Belonging from Connections with Places

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Question 3 (15 marks) Explore how perceptions of belonging and not belonging can be influenced by connections to places. In your response, refer to your prescribed text and at least ONE other related text of your own choosing. An individual’s sense of belonging or not belonging can be strongly influenced by their ability to connect to places. Emily Dickinson’s poetry has a degree of complexity as it explores the notion of belonging and not belonging simultaneously, depending on her place and the connections she experiences. Emily Dickinson explores the concept of not belonging due to a lack of connection experienced with her place in society. Dickinson’s poetry then contrasts this, by exploring her sense of belonging to her poetry and to Nature. In the poem I had been hungry all the years, the persona in the poem initially seeks a belonging with society, however she immediately rejects this belonging due to her sense of discomfort and lack of connection intuited. In the poem I died for beauty but was scarce, Dickinson explores the perception of making the deliberate decision to belong to her art and indirectly to nature. The film Pan’s labyrinth explores the sense of belonging the character Ofelia feels to a fantasy world that she has created, as a consequence of not feeling a connection to the real world. A sense of belonging starts from the desire of a person to belong, it is however prolonged by connection the individual experiences. The poem ‘I had been hungry all the years’ explores Dickinson’s initial desire to belong and later her discomfort with her own society and her failure to connect with it. The persona primarily admits to a curiosity about what the society has to offer. This is established through the imperative central metaphor of” being hungry all the years”. The word “hungry” symbolizes her craving to belong. This longing is then usly, ‘in

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