OK guys, here's a draft of a belonging essay (using two texts) I recently wrote. Hopefully, it will give some of you some ideas. Remember that this module is essentially about showing the marker 1) Your understanding of what the texts say about belonging 2) The way (i.e. the techniques used) to convey the ideas in 1. See if you can see this pattern coming out in the body paragraphs below. Good luck! :)
Whilst belonging is essential to our happiness and wellbeing there are many forces that can undermine our sense of belonging. Firstly, in the poem ‘The Sweetest Noise,’ Emily Dickinson describes the way that death can fracture the belonging we find in relationships. Secondly, in the short story ‘Sticks and Stones,’ Anne Miethke comments on the way not belonging to our peers can undermine our sense of belonging to ourselves leading to many inimical effects. In both texts, belonging is shown to be both important and yet fragile and susceptible to natural and human forces.
The Sweetest Noise shows how we all belong to the natural world and are collectively susceptible to the cycles of death and rebirth. Dickinson describes the sound of birds in the evening and how, although sweet sounding, they remind her of people she has lost in her life. Using the extended metaphor of ‘magic’ and ‘sorcery,’ Dickinson shows how the alienating process of death is, like magic, somewhat inexplicable and inscrutable. The persona repeats the collective pronouns ‘us’ and ‘we’ six times in the poem which emphasises that this experience is a collective one for us all, as we all belong to nature. The allusion to the deadly ‘siren throats’ and the emotive word ‘deplore,’ shows how painful the alienating force of death can be and the double entendre of the word ‘dear’ in the third stanza underscores firstly, the value of the people that we may lose to death and secondly, the way the full effect of death’s severance of belonging is only appreciated once the people have left us. The emotive adjective ‘cruelly’ emphasises the loss of belonging.
Dickinson’s extended metaphor of seasons throughout the poem: ‘summer,’ ‘spring’ and the ‘March and April line’ is apt to describe the way in which loss of belonging is, like the cycle of the seasons, inevitable. The last stanza shows that belonging is a double-sided coin in that we may find joy and happiness in the relationships we form with others, but we may also feel great pain and loss once those connections are severed. In the final line, Dickinson uses the metaphor of the ear and the heart to express her wish that she could appreciate the beauty of nature without being painfully reminded of the way it can inexplicably destroy our belonging to the people we love.
It isn’t only nature that can destroy our sense of belonging. In Sticks and Stones, Ann Miethke tells the story of a young girl Nola who is alienated from her peers as they constantly tease her about her weight. The use of onomatopoeia ‘tick tick’ shows the way in which Nola’s sense of belonging is eroded over time. The alliteration of ‘cruelly cutting’ emphasises the effect that the social ostracism is having on Nola – a physical effect on Nola’s personal well-being. The imagery of the ‘twisting agonising knife’ extends the cutting metaphor and underscores the harmful effects of Nola’s exclusion. Miethke says that Nola becomes a ‘melted pat of butter’ showing that not belonging to her peers has led to her having no internal sense of identity and structure. That is, the external alienation from her peers has led to Nola’s internal alienation from herself.
The structure of the story oscillates between external accounts of the children’s jubilant teasing with sombre descriptions of Nola’s deteriorating internal state. This conveys the way in which the intensity of the children’s alienating taunts are paralleled with Nola’s increasingly fragile state of mind. Miethke thus illustrates the connection between the external belonging to our peers and our internal belonging to ourselves.
Both Dickinson and Miethke reflect on the forces that can lead to our alienation. Dickinson shows the way in which nature severs our sense of belonging to others through the universal force of death. Dickinson’s references to, and metaphors of, nature show that such loss of belonging is part of human existence and that it may sometimes be difficult to appreciate nature’s beauty without being reminded of its alienating power. Miethke shows how humans may similarly act to alienate each other and how loss of an external sense of belonging to our peers can ultimately lead to a loss belonging to ourselves.
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