Looking For Alibrandi Identity Essay

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‘Looking for Alibrandi’ is a novel exploring the issues of teenagers finding their identity. How has Melina Marchetta highlighted that this isn’t an isolated experience. Melina Marchetta’s novel, ‘Looking for Alibrandi’, set in Sydney in the early 90s explores many themes relevant to teenagers of any generation. This novel which follows her troubled protagonist, Josephine Alibrandi, through her senior year of high school shows how teenagers often spend the last years of their teens, discovering who they are in this world. The majority of the novel is focussed on Jose’s struggle to grow up as a cross cultural teenager in a private school, but we also discover her friend Lee Taylor issues with finding a career suitable for her, Jacob Coote’s…show more content…
She reveals that she has hidden concerns about her future as she can’t see herself rising above the negative cycle her family is caught in. She appears to have a realistic view on life that challenges Josephine’s positive outlook. She admits to Josephine, ‘Your problems are out there…but they’re small’ as Lee herself is the one who ‘doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her life.’ Reflecting on her parents’ life that she claims is ‘shit’ she fears that ‘I’ll probably be the same’. Lee’s admission that Josephine too has problems in this world, but in comparison are minor further demonstrates that teenagers are often consumed with a battle to find a place in the world. In this instance, Lee seems to have the belief that she is destined to end up living the same existence as her parents – a future that she isn’t comfortable with. Similarly, John Barton is constantly dealing with the inner turmoil of wanting to break free from family tradition to find an existence completely separate from family expectations. Several conversations that Jose has with John through the text reveals the trouble he is having coping with the pressure to follow in his family’s footsteps and to be a high achiever. In one serious conversation John discusses the pressure that he feels from his father, declaring that
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