My Place by Sally Morgan Essay

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Belonging is a multi-faceted concept that manifests itself as an intrinsic necessity within the human experience, as palpable within Maslow’s Hierarchy of Inner Needs. Ultimately, however, perceptions and ideas of belonging and not belonging vary and culminate to be lucidly imparted within Sally Morgan’s “My Place” in which an articulation of both collective enfranchisement and personal estrangement bolsters the above notion and explicitly typifies the multihued nature of belonging and not-belonging that pervades within the paradigms of cultural, societal and familial microcosms, essentially defining one’s identity. These notions are further enhanced by the respective composers via a multiplicity of visual and literary elemental constructs including visual imagery, metaphoric language and symbolism. Sally Morgan’s “My Place” is an anecdotal and introspective autobiography that unquestionably represents the concept of belonging that pervades principally within the various microcosms of the protagonist Sally Morgan, as conveyed via the epigraph, “how deprived we would have been if we had been willing to let things stay as they were…we would never had known our place”, communicating Sally’s struggle and ultimate success within her belonging experience. Explicitly, however, My Place explicates values and perspectives pertinent to the paradigms of familial, societal and cultural spheres which permeate belonging and not belonging, and parallel to Romulus, My Father, further extends to demarcate the catalyzing implications of exogenous and endogenous forces upon an individuals belonging experience within the aforementioned domains. In emulation of Romulus, My Father, belonging within an individual’s familial microcosm is synonymously a prevalent notion that is imbued within My Place, and most pertinently elucidated within Sally Morgan’s inter-generational family members.

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