Shaping Identity Through Acceptance and Understanding

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Through the Individual's understanding and acceptance of the world around them, their sense of identity changes accordingly in order to belong. Within Raimond Gaita's 1998 literary memoir "Romulus my Father" and Hanif Kureishi's 1995 short story "My son The Fanatic" this concept of belonging is consistently demonstrated. Raimond utilises emotive language and natural imagery to show how his father and his own sense of character developed through challenges they faced in a new environment. Similarly Kureishi utilises sophisticated diction to portray how his two mutually antagonistic character's identities change due to their different interpretations of the world around them and their unacceptance of one another.

Paragraphs 1 and 2 idea - identity …show more content…

From the opening of the text we are given insight to the 'desperate defences' Romulus had to take up in order to escape his troubled childhood, emphasising the sense of alienation from family. Through this, Romulus was able to establish his identity as he 'knew only poverty' and 'worked hard' thus he never knew the innocence of childhood as explained by the quote ' Childhood as we know it….. Did not exist'. Never having the experience of childhood Romulus was able to become someone who valued morals and character which he later oppressed onto Raimond giving him a sense of belonging. Furthermore, after Romulus had migrated to Australia his individual identity became associated with other immigrants as 'they were called Balts by most Australians', thus his identity became symbolic of his race. As Romulus's life progressed his sense of identity slowly began to diminish as his original values of moral had crumbled expressed by the emotive language - ' disintegration of his moral world'. Raimond uses natural imagery to juxtapose European and Australian landscape and how, his father had still prefered his European identity over his identity as an Australian - ' Through the landscape is one of rare beauty, to an European or English eye it seems desolate, and even after 40 years my father could not be reconciled to it'. …show more content…

After observing the unforeseen changes in Ali's personality, Parvez had become ' slightly afraid of his son' and attempted to understand the unusual behaviour that had developed. 'Parvez had grown up … taught the ways of Koran', which allowed Parvez to accept the reasons why his son had become the way he is, however his son did not accept his father's behaviour and looked to change that ' don't you know its wrong to drink alcohol?'. Kureishi cleverly constructs the conflicting reasons on why Ali had chosen to embrace the Islamic ways by using the words ' How can you love something which hates you' to show that Ali felt like he did not belong in Western civilisation while Parvez seemed to accept that fact and enjoy his life. Throughout the text Kureishi seemingly illustrates Ali to be the villian who is antagonising Parvez, this illustration is broken when Parvez could not accept and understand his son for who he is and hits him multiple times until Ali says ' so who's the fanatic now?' which emphasises the unacceptance of Parvez by Ali. Due to the unacceptance and inability to understand each other, Parvez and Ali realised that they belonged to different sections of society were did not belong with each

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