Heat and Dust Belonging Essay

Belonging is a subjective feeling that is about connections to people or places. These connections lead to a temporary sense of acceptance and understanding, but it is ever changing, and continuous sacrifice is required to continue to belong. This ever changing notion of belonging, and the continuous sacrifices required to maintain it are evident in the book Heat and Dust by Ruth Prawar Jhabvala. However, this idea is challenged in the personal Essay Of Middle Eastern Appearance by Abdel Fateh and the short film New Boy by Steph Green. The characters of Olivia and the narrator both have to sacrifice their English cultural ties to construct a sense of belonging. However, Abdel Fateh and Joseph from New Boy counters this very notion and proves that sacrifice doesn’t necessarily lead to belonging, nor that there has to be sacrifice to belong.
Olivia is the main character of the novel, and she longs to belong, and eventually makes great sacrifices to temporarily construct a sense of belonging. She is a housewife in 1920’s India, who is extremely bored and suffers from a lack of acceptance and understanding with her local British compatriots, as well as the Indians.   From the very beginning of the book, the diction in “been in Satipur for several months...already beginning to get bored” shows that Olivia was clearly in isolation and alienation. She doesn’t seem to have any connections with the local British either, the hyperbole “same old boring dinner parties...one more of these...I’ll...die” shows her severe alienation and isolation from all communities. However, even at this point, Olivia doesn’t seem to come to a realisation that she has to sacrifice certain things to construct a sense of belonging, gain acceptance and understanding amongst her peers. Eventually though, unknowingly in her quest to belong she does sacrifice her English connections. Near the middle of the novel she is shown to have constructed a temporary sense of belonging with the Nawab. This is...