Simple Gift
How do the texts you have studied explore the assumptions underlying the concept of belonging?
A sense of belonging is an inherent, ubiquitous facet of the human condition, brought about through connections to places, people and society. As such, the positive or negative nature of this concept is dependant on the effects of interpersonal experience on individual condition. Steven Herrick’s verse novel, ‘The Simple Gift’, explores assumptions surrounding the need for societal and familial acceptance. This novel challenges such perceptions through three varying viewpoints, each elucidating the common theme that belonging is reliant on human feelings of security and happiness. Similarly, Breath by Tim Winton explores the notions of positive connection to place, and the capacity of negative belonging to drive individual development. Winton highlights the importance of positive belonging experience through exploring the detrimental effects of its absence. Both of these texts challenge the notion that belonging is about assimilation and conforming, and elucidate that it is rather a necessary means by which individual development is facilitated.
The Simple Gift follows the ‘coming of age’ story of Billy Luckett, and his approach to developing a sense of belonging. Herrick challenges the assumptions surrounding the concept of societal belonging through Billy’s story. The societal belonging Billy experiences is negative, evident in his description of his street as a ‘deadbeat no-hoper shithole lonely downtrodden’. The use of accumulation through lack of grammar, combined with emotive language in his description demonstrates his unwillingness to conform to this society. Concomitantly, he refers to his town Wentworth as ‘Nowheresville’, and in the page ‘Longlands Road’ he utilises negative imagery to describe its aesthetic, in ‘unmown grass’, ‘broken windows’, ‘blowing potato crisp wrappers’. Billy uses the negative societal belonging he faces as a springboard, off
A sense of belonging is an inherent, ubiquitous facet of the human condition, brought about through connections to places, people and society. As such, the positive or negative nature of this concept is dependant on the effects of interpersonal experience on individual condition. Steven Herrick’s verse novel, ‘The Simple Gift’, explores assumptions surrounding the need for societal and familial acceptance. This novel challenges such perceptions through three varying viewpoints, each elucidating the common theme that belonging is reliant on human feelings of security and happiness. Similarly, Breath by Tim Winton explores the notions of positive connection to place, and the capacity of negative belonging to drive individual development. Winton highlights the importance of positive belonging experience through exploring the detrimental effects of its absence. Both of these texts challenge the notion that belonging is about assimilation and conforming, and elucidate that it is rather a necessary means by which individual development is facilitated.
The Simple Gift follows the ‘coming of age’ story of Billy Luckett, and his approach to developing a sense of belonging. Herrick challenges the assumptions surrounding the concept of societal belonging through Billy’s story. The societal belonging Billy experiences is negative, evident in his description of his street as a ‘deadbeat no-hoper shithole lonely downtrodden’. The use of accumulation through lack of grammar, combined with emotive language in his description demonstrates his unwillingness to conform to this society. Concomitantly, he refers to his town Wentworth as ‘Nowheresville’, and in the page ‘Longlands Road’ he utilises negative imagery to describe its aesthetic, in ‘unmown grass’, ‘broken windows’, ‘blowing potato crisp wrappers’. Billy uses the negative societal belonging he faces as a springboard, off