Preview

Belonging Speech Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
341 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Belonging Speech Example
Tim Winton once said “Our Culture is obsessed about belonging, but people haven’t grasped the notion that you have to earn belonging, to earn some kind of comfort and ease of familiarity with yourself’’. Peter Skrzynecki’s poems Feliks Skrzynecki, St Patricks college and 10 Mary Street reflect this idea through many different ways and in many different contexts such as family, school, home, culture and land.
To belong is to feel as though you are a part of something, where you connect with other people, and where you feel a sense of security. Belonging can be individually, within a group, community, society, or the larger world. This sense of belonging can be earned through our family, friends, likes and dislikes, backgrounds and opinions. Peter Skrzynecki uses various language and visual techniques throughout his poems to portray the idea that you have to earn belonging. Two texts that are related to Peter Skrzyneckis peoms are the film ‘Freedom Writers’ and Kevin Rudd’s sorry speech to the Aboriginal people of Australia.

Feliks Skrzynecki explores the relationship between the poet and his father, and their contrasting experiences of belonging to a new land.
Techniques: The use of first person narration throughout the poem shows us that the poem is actually about a personal feeling of belonging. It also helps to show the connection that exists between Feliks and Peter.

The first line of the poem is “My gentle father”. Already we are shown the sense of belonging through the words “My” and “father”. This relates to a common emotion that the audience can feel through the belongingness in a family or relationship. In the last stanza we hear the quote “I forgot my first Polish word”. This quote shows the loss of belonging to his original country and its culture. The loss of culture represented in this quote can be linked to the loss of culture that the Aboriginal people involved in the stolen

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In order for one to feel a sufficient sense of belonging, they must first experience the sensation of not belonging. “Immigrant Chronicles” is a poetry anthology by Polish/Australian poet Peter Skrzynecki and includes the poems ‘St Patrick’s College’ and ‘Migrant Hostel’. They explore the notion of belonging and the lack of it, and how one’s experience of it can be limited or enriched through interactions with other, and the world. ‘Migrant Hostel’ and ‘St Patrick’s College’ regards the belonging, or absence of it he felt in those places, as well as the watercolour ‘Alienation’ by Ian Kim.…

    • 1051 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Migrant Hostel Analysis

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The migrants which the poet depicts are those after WWII who were invited by the Australian Government to seek refuge in the provided migrant hostels. The poem has a sense of bitterness where the migrants have been taken out of their homeland and placed into an area isolated from the rest of the Australian society. The concept of belonging and not belonging are explored in this poem where the poem is able to relate his experience and put them into either one.…

    • 365 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter’s attitude changes with time. The poem “Feliks Skrzynecki” explores the growing tension between the father and the son, non-existent in the poem “10 Mary Street.” The boy is more than willing not only to accept the new country but also to surrender his father’s Polish heritage. Peter develops a sense of alienation that comes from his cultural and educational context - he is a son of migrants who has never been to Poland,…

    • 1152 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Although the notion of ‘belonging’ entails a need for acceptance by others, the first barrier one must face is coming to terms with one’s own identity. This essay, I will explore two interrelated issues. First, it is the inability to reconcile one’s identity that prevents one from belonging. Second, it is only through engaging with one’s surrounding that a better sense of self may be achieved. These themes are expressed in Peter Skrzynecki’s suite of poems, the Immigrant Chronicles (1975), where the author’s sense of alienation from both his Polish and Australian heritages stems from his own ambivalence towards his identity. In particular, the poems In the Folk Museum, and 10 Mary Street articulates his internal struggles during his teenage…

    • 1286 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poet’s house includes warmth and intimacy. It symbolises new opportunity for the poet’s family. The address 10 Mary Street provided the family sense of security, stability and reliability after they arrived at an unfamiliar country facing unpredictable physical and emotional change. This address evokes the poet’s old memories about living with his family and the house provided them a shelter from the unfamiliar country. The theme of “Felik Skrzynecki” highlights the displacement between different generations with distinctive heritage can affect a person’s identity. Different types of belonging such as belong to mother country Poland and Australian community, are conveyed by describing the lifestyle of his father and the adaptation the poet faced. In addition, the poet explores the idea of family members respecting each other despite their different perceptions of the Australian culture.…

    • 770 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Belonging is the perceptions held by one’s self which enables them to be connected with others. It is the way of acceptance, having security, fulfilment and a connection in association to people, places, groups, communities and the world itself. The sense of belonging is affected by many factors such as understanding, choices, culture, relationships, and experiences. Due to these factors, it can be harder for some people to overcome the barriers of belonging, but may also be easier for others. In the poem, “St Patricks College” by Peter Skrzynecki, and “Refugee Blues” by Wystan Hugh Auden, it demonstrates how belonging can be difficult for some people. Whereas in the poem, “Feliks Skrzynecki” also by Peter Skrzynecki, it contrastingly shows how others find it easy to belong, even if they find it hard in other factors.…

    • 1108 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The poem Feliks skrzynecki written by Peter skrzynecki, deals with the issue of the relationships between the generations and the adaption of migrants from an old European culture to the new Australian society. Through the poem we see the widening gap between father and son as the…

    • 375 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter Skrzynecki’s persistent desire to connect/belong to his cultural heritage is carried forth in various poems, such as Feliks Skrzynecki and St. Patrick’s College. Cultural barriers determine whether the composer/responder is able to belong, and shows the ways in which he attempts to belong. The continual desire to belong to…

    • 1293 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter Skryznecki

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Peter Skrzynecki demonstrates the complexity to belong through the poem ‘Felicks Skrzynecki’ and his father’s affiliation with a place as he writes “ loved his garden like an only child’ . Simile conveys that Felicks sense of belonging is derived from the comfort of his garden; he has paternal feelings towards it like a father connects to his child. In comparison this establishes the alienation of peters relationship with his father. Skrzynecki conveys he feels displaces and his sense of cultural identity is marginalised when he writes “ pegging tents, further and further south of Hadrians wall’ Metaphor conveys Peter’s education has resulted in him moving further away from his cultural heritage and his father, instigating his loss of association with Poland. The complexity of belonging conveyed when Skrzynecki compares the separate lifestyles of him and his father, “ happy as I have never been” Adjective ‘happy’ foregrounds his uncertainty of moving away from his culture as well as the awe he feels in regards to his father living a happier lifestyle. Skrzynecki further conveys he does not belong when he comments “shook hands violently” and “never got use to the formal addressing of my father, Felicks Skrzynecki” negative connotations of ‘violently’…

    • 769 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The line ‘we became citizens of the soil/that was feeding us – inheritors of a key/that’ll open no house/when this one is pulled down’ reveals the regret and sorrow that he felt when the very first place that Skrzynecki could call home since coming to Australia was torn down. It is through these techniques, such as similes and metaphors, that Skrzynecki was able to demonstrate the idea that belonging can occur through a locality and back up the previous thesis that to belong, an emotional and historical connection must be…

    • 984 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter Skrzynecki

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The poem Feliks skrzynecki is a tribute about peters father .Peter uses many different poetics devices to show the idea of belonging and alienation, the use of possessive pronoun in the first stanza which starts with “My gentle father” indicates very touching and positive opening of the poem which makes the poet feel a sense of possession and pride towards his father which expresses that peter has sense of belonging to he’s father.…

    • 640 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Peter Skyrznecki

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Feliks Skrzynecki is a poem that shows a tribute to Peter Skrzyneckis father. Through the use of powerful and vivid imagery, the poet successfully conveys Feliks as a man who is comfortable, content and secure in his own identity. In this poem, concepts of belonging and not belonging occur within place, family, community and culture.…

    • 544 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Peter Skrzynecki

    • 340 Words
    • 2 Pages

    Also in‘Feliks Skrzynecki’, the struggles of relationships between the generations and the adaptation of migrants from an tradition Polish cultural heritage to the newfound Australian society is significant evident in author and his father’s point of view of his world, how he sees his surroundings. The ‘gentle father’imply a physical journey symbolize the alliteration ‘His own mind’s making’and ‘loved his garden like an only child’represents the protective, isolated and self-contained world which Feliks exist with his own value at his own place as ‘Happy as I have never been’which suggests that his care for the garden is greater than that of his son. The use of Hyperbole “why his arms didn’t fall of” emphasizes the poem’s confusion towards his father’s hard-laboring life create a sense of not belonging as Peter’s perspective of difficult to comprehend Felink’s relationship of the Polish immigrant community to which his father belongs: ‘Always shook…

    • 340 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Feliks Skrzynecki Analysis

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Feliks Skrzynecki is the poet’s father and this poem is a tribute to his dignity and stoicism in the face of loss and hardship. Felix’s individual journey from Europe to Australia, from one culture to another, echoes through the poem and it is clear that the impact of the journey is as strong for the son as it is for the father.…

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Belonging

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The poems by Australian poet Peter Skrzynecki illustrate many examples of kinship and detachment. Many of the poems in the book Immigrant Chronicle by Skrzyecki explain his problems with feeling like an outsider stuck in limbo…

    • 872 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays