Here are my solutions to the 2010 paper. They're pretty dodgy but it was the best I could do. Also I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.
(a) Describe how the image depicts the idea of belonging or not belonging to
a family.
The image depicts four figures of varying olours and heights clustered together in the foreground against a background gradient which fades from black to grey.
The varyting heights of the four figures represents the differing heights of members in a family. The heights of the two central figures are similar, and greater than that of the two outer figures, and therefore it can be interpreted that they represent parental figures. There is a strong sense of belonging in this image conveyed through the placement of figures closely to eachother, with Searles using their physical proximity to represent their similar emotional proximity. Furthermore the different colours of the family members’ bodies suggests that while they as individuals may have differences between them, they still integegrate together to belong to a family.
(b) Explain the speaker’s relationship with his brother.
The speaker has a complex and multifaceted relationship with his brother. The narrator admires his brother’s ability to fit in easily, contrasting how “he blended in at school in every way” to his own accent, which “still carried the thick, stumbling textures of Holland”. Furthermore the speaker sees his brother as a role model, wearing his old clothes, being “focused on the way [he] had seen [his] brother wear them” and admiring his grace “the ease with which he moved inside his skin.” While he states that he “was used to admiring my brother,” their relationship was somewhat strained by his “easy contempt for those who didn’t have that natural ability,” and his brother’s seeming mockery at the composer’s clumsiness. This filled him with rage, and brought latent emotions and memories of how “he had always put me down, how he had oppressed me,” revealing an underlying jealousy and envy that had come from a lifetime of almost filial admiration. After this however it seems that their relationship has become more cordial, with his brother beginning to see and compliment the narrator on his own gifts.
(c) ‘It is Beth, not May or Phoebe, who understands my exile.’
How does this text portray friendship as an alternative source of belonging?
The extract from ‘The Cuckoo Clock’ represents friendship as an alternative source of belonging to family through the contrast established between the narrator’s relationships with her friend Beth and her sisters. Through the casual language and conversational tone in “that’s the problem, we all understand it too well,” Modjeska creates a sense of authenticity, showing that her thoughts are real and pertinent to our society.
Through the extract, it is clear that the narrator’s feelings of belongings with her friend are constructed through shared experiences.
(d) ‘This is the record of our desired life.’
Explore the speaker’s attitude to the family photo album as a record of
Belonging
The speakers sees the family photo album as an imperfect and incomplete record of belonging. Rutsala sees the album as an idealized version of family life, using harsh diction in “surrendered”, “falsify appearances” and “even snapshots meant to gather afternoons with casual ease are rigid” to express the artificiality of the moments captured on film. The frequent caesurae further creates a sense of inescapable rigidity, detracting from the authenticity of the family album as a record of belonging. Rutsala uses listing in “Pleasant, leisurely on vacations, wryly comic before local landmarks, competent auditors of commencement speakers, showing in our poses that we believed what we were told” to express the brief and limited false emotions that could be expressed on film, while “we burned the negatives that we felt did not give a true account” ironically subverts the ideas of rest of the poem, where it had been previously established that photography was an untrue, limited account of real life. Furthermore the burning of negatives seems to be an extreme action, aiming to remove all record of past events resulting in a whitewashing of history, which omits “pictures of our brittle, lost intentions”. Therefore the composer sees the family photo album as a one sided text that represents only the positive moments where belonging as part of a family is felt, while neglecting any representation of disillusionment as a result of its rigid nature.
(e) Analyse the ways distinctive perspectives of family and belonging are
conveyed in at least TWO of these texts.
Family sculpture presents family as conducive to and an integral part of one’s feelings of belonging. The curvature of the figures to gravitate towards the center of the canvas metaphorically shows family’s tendency to gravitate towards each other in times of need, while the differing colouration of figures in the image represents the composer’s view that individuality can be still be maintained while belonging to a familial group. The colouration in the placement of the brightly coloured people against a dark background represents them finding shelter from the outside world as a family unit, therefore presenting to us the integral nature of familial bonds to one’s sense of belonging. This sense of belonging constructed from familial relationships is however subverted in Modjeska’s The Cuckoo Clock. Through the establishment of a highly personal first-person point of view, Modjeska portrays Beth’s view that “with real sisters friendship real sisters must always be struggled for” as highly original and therefore authentic, presenting difficulties that may arise in forming bonds with family, and hence the view that famililal bonds are not completely vital to achieving a fulfilling sense of belonging. Through her portrayal of the narrator’s relationship with her friend Beth with an idiom as being of “one skin,” she reveals to us the strength of the bonds formed by friendship, and the effect that this has on the narrator’s ability to maintain a sense of belonging regardless of her dysfunctional family. Furthermore the exclusive pronoun “they” used in the anaphora in “They say I left them behind … They were stuck … They had drizzle, and guinea pigs to bury … They know their way around streets” shows a clear separation of the narrator from her two sisters, hence downplaying the importance of their relationship, while frequent references to her relationship with Beth as “perfect sisters” shows that friendship strong enough could lead to the formation of bonds stronger than that of family. Through his text, Seares shows the importance of family to one’s experience of belonging, while Modjeska’s extract downplays this importance, focusing more on the difficulties that one may experience in connecting with family members, and the apparent ease with which one may forge bonds and relationships with members of the public.
