Robert Frost - Reflection Statement

Belonging is a sense of connection or attachment to people, religion, culture or places. I think throughout the texts ’10 Mart St’, and ‘Migrant Hostel’ and the related texts ‘The arrival’ and ‘house of sand and fog’ the concept of belonging to place and culture is expressed strongly. In Migrant Hotel Skrzynecki talks about ‘sudden departures’, people always coming and going and not knowing who will be next. This creates a lack of belonging and place. That same feeling of lack of belonging and lack of place is portrayed in ‘The arrival’ when the unnamed man first arrives in an unfamiliar country where he doesn’t fit in, and has no place to live. He does not belong. Belonging to a place is represented through the house in both ‘10 Mary St’ and ‘House of sand and fog’. ’10 Mart St’ expresses that the Skrzynecki family feels as though they are secure and they belong in there house. When Skrzynecki says that they “hid the key under a rusty bucket” they key emphasises the feeling of security. The key is a symbol of their naturalisation, a symbol of their becoming Australian. In ‘House of sand and fog’ the house for Kathy is a place she belongs, it’s a reminder of her childhood and her connections to her family: “It took my dad twenty years to build the house. It took me two months to screw it up.” When Behrani is living in a hotel people treat him like he doesn’t belong, like the hotel manager who asks him “can I help you?” But when he buys the house it reminds him of his old home on the Caspian and it makes him feel like he has a place he belongs. In ’10 Mary St’ Skrzynecki writes: “For nineteen years we lived together – kept pre-war Europe alive”. This shows the Skrzynecki family’s importance of culture and how they try to recreate their polish culture in their new Australian home. It is likewise in the ‘House of sand and fog’, culture is what unites people. The sense of belonging to culture is created with Behrani’s Persian background at the daughter’s wedding at the