Belonging

English – Belonging Essay – Band 5
Belonging Essay
‘Understanding nourishes belonging… A lack of understanding
prevents it.’
In order to feel as though you belong, you must first understand who you are
and where you come from. This is because if you don’t truly understand
yourself and your surroundings, then you will never truly feel as though you
belong where you are. The idea that ‘understanding nourishes belonging… a
lack of understanding prevents it’ is clearly conveyed in ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’ and
‘Ancestors’ by Peter Skrzynecki, as well as in an image of an Aboriginal man in
the bush. These texts use emotive language, second person point of view,
dashes, and eye level camera shot to represent the idea of belonging.
In the poem ‘Feliks Skrzynecki’ by Peter Skrzynecki, Peter doesn’t understand
his father’s world and the Polish culture, and this has prevented him from truly
being able to belong in his father’s world. ‘His Polish friends all shook hands too
violently’ uses emotive language to convey how Peter feels about his father. He
doesn’t understand the Polish culture nor does he understand the past
experiences that Feliks and all of his friends have shared. Peter is critical of the
group’s loudness because he doesn’t understand what they have all been
through, and he sees it as being raucous and unnecessary where as they see it
as a very welcomed reunion. Because Peter doesn’t understand the culture or
the experiences they have shared, he doesn’t belong in this group or in the
world that his father has always and will always belong to.
The poem ‘Ancestors’ by Peter Skrzynecki also portrays how a lack of
understanding prevents belonging. Peter is troubled by his lack of understanding
of his past and his heritage, because he needs to find a place in his past where
he belongs just like his father has found. The point of view used in this text is
second person, such as ‘hang over you in a dream’ and ‘why do you wake’. Even
though...