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"Swallow the Air, "The Secret Garden" and "The Seven Stages of Grieving" Year 12 Speech

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How do the texts you have studied communicate a sense of identity arising from the choices to belong or not to belong? (In 7:45-8:15 minutes) Introduction: Hey everyone, hope your enjoying your lunch. I’ve never spoken at a literary lunch before but I really did enjoy this book that I’ve read recently so, yeah. The book I’m talking about is “Swallow The Air.” If you’ve read it then you might know that there’s a small piece of writing at the very beginning that describes the work of a Chinese artist. Now, I googled him and it turns out that he was born into a wealthy family but chose to live a life of poverty. I had to think about this for a while before coming to the conclusion that this was a decision that was meant to …show more content…

This leads a responder to think that maybe Mary’s parents were being punished by a higher power of some sort. The importance of family is similar in both these texts to a play that I have seen recently called “The Seven Stages of Grieving.” One particular scene tells the story of a large aboriginal family. Flooding the stage with color and infusing the story with background noise of family, music and local birds enhance the performance by creating a feeling of unity and excitement. This scene depicts the ideal family gathering. One would expect that characters like May or Mary could only dream of such a family. Point 2: Reasons behind displacement (not fitting in with the rest of the world) Sometimes these important aspects of life are made difficult to connect with. This would result in a feeling of displacement or not fitting in with the rest of the world. When we look at “Swallow The Air”: The title itself tells us that May and her brother struggle after the suicide of their mother. “Swallow the Air.” It’s hardly a comfortable concept is it. This metaphor gives you the impression that May is surviving rather than living. It vividly describes the displacement she feels. Mary is also struggling against a feeling of displacement. It’s ironic that the two things she places most importance on are the two things she doesn’t posses. Her parents ignore her up until their deaths and she has no friends due to a bitter

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