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.
With an unequal marriage and a woman which let her self-expression ruin her, was the short story "The Yellowwallpaper," a great story to talk about the theme of gender. The theme of gender also has to do with how far the story dates back which is in the 1800's, this focusing on how much pain this woman is in with no place to run. Gilman narrates the story to let the reader have a better look at what this woman is feeling and how she reacts to her surroundings. She actually turns to her husband whom which is a doctor and her companion and he dismisses the notion of her mental illness. He sort of traps her in a controlled space by taking her to a secluded house with no human contact besides her sister, Jennie, and himself who both look at her illness in the same way.
In addition, she portrays similar tones such as desperation and mournfulness. In fact, in lines 30 to 24 her tone is at it’s most somber state as she expresses her guilt for being a bad mother to her “child” and believes she has not sent this child away prepared for the world’s cruel criticism. Furthermore, the diction is a device that coincides with the tone of the poem. Her choice of words all share a very strong connotation. As previously mentioned she uses the words ill formed and feeble to describe her unfinished writing’s fragility.
Steinbeck presents the character of Curley’s wife in a complex and complicated manner. Steinbeck uses her as a literary device to show what it was like for a woman in 1920s America during the depression through Curley’s wife. Steinbeck uses Curley’s wife as a vehicle to show the gender prejudice and discrimination a woman had to face. He wanted people to change the way society thought of people such as women by showing that they are actually lonely and vulnerable even if they don’t seem it at first with the use of Curley’s wife and subtle methods as a symbol for women in that era. Steinbeck makes the reader conflicted on how they feel about her throughout the novel until and after her death.
Based off of these facts, a reasonable assumption can be made that the speaker in the poem is indeed Trethewey. The unacceptance of an interracial marriage at that time only reinforced the unfortunate shame Tretheway felt as a half-black half-white girl living in the South. In her eyes, the acceptance in society was dependent on the color of one’s skin. If gaining privileges meant lying about her ethnicity to others, then a small “white lie” couldn’t do much more
Her poetry very much reflects this, and she advises the audience subtly in her writing that it is not society’s fault that she cannot live in the regular social world, but she just needs something that society doesn’t give her. She also wishes acceptance or tolerance from the world, wanting to ‘belong’ to a small degree, even though she cannot. Dickinson’s poem “this is my letter to the world” is her main body of work, being one of the only two poems that were published in her lifetime, and is one of the strongest poems that shows her connection with nature and her lack of belonging to the human world. The form of a letter to convey her message functions as a strong metaphor to show her separation already from society. Dickinson states that her ‘letter’ to the world was a one sided attempt at communication ahead of her.
Gwen Harwood chooses to represent social institutions in a negative light because often in Gwen Harwood’s poems, women are portrayed as victims of the social circumstances of the 1950s and in the past as well. But Harwood sometimes chooses to take a different view and instead has the women either fight against the male dominant character, choosing to be more than just the mans possession or be an independent women who has ambitions and determination to be successful and not necessarily just be a mother. By placing the man as the dominant sex that provides for the family, and the women as the housewives and mothers, she gives the reader a view of how people were in the 1950s, and then adds a twist of the women dismissing this accepted behavior to express her opinion of such issues. Gwen Harwood’s work frequently focuses on woman being demoralised by society’s practices that reduce her to a lesser being. A common worldwide value that Harwood rejects as the normality in life with her poems.
You’re gonna be the darkest, poorest one there.” The pressure society has put Mrs Simmons feeling the need to make Judy’s night of the ball feel like a ‘battle’ demonstrates the real effects that racism has. It encourages the readers to think twice about not only their own approach towards the issue of racism, but also to their own community’s approach. The text opened my eyes to how these issues were not only present during the time of the text but also allowed me to see how inequality, due to your race or cultural difference, is still seen
In this poem the beat that the author is talking about is not a happy beat as the author is using a metaphor of what people were feelings about the situation they are in at that time. Sometimes I feel mad and anxious at the same time wanting to be free. I usually feel this way when experiencing racism from someone in authority over me. The racial persecution placed on African Americans to live as second class citizens with no hope in moving forward toward advancement in society was very hard. Reading this I was able
Many also argue that Chesnutt’s position on race and separation is the very thing that helped to fuel his writing. One of his more popular stories titled, “The Wife of his Youth” sparked a lot of controversy on this subject. This short story explores the intellectual pressure, moral conflicts, and psychological strains experienced by people of mixed-race similar to him. Essentially, through Chesnutt’s choice of diction, and conflict, one can determine his negative attitude toward the separation of races, the separation within a race,