The simile ‘ renting this country’ explains how the parents didn’t really belong because they had chosen not to belong in Australia. In other words they were borrowing the country. Anna Maria’s mother later on sends her a mail which is describing how she doesn’t belong in Italy, ‘ It’s like being in a village in Africa’, writes my mother, ‘ Only villagers speak Italian and sometimes they remind me a little bit of the people I used to know’. This is only the mother’s perspective of Italy since she has written the letter.
The simile ‘ it’s like being in a village in Africa’ creates an image of not belonging. Although there are people there that speak Italian and being able to speak the same language allows you to form a relationship with the individual. However, the mother is referring to the people that they remind her of the people she ‘ Used to know’ and had a short term relationship with. Later on in the story Anna Maria’s parents abandon her to go back to Italy due to her dad’s mother being on her deathbed.
It is proved in the line ‘ I tell myself it’s the migrant’s change of life leaving me to play the abandoned partner, sceptical but frightened’. In the quote ‘ I tell myself’ she is trying to convince herself that the alienated feeling is just temporary. This phrase refers to a cycle of missing and leaving a place. Belonging in more than one place created a conflict in them. The metaphor ‘ leaving me to play the abandoned partner’ is referring to acting, which means that her feeling of being abandoned is not permanent but temporary.
Abandoned has a major emotional implication to her sense of belonging such as withdrawal or being alone. Although she quotes ‘ sceptical but frightened’ so she is not convinced her parents will come back hence this feeling of abandonment might actually be permanent and this makes her frightened. Then Anna Maria gets married and starts to realise the importance of her Italian heritage and family ‘ outside the gates I stand as the last of my people, something of a pathetic half cast, with my Italian lessons at TAFE on Friday nights, my women’s weekly lasagne, my kids called Emily, Lockland and Damian’.
The line ‘ outside the gates’ is symbolising the feeling of being isolated or left out while wanting to belong and the personal pronoun ‘ I’ is used to present the author’s sense of responsibility for not belonging to her Italian Heritage. It seems like she is the only hope left in her family ‘ I stand as the last of my people’ due to being the youngest member of her extended Italian family. Half-cast is used as an Australian term referring to the ‘ stolen generation’ meaning half aboriginal half British which symbolically in this line to refer to being half Italian and half Australian. With my Italian lessons at TAFE on Friday nights’ used to symbolise that she is sitting with Australians learning her country’s or nation’s language.
Her kids names are also mentioned which are not Italian names ‘ Emily, Lockland and Damian’. Finally in the story her mother sends her another message that she doesn’t completely belong in Italy due to the many changed ‘ All is lost here, the country changed, the water bad, to many strikes, the young people no longer want to work and the doctors are fools’. The technique accumulative listing which emphasises how much actually has gone or been lost compared to when they last left.
The use of ‘ all’ which is portraying that there is nothing left in Italy due to the changes and ‘ lost’ is used to symbolise that there is nothing left that they used to have. It also emphasises how much has gone or been lost compared to when she last left. In conclusion a person’s sense of belonging changes as time passes, as places change people change therefore the parents no longer belong to Italy they left 36 years earlier. Perceptions and ideas of belonging or not belonging vary because people see their sense of belonging differently to others, therefore belonging and not belonging is based on the individual.