language techniques to explore the aspects of belonging throughout the journey of Lead and Joan to China. This journey to China is to find their lost family, accomplish the last wish of Joan’s father.
One example that demonstrates very profoundly the feeling of a person about family identity is Lead. At Good field when Lead and Joan with Grand uncle went to the grave of Dad’s family, the image of the graves with the earth arms opening has evoked in Lead the feeling of welcomed. This image created in Leah a lot of positive feeling about her mother family and also about China, which previously she did not have any good feeling about that. Another example is, when on the way to                   , the boat getting inside the lift which is blocked four sides by the walls. This event causes Leah to remember the feeling when her Dad died. The door of the lift closing up is an extended metaphor showing the end of hopes. However it also evokes the sense of belonging toward audience. Besides that, the lift lifting Leah and Joan up to a new level of the river also refers to the change of Lead’s sense of belonging to China.
In this novel, beside the effect of metaphor to the idea of belonging, Allan Baillie also uses the dialogues of the characters in different situations to represent the aspects of belonging. One of examples demonstrating that is on page           , chapter               when Li Nan and Leah came to visit Joan in hospital. In this part the understanding between Li Nan and Joan...