Swallow the Air

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In my reading of Swallow the Air, there are many images of belonging and anti-belonging that are conveyed through May’s narration throughout the novel. I found these images that Winch describes uses powerful imagery and this helped me to understand May’s struggle to find belonging and her identity. The images that are created in Swallow the Air assisted me in creating my visual representation. In my visual representation, I decided to paint the background of my visual representation blue to represent the strong connection between May and the water, “Murun. Everything is water.” May gets her life, energy, force and draws from the water and feels a strong sense of belonging to the water. Her tribe, the Wiradjuri tribe are the hard water people, I chose the quote, “Our people are born from quartz crystal, hard water,” because May feels that she belongs to her tribe due to her Aboriginal ancestry. I decided not to add anything else a part from the blue background to represent May’s spiritual connection to the water because the meaning of the Wiradjuri tribe is, “wiray – no dhuray – having.” The people of the Wiradjuri tribe have to accept having nothing, which is represented by the quartz crystal being hard water. I chose to portray May’s fantasy illusions in contrast to her actual life and reality; the fairytale castle and the quotes represent this, “I’d rather think of it as a castle.” “A balmy night in some fairytale village in a cartoon.” Throughout Swallow the Air, May creates illusions and fantasies of her life, such as her Dad being a perfect father, which is represented by the mango in my visual representation and the quote “Seemed all so perfect, so right.” I chose the contrast the fairytale castle with the dark and harsh reality of the Block, ”But the cartoons don’t scream and ambulances don’t ribbon the streets of its spilling blood.” May

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