Looking For Alibrandi Coming Of Age Analysis

68 Words1 Page

In Melina Marchetta’s, 1993 coming of age story, Looking for Alibrandi. Josie, the protagonist of the novel, finds it complicated to belong to her caecilian culture, and heritage, her mid class status, and being on a scholarship at St Martha’s also has a quite a big impact on her as well. As Josie grows throughout the novel she starts to realise being an “Alibrandi” isn’t what she expected.

Show More
Related

  • Identity In Looking For Alibrandi By Melina Marchetta

    747 Words  | 2 Pages

    “Looking for Alibrandi” is a novel written by Melina Marchetta. The novel is written in the first person, through Josephine Alibrandi’s perspective. Josephine Alibrandi is the main protagonist in the story, she is seventeen and is experiencing her final year at St. Martha’s. Throughout the novel, Josephine is trying to discover her true self and identity as she is stuck between her Italian and Australian culture. She believes that her Australian culture is her sole identity, but at the end, she realises that it is not only one culture but both of them that form her identity.

    Read More

  • Looking For Alibrandi Changing Perspective Analysis

    446 Words  | 1 Pages

    Melina Marchetta, the author of the novel ‘Looking for Alibrandi’ signifies the idea that the way people create meaning influences their perspectives and the perspective of others. The novel has an in depth look at the issues and the problems faced by the teenagers today which the main purpose is to increase the knowledge on “changing perspective”. Marchetta uses various narrative techniques such as dialogue, tone, and first person narrative to verify the deep understanding on how and why perspective changes over time.

    Read More

  • How The Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents

    1624 Words  | 4 Pages

    Immigrants come to America, the revered City upon a Hill, with wide eyes and high hopes, eager to have their every dream and wild reverie fulfilled. Rarely, if ever, is this actually the case. A select few do achieve the stereotypical ‘rags to riches’ transformation – thus perpetuating the myth. The Garcia family from Julia Alvarez’s book How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, fall prey to this fairytale. They start off the tale well enough: the girls are treated like royalty, princesses of their Island home, but remained locked in their tower, also known as the walls of their family compound. The family is forced to flee their Dominican Republic paradise – which they affectionately refer to as simply, the Island – trading it instead for the cold, mean streets of American suburbs. After a brief acclimation period, during which the girls realize how much freedom is now available to them, they enthusiastically try to shed their Island roots and become true “American girls.” They throw themselves into the American lifestyle, but there is one slight snag in their plan: they, as a group, are unable to forget their Island heritage and upbringing, despite how hard they try to do so. The story of the Garcia girls is not a fairytale – not of the Disney variety anyway; it is the story of immigrants who do not make the miraculous transition from rags to riches, but from stifling social conventions to unabridged freedom too quickly, leaving them with nothing but confusion and unresolved questions of identity.

    Read More

  • Salvatore La Puma

    1137 Words  | 3 Pages

    The first paragraph evokes the normal and typical structure of the Italian-American immigrant family in this era. In the Vitale family, everyone has their own role. The father, Giovanni Vitale, has the duty of working long hours to provide for his family. The mother, Lisa, has the role of a homemaker, making dinner for the family, and takin...

    Read More

  • Analysis Of The Girl With The Golden Eyes

    1371 Words  | 3 Pages

    In this novel, the society is centered around dichotomies; “youth and dotage” (Balzac 67), “the young man who has possessions and the young man that has nothing” and “the young man who thinks and the young man who spends” (87). Any person who falls outside of either box is called a “[child] who learn[s]… too late” or can “never appear in polite society” (87), essentially meaning they are undesirable in a formal society because they cannot follow expectations. The titular character, Paquita, is an “oriental” foreigner, from Havana, domesticated in Paris when she was sold to a wealthy woman who desired her. She fits into no culture entirely, as she is “part Asian houri on her mother’s side, part European through education, and part tropical by birth” (122). She is bisexual, choosing neither men nor women over the other. She is controlling, dressing Henri in women’s clothing (119), but controlled as she is reduced to a possession. However, there are ways in which a person can still be desired even if they are not easily pigeonholed. With her golden eyes and sensuality, Paquita fulfills both of the main pursuits of this society, “gold and pleasure” (68). Consequently, unlike the Marquis and his irrelevance in society, Paquita is highly sought after, thus making her a valuable commodity. Her desirability is not because of who she is as a human, but instead what

    Read More

  • The Transition Of Getting Older By E. B. White

    714 Words  | 2 Pages

    ThThe notion of getting older, one day has too frightened me. I wonder what could I have done in the past to change the future. I reminisce of all the things I have done with the people that I love. But, at the end the day, I look forward to getting older. I look forward to the memories that I will make, which one day will be stories told between two friends or family members about their crazy grandmother Gabriella. E.B. White 's essay represents the fears that adults, but mostly parents, face when seeing children grow up and experience life the same way they once did. These nostalgic moments turn to fear of losing their youth. I believe that White 's essay is a manifestation of a mid-life crisis that fails to show what life has to offer after

    Read More

  • On Being Young-a Woman-and Colored

    357 Words  | 1 Pages

    Marita Bonner starts her short essay by describing the joys and innocence of youth. She depicts the carefree fancies of a cheerful and intelligent child. She compares the feelings of such abandonment and gaiety to that of a kitten in a field of catnip. Where the future is opened to endless opportunities and filled with all the dream and promises that only a youth can know. There are so many things in the world to see, learn, and experience that your mind in split into many directions of interest. This is a memorable time in life filled with bliss and lack of hardships.

    Read More

  • What Is The Mood Of The Short Story Helen On Eighty-Sixth Street

    806 Words  | 2 Pages

    In “Helen on Eighty-sixth Street,” by Wendi Kaufman, a young girl named Vita is facing a lot of struggles. With her dad gone, her mom dating a new guy who she strongly dislikes, and not getting the role of Helen of Troy in her school play, Vita is having a tough time. Through these conflicts, Vita shows that she can be dramatic, insecure, but, in the end, hopeful.

    Read More

  • Helena Maria Viramontes’ The Moths

    1672 Words  | 4 Pages

    ...eedom was found and cultural boundaries were not shattered, simply battered, the narrator’s path was much preferable to that of her sisters (those who conformed to cultural boundaries). Through this story we can see how oppression in certain cultures changes individuals differently, creates tension between those who do not wish to be subjugated and those doing the subjugating, and we see the integral opposition between the path of Catholicism and that of curandismo.

    Read More

  • How Did The Westgate Bridge Collapse

    556 Words  | 2 Pages

    Antonello survives but two of his closest friends die. The first half of the novel traces Antonello’s story up until a few days after the collapse. The second protagonist is Jo, a young working class woman born in the 1990s. The second half of the novel begins with an accident that connects Jo and Antonello. For the purposes of this paper, I am not going to discuss Jo or her story. While there are some overlaps in relation to the issues and questions that have arisen for me in writing Jo’s character there are also major differences, partly because of gender but also because of the way our understanding and experience of class identity has changed in the intervening years. The aim of this article is to focus on the issues of writing about a tragic event and about the working class men at its

    Read More

  • Dreams of Trespass: Defining the Frontier

    3708 Words  | 8 Pages

    It is here that our young protagonist finally feels and understands what for years she has only experienced listening to the stories of the women in the harem. That day, she experienced her first feeling of prejudice.

    Read More

  • Aquiles By Amelita

    861 Words  | 2 Pages

    Carmelita utilizes beauty as a form of power in conjunction with her bold actions to construct a self-identity despite gender imposed basis. With this short story the audience is introduced to four main characters Including Carmelita and Aquiles, and it's through their interactions that the reader is able to notice the superior strength in Carmelita than in Aquiles. While running away from Divina Merced Carmelita is seen “Laugh[ing]again at her transformation of her own once fearful and fastidious self” and the when “ Aquiles showed fatigue she enticed him on with snatches of song” (Mena 98). Here the audience sees the transformation from a demure and noble lady into an Amazonian she utilizes tools associated with the weaker sex such as singing

    Read More

  • A Journey into Self-Discovery in Araby by James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield’s, The Garden Party

    1267 Words  | 3 Pages

    In “Araby”, author James Joyce presents a male adolescent who becomes infatuated with an idealized version of a schoolgirl, and explores the consequences which result from the disillusionment of his dreams. While living with his uncle and aunt, the main character acts a joyous presence in an otherwise depressing neighborhood. In Katherine Mansfield’s, The Garden Party, Mansfield’s depicts a young woman, Laura Sherridan, as she struggles through confusion, enlightenment, and the complication of class distinctions on her path to adulthood. Both James Joyce and Katherine Mansfield expertly use the literary elements of characterization to illustrate the journey of self-discovery while both main characters recognize that reality is not what they previously conceptualized it as.

    Read More

  • Oppression In Purple Hibiscus

    679 Words  | 2 Pages

    In Purple Hibiscus, Adichie explores the intricacies of fifteen year old Kambili’s life as she is forced to deal with the reality of her father’s oppression when placed in contrast with the freedom and joy of her cousins’ lifestyle. Papa, a mimic-man of colonialism, ashamed of his past and now fearful of insubordination requires perfection from his family. Kambili lived to please her father, and was ashamed if she let him down in any way. “I wanted to make Papa proud, to do as well as he had done... I needed him to smile at me, in that way that lit up his face, that warmed something inside me. But I had come second. I was stained by failure”(39). Initially, this seems to reflect normal feelings that little girls have for their fathers: a view

    Read More

  • Diaspora and Syal’s Anita and Me

    2965 Words  | 6 Pages

    Syal’s Anita and Me is a coming of age novel about a young girl, Meena, trying to cope with the inner and outer conflicts of a child of a minority culture facing both the temptati...

    Read More

More about Looking For Alibrandi Coming Of Age Analysis

Open Document