Physical Journeys - Case Study Example

Physical Journeys Physical journeys produce not only a change in the location of a person but also a change in the individual’s development. There are adjustments that must be made as an individual makes a transition from one environment to the other. In the poems of Skrzynecki, the issues related to physical journeys are presented in the form of the immigrant experience and some of the common techniques underlying the works are the feelings of displacement from the home culture and the struggle to establish a new identity in a strange new location. The same themes are also reiterated in the story titled “Jolanta Pietras” as well as the movie “Castaway”. Physical journeys involve a change of locations, which requires an adjustment by the traveler in several areas. During the course of physical journeys, there may be obstacles encountered as an individual moves to new places and there is emotional, physical and intellectual expansion that is required of the traveler in order to adapt to the conditions prevailing at the new location where he or she moves to. Therefore physical journeys concern the growth of the individual, adapting to changes and learning to overcome obstacles. Physical journeys, by requiring a range of adjustment from the individual, expand his or her understanding of himself/herself. Journeys are also multi-faceted because they can be negative or positive, they can result in a process of acculturation or isolation of the individual. The multifaceted nature of journeys and the process of adjustment that takes place involving a range of expansion and adjustment by individual/s. In the poem “Migrant Hostel”, there is the suggestion of anonymity of the travelers, representing in a sense, their loss of a familiar identity as they move away from one physical location to another – “No one kept count, of all the comings and goings”. The poem deals with the two year stay of the Skrzynecki family at a migrant hostel at Parkes in Australia. Their stay is characterized by the element of uncertainty, since they never know who will be coming next, or even how long they will be able to stay at the hostel. When they find people from their own country, the writer characterizes the movement of the family towards them as being “like a homing pigeon”. This simile is used to suggest the natural inclination of birds which are similar to flock together. The family tends to hate those inmates of the hostel who are from other countries and gravitate towards those from their own country, who have accents similar to theirs, because it gives them a sense of being home. The poet also uses another birds simile to demonstrate the feeling of displacement of the immigrants – “we lived like birds of passage” which reinforces the sense of uncertainty and having to move from place to place. They are experiencing a sense of displacement and isolation from others in Australian society, which the poet symbolizes metaphorically in the poem by the “barrier at the main gate [which] sealed off the highway from the front doorstep”, illustrating the isolation and separation that these immigrants are experiencing within mainstream Australian society. The structure used in the poem also heightens the sense of uncertainty that the immigrants feel – for example, the poet uses free verses and some of the sentences are half formed with inconsistency in the length of the stanza, all of which reinforce the impression of uncertainty in the immigrant lives. They have left their lives in their own war torn country to find a better life, yet are forced to try and adapt within a society where they feel even more isolated and this calls for emotional and psychological changes within them in order to try and adapt to the new surroundings. The poem “Crossing the red sea” there is a different kind of voice that is used – it is not as personal as the “migrant Hostel”, but is more descriptive and deals with an entire group of people rather than one immigrant family. This group of people is physically displaced, not to escape war in their own country but rather leaving their homeland in disgrace. In this poem, the poet uses a different kind of imagery rather than birds, to portray a different kind of displacement – terms such as “shackles”, “secrets” and “exiles”. The poet uses imagery to symbolize similar feelings of dispossession of culture and the exile from homeland as those expressed in the “Migrant Hostel”. The poem describes “red banners that Time was hoisting in mock salute”, where the “red banners” represents the communist, dictatorial rule in their own country which they are running away from, while it is “time” that will ultimately control what their destiny is to be and the “mock salute” heightens the element of uncertainty and problems they are likely to face. The notion that “time waited anxiously with us” further heightens the element of uncertainty, especially as the travelers are portrayed in images such as “patches and shreds, of dialogue”, suggesting that their clothes are also in a threadbare condition and that they are leaving with nothing, trying to seek a better life in a new land. The poem is about the actual physical journey across the Red Sea and the title is selected to create an association with the journey of the Jews across the Red Sea – a journey that was long and hard and entailed changes but which resulted in a better future for them. This is a much longer and more descriptive poem as compared to the “Migrant Hostel” but some of the same techniques and themes prevail. Some of the common elements are the feeling of isolation and displacement, the exile from the homeland and dispossession of the home culture, the loss of identity and the struggle to establish a new one as they struggle with anonymity in the interim and the barriers to assimilation which they face in the new land. Similar techniques of displacement and alienation surface in the movie “Castaway”. The protagonist is the sole survivor of an ocean crash and must learn to fend for himself all alone on an island, using the contents of a few packages that have been washed up on shore. The same techniques of isolation and alienation and exile from the homeland are portrayed in this film. The protagonist finds that his beeper watch is totally useless because time seems suspended on the island – it assumes the same element of uncertainty and anxiousness that appears in the previous two poems. He must learn to adapt and provide for his daily needs and in the process of learning to make fire, find food and build a shelter, he is forced to overcome several problems, including intellectual, physical and emotional problems. He is placed in a situation where he is exiled from his home culture and gradually, he begins to question the very values of that culture and goes through a process of learning and spiritual transformation which makes him a better person. In this film, the displacement that occurs places the protagonist in a challenging position. With each obstacle he faces and overcomes, he reaches a new milestone in terms of his emotional, psychological and intellectual development. His existing identity as the busy, overworked American worker who is not very considerate about his loved ones or about spending time with them, undergoes a radical transformation as a result of the physical journey he is forced to make that displaces him from his homeland on to a lonely island. The physical displacement produces movement into new places – it leads him into new levels of growth in the emotional, intellectual and spiritual spheres. In the case of the Polish Jolanta in “From here to there”, the war in her home country brings about a displacement from her homeland as she knew it, when the Germans occupied her country. While her dream was initially to become a ballet dancer, the onset of the war pushes her on to a different kind of journey, where she has to change and adapt intellectually, emotionally and psychologically. When she joins Armia Krajowa, she learns a different set of skills other than ballet, she learns first aid and how to use weapons. But then she is displaced again, and forced to go to Auschwitz, where the living conditions are appalling and the constant specter of death looms over her. This stage calls forth great resilience from her, because she tries to stay cheerful according to her nature and sing and dance for the other inmates. Some of the same techniques can also be noted in Jolanta’s experience. The feeling of displacement and homelessness in exile occur in this story as well. When she is removed from the concentration camp and taken to the factory to work, she is resourceful enough to seize her change to escape as the bomb hits. She does not know German and is in a strange land, where the same technique of dispossession of her home culture appear as in the other works discussed above. Yet Germany becomes her home at the end of the war because she marries her American husband and lives there. At every stage, Jolanta experiences a loss of her identity as she knows it and she is forced to reinvent her identity through the process of intellectual and psychological growth, which takes her into new places and helps her to adapt. During her later immigration to Australia, she experiences a similar feeling of dispossession of the German culture and the struggle to establish a new identity. She comes to Australia with her family as an immigrant who does not know the language and she has to use her creativity and ingenuity in order to establish a new life for herself in an alien land that is far away from her native Poland. During the process, she undergoes a transformation in her emotional and psychological state that is produced by the growth she experiences. This story also reiterates the theme inherent in the earlier works- the feelings of exile and the struggle to establish a new identity, which however lead to growth and new understanding gained by learning to cope with obstacles generated by physical displacement. In conclusion, it may thus be noted that some of the techniques used by Skrzynecki to illustrate the migrant experience, such as the feelings of isolation, loss of culture and the need to develop a new identity, coupled with intellectual, psychological and emotional changes which are required of the individual, also appear in the other two works. The film “Castaway” also portrays the displacement of an individual from familiar terrain into a strange land where he must struggle to develop a new identity and skills that will enable him to survive in the new land. References: “Cast Away” Film starring Tom hanks and directed by Robert Zemeciks Radna, Agata, :Jolanta Pietras” Skrzynecki, Peter. “Immigrant Chronicle” Read More