Looking for Alibrandi

Analysis of looking for Alibrandi
The novel, Looking for Alibrandi   by Melina Marchetta is packed with various emotional control and remarks about the dilemmas of being caught up between two civilizations and not having that sensation of fitting into either one.   The novel is basically written about a social and cultural analysis of a young teenage girl’s life where it all revolves around her as she moves more into the semester through her HSC year at the prosperous school, St. Martha’s Catholic College in Glebe.   The protagonist, Josephine Alibrandi, is presented as a third generation Italian-Australian girl caught up in a pertaining, old generation family which she has a necessity to escape from the traditional life in order to become a typical normal living girl in the Anglo-Saxon society in which she lives in. In the novel the use of character and setting, helps withdraw attention to the main emphasises of prominent theme of being an outsider because one is a minority in a multicultural society.   Lacking exceptional accomplishments, the novel demonstrates that average members in the society cannot justly sense they belong in their own individual life which causes the members of our society to endeavour and change their personality, genuine uniqueness all aligned just to fit into the mainstream of their environment.

Josephine Alibrandi was created to be an authentic human realistic character having to possess identifiable character traits that express her not fitting into her traditional and cultural environment and to also grab the reader’s attention to draw them in. The general significant character traits that Mrs. Marchetta presents about Josephine in the novel, Looking for Alibrandi are her Mediterranean appearance and her living conditions.
Mrs. Marchetta describes Josephine as having “dark hair, dark eyes and olive skin” (Page 7) as to being opposed to her friends who are presented as “One of those girls who have perfect white skin and not one split...