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March 29, 2024, 07:24:14 am

Author Topic: English Speech Regarding Belonging  (Read 1213 times)

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glinny

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English Speech Regarding Belonging
« on: March 28, 2017, 07:51:01 pm »
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Hey guys, I will attach below my English speech regarding belonging.
The criteria is; Use ONE piece of related material and ONE prescribed text as the basis for a five minute oral presentation on the concept of ‘Belonging’.
Your aim is to demonstrate your understanding of the concept and to clearly show the links between your chosen related text and ONE prescribed text.

Spoiler
A sense of belonging both strengthens a person’s frame of mind and allows difficult obstacles to be overcome. This is shown in Barbara Baynton’s (1902) short story “A Dreamer” and in Christopher Nolan’s (2014) film Interstellar.  Both text’s focus on the main character being pitted against impossible circumstances, and using their resolve and the vehemence of strength, they manage to fight through the environment and attempt to be reunited with their family in the end.

“A Dreamer” examines the maternal instinct in its relation to adversity and how the concept of comfort and familiarity provides strength. While the mother is facing an episodic-like series of problems on her journey to her mother's. The thought of her mother's warm and loving hands comfort her, and give her the resolve to push these through these issues; “What mattered the lonely darkness, when it led to mother”. This concept of belonging providing strength and resolve is further exemplified by her relentless persistence towards reaching her mother; “Must she dare! She thought of the grey-haired mother, who was waiting on the other side. This dwarfed every tie that had parted them”.

The recurring motif of the malevolence of nature, is another of Baynton’s effective literary devices. The weather and other inanimate objects are frequently personified to be the antagonist of the story. Everything from the train; “Whoof! Whoof! its steaming breath hissed at her” to the wind tried to prevent her from reaching her mother’s home; “malignantly the wind fought her”. Her choice of words in the above passage shows natures aggressiveness towards her and the hostility of the environment, the use of the word 'hissed' further implies the notion of nature being a character in the story.

The weather is also used to create an atmosphere of tension and danger to suggest the dark world the female protagonist has arrived in. The language used is a further example, of this dark and tense environment;” A swirl of wet leaves beat against the doors of the carriage”. While Baynton could have used multiple other words to describe the “beating” of leaves against the door, she chose to use a word which is both humanistic and aggressive, to furthermore enhance the theme of nature as being an atagonist. Metonymy is also used quite frequently for the weather to represent a feeling a character possesses. Often through the story, the wind, rain and darkness are used to further depict the female protagonist's feelings of isolation and desperation.

Similarly, in  Interstellar the environment (outer space) is shown as dark, vast and empty. Various extreme long shots are used throughout the movie to portray space as a bare and desolate environment to develop the main character’s sense of isolation and fear. The colour palette used while Cooper is on earth is a brown/sepia film scene colour, which is then heavily contrasted to the deep blues and blacks when is he in outer space. The sepia colour represents his familiarity to the earth and it’s desert-like soil, and the cold blues and blacks are used as another metonymy to show his fear and separation from his family and planet.

Both texts detail a man-vs-nature situation, in which an antagonist is faced against impossible obstacles and boundaries and has to overcome them. In A Dreamer these problems was the malevolence of nature and its attempts to stop her reaching her mother's home. Whereas in Interstellar, the problems relate to the extreme vastness of space, and the empty void that fills the space between the protagonist and his daughter. Everything that the protagonist has ever known, is located on that tiny blue dot hundreds of thousands of kilometres away.

Throughout Intestellar, Cooper’s fatherhood is constantly framed in terms more familiarly associated with motherhood in fiction. He doesn’t stride manfully off to save the world; he resists every inch of the way, wanting to be there for his children. When his team revives a man who has been living alone for decades on a new planet, the man grasps him and begins weeping to see another human face; Cooper cradles him firmly but gently. Later, the same man identifies the fact that Cooper’s survival instinct is stronger than anyone else’s because he has children, obliquely recalling anecdotes about women getting bursts of strength when their children are threatened. In both texts, sentimentalisation of family occurs, appearing as a source of hope and determination for both protagonists throughout their journey.

A common characteristic of gothic-style texts is the idea of despondent ending, one in which the protagonist not find the result they were looking for. In A Dreamer, this anticlimax is the lady finding her mother dead, after the long and exhausting journey. In Interstellar, it's the fact that due to time dilation, Cooper's daughter, Murphy, is now significantly older than her father.  In one of the final and most emotional scenes of the movie, Cooper is reunited with his daughter, who is being housed in a hospital ICU due to her old age. This heartbreaking notion that primary motivating factor for their success is no more, is again characteristic of Gothic texts, and is very similar to the denouement in A Dreamer. So while Interstellar is a science-fiction blockbuster, it takes inspiration from other modern day gothics, and has small hints of gothic conventions scattered  throughout the text.

In conclusion, both A Dreamer and Interstellar allow us to have a greater understanding of the concept of belonging. In both texts we can see how the power of belonging and love allows people to persevere against near-impossible situations. However in A Dreamer these problems stem from the gothic convention of personifying nature and effectively making it a character. Conversely, in Interstellar, nature isn’t personified at all, but is often used as a boundary against the antagonist, preventing him from reaching his family. From this, a strong distinction can be made about the texts; that while the methods of depicting isolation and unfamiliarity are distinctly different between the two texts, the concept of belonging providing strength and resolve, consequently allowing the protagonist to overcome obstacles, is the essence of both stories.



Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks :).

jamonwindeyer

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Re: English Speech Regarding Belonging
« Reply #1 on: March 28, 2017, 08:02:53 pm »
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Hey guys, I will attach below my English speech regarding belonging.
Any feedback would be appreciated, thanks :).

Welcome to the forums glinny! ;D

Thanks for posting your essay - Our essay marking rules require you to have 15 posts for each essay you'd like feedback for. This is just to make sure the markers can keep up and spend the 30 minutes-1 hour we like to spend marking your pieces ;D

If you hang around the site a bit, I bet you'll reach that threshold in no time :)

glinny

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Re: English Speech Regarding Belonging
« Reply #2 on: March 28, 2017, 08:23:43 pm »
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Thanks for the quicky reply,

Do you think my thesis adequately demonstrates my understanding of the concept of belonging? I think its not as sophisticated as it could be.

jamonwindeyer

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Re: English Speech Regarding Belonging
« Reply #3 on: March 28, 2017, 08:31:54 pm »
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Thanks for the quicky reply,

Do you think my thesis adequately demonstrates my understanding of the concept of belonging? I think its not as sophisticated as it could be.

I think the idea is definitely good, but you could delve deeper! What sorts of belonging are you going to be discussing (filial, cultural, communal, etc)? Are any more powerful than others in overcoming obstacles? You should also try to make the link between your text and the concept a little clearer - Right now the brief explanation of the plot(s) you give doesn't really link to belonging as deliberately as it could with a bit of tweaking :)