Father

Romulus My Father: Values & Belonging Romulus values education and learning, but sadly, only completed primary school. He is a tragic figure from the very beginning: 3: … an inefficient postal service, however, prevented his application [for high school scholarship examinations] from arriving on time. He cried bitterly, not because of lost employment prospects, but because his love of learning would never be fulfilled.

Romulus values European landscape – he does not find serenity, and does not belong to the landscape: 14: Though the landscape is one of rare beauty, to a European or English eye it seems desolate, and even after more than forty years my father could not become reconciled to it. He longed for the generous and soft European foliage, but the eucalypts of Baringhup, scraggy except for the noble red gums on the river bank, seemed symbols of deprivation and barrenness. In this he was typical of many of the immigrants whose eyes looked directly to the foliage and always turned away offended. 3: The peppercorns, to be found at almost every settlement in the area, were planted as though to mediate between local and European landscapes. 21: The Frogmore farmhouse is deplorable – it is not homely, or conducive to belonging and comfort: There was no electricity and no running water… Rats lived under the house and occasionally bit us in bed… Hora woke one night to find a large rat tugging at his elbow trying to make off with a piece of flesh. Large brown snakes came to eat the rats…

Romulus values purposeful work but is belittled by menial labour as a new immigrant: another example of Romulus not belonging to the mediocrity of Australian culture: 16: ‘New Australians’… were almost always given menial manual tasks… In the case of my father, this unusually gifted man was set to work with a pick and shovel. He noted how incompetent some of the Australian tradesmen were, especially the welders, but not with resentment or anger, more with incredulous irony. He had long come to accept what fate ad dealt him and felt not resentment or indignation, or any other response which depended on the assumption that he was owed something better. 29: My father worked shifts at P&N, unable to avoid it because the foreman threatened to sack him if he did not do so. As a consequence, I spent many nights alone at Frogmore. Romulus values fatherhood. He has a nobility about him: 17: He and Hora worked alternate shifts so that one of them could always care for me. At his request, my father was transferred to a job cleaning the lavatories in the camp so that he could be near me. 4: Primitive though the house was, it made it possible for my father to keep me rather than to send me to a home, and it offered hope that our family might be reunited. 31: My father’s devoted care of me contrasted obviously with her neglect, and fuelled hostility toward her. Romulus values intimacy and his marriage and is crushed at Christine’s infidelity: 19: My father must have been heartbroken by his unfathomable, troubled, vivacious and unfaithful wife. Romulus values character: 101: Character – or karacter… was the central moral concept for my father and Hora.

It stood for a settled disposition for which it was possible rightly to admire someone… Honesty, loyalty, courage, charity (taken as a preparedness to help others in need) and a capacity for hard work were the virtues most prized by the men and women I knew then. Romulus believes that life is short and full of suffering: 121: His sense of life is beautifully expressed in the ‘Prayer for the Dead’: ‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut like a flower. He fleeth as it were a shadow and never continueth in one stay’.

Those accents of sorrow and pity determined his sense of all other human beings as his fellow mortals, victims of fate and destined for suffering. They determined the quality of his deeply felt compassion in which all moral judgements were embedded. 172: Suffering ennobles… Some kinds of wisdom, however, the kinds that show themselves not only in thoughts, but in the integrity of an authoritatively lived life – are given only to those who have suffered deep and long. His affliction gave authority to much of what my father said etc

Romulus’ moral code – his sense of what is real and important was shattered after Lydia’s letter of rejection: 122: Only someone with an extraordinary sense of the reality of the ethical could be so shaken by a sense of evil, and my father was such a person. Vacek’s institutionalisation shows the danger of conformity: 143: … police took him to the Ballarat psychiatric hospital… over time he became dependent on institutional living so that, even when he was free to leave, he preferred to stay, and remained there for the rest of his life.

Here is an argument against belonging – belonging becomes a prison. Hora & Romulus enjoyed an enduring friendship… Romulus remained a noble, heroic man despite his illness: 146: Hora knew that, despite his illness, there was still no one who remained as steadfast as my father in his disdain of superficialities, in his honesty and in his concern for others. Romulus believes in keeping one’s word at all costs – he pays for Lydia’s family to migrate: 149: Their fares were paid not by Lydia and her husband, but by my father.

He had promised to do it years before, and it was inconceivable that he would go back on his word whatever Lydia had done to him and irrespective of whether her mother and her brother had been accomplices in her deception. Romulus values the truth and absolute honesty Romulus values being polite: 138: My father said that we should wait until a more suitable time before knocking at their door. This courtesy struck me as incongruous with our purpose. Finish what you start – changing direction signifies an instability and weakness in character: 157: My father refused to let me go [to Melbourne High School].

He said that I had started at St Patrick’s and so should finish… For years… he insisted that I had made the wrong decision… because I had not finished what I started. Hora (like Romulus) detests moral shallowness. After an argument between Raimond and Hora about communism, Hora refused to speak to Raimond: 159: He knew that I knew how many millions had perished under communism, for he had often told me. Given that I knew, how could I not care? But how could I claim to care if I treated it all so lightly?

If I was now such a morally shallow person, what could he say to me? How could he speak to me of anything that mattered? These questions cut into his heart, for he loved me. For his the pleasure of talking even about trivial matters depended on his knowing that the person with whom he was speaking was one whose responses could be trusted to be serious and decent. Romulus does not believe in traditional gender roles, he believes in doing what must be done: 163: The division he knew from his childhood between women’s and men’s work, played little role in his life.

He sewed, cooked and baked, teaching Milka how to make strudel with their own pastry, doughnuts and other things. Romulus values compassion, generosity and care… his commitment is almost religious: 165: Compassion went unusually deep in my father. It showed itself all his life in the help he gave those in need and in the pain he visibly felt for their pain. He was literally incapable of not helping someone genuinely in need if he had the means to do so. 165: More often than not my father’s generosity was abused, and although it pained him it did not diminish his impulse to give. 68: He had no interest in doctrine. At the centre of his religious sensibility was the idea of a pure heart responsive to those in need. 169: His sense of our deep need for prayer was the expression of his belief that only a life of prayer could enable one to consent to great and protracted misfortune and for that consent to go sufficiently deep to save one from despair. Romulus values European culture: he is in the prison of Anglo society, craving European conviviality: 169: He longed for European society, saying that he felt like a ‘prisoner’ in Australia.

He meant that, although he had good neighbours, in Maryborough he had almost no one with whom he could enjoy the generous and open forms of conviviality that characterised European hospitality as he knew it. He complained that one could not just drop in on Australians and talk freely for hours: one had, as he put it, always ‘to make an appointment’. Whereas if you went to a European home, you would generally be offered food and talk, both in generous quantities. Romulus believes that conversation is humanising: 23: All conversation which meant all living, occurred in the kitchen 73: He believed that it was essential to decent conversation that one not pretend to virtues one did not possess – as essential as being truthful about one’s identity. Only then could conversation be true to its deeper potentialities and do its humanising work or opening up the possibilities of authentic human disclosure. Romulus values a life governed by necessity, and work is the ultimate necessity: 194: Although……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. e and Hora were inclined to believe that depth and real contentment were to be found only in a life governed by necessity. Wisdom they believed, lay in consent to that necessity. Superficiality and restlessness were in store for those who fled it. See also: incident with Mikkelsen Delivering groceries by carrying them on his back Miscellaneous: Relationships – or belonging and connectedness to another human being – is destructive. 137: Mitru’s suicide and my father’s madness had convinced me that sexual love was a passion whose force and nature was mysterious, and that anyone that came under its sway should be prepared to be destroyed by it.

Its capacity to wreck lives, to humiliate otherwise strong and proud people and to drive them to suicide was already familiar to me. That it should also drive them to murder was part of the same story. Christine: 25: A troubled city girl from Central Europe, she could not settle in a dilapidated farmhouse in a landscape that highlighted her isolation. She longed for company. 31: Desperately lonely, she was glad of any conversation that came her way. 31: Mikkelsen remembered her vividly… he had the arresting presence of someone who experienced the world with a thoughtful intensity. 103: But for someone like my mother, highly intelligent, deeply sensuous, anarchic and unstable, this emphasis on character, given an Australian accent, provided the wrong conceptual environment for her to find herself and for others to understand her. p. 28: Setting fire to kill snake -> humiliation and ridicule in local paper. p. 29: Redemption by valiant intelligence in saving Mikkelson

Conflict and Communication Styles Within Families There are many areas to be explored underneath the Communications Studies umbrella making it quite difficult to narrow down a specific subject to write about. After performing some research I chose to discuss conflict and communication styles within families. Conflict seems to be an inevitable event in all-interpersonal relationships and the way one manages such conflict can determine how the rest of the relationship may be influenced. According to Wilmot and Hocker (2005). Conflict is usually a struggle between at least two parties who have indifferences in goals.

Families tend to deal with this issue differently based upon communication patterns, perceptions and environment. As aforementioned the way conflict and communication is dealt with can differ within families based upon their communication styles or patterns. I thought it would be interesting to further study why this happens. Many families face difficult struggles, which can often be quite volatile and troubling. How family members deal with these struggles not only affects personal development but it can also affect younger children, what they learn from family conflict and how they can be impacted by exposure to such conflict.

The first article I chose is Family Communication Patterns and Conflict Styles in Chinese Parent-Child Relationships written by Qin Zhang. The purpose of the study that was conducted was to investigate Chinese family communication patterns and the effects on children’s conflict styles and perceptions of parent-child relationships satisfaction (Zhang, 2007). The study found that Chinese family communication patterns are more conversation-oriented than conformity-oriented, and the collaborating and accommodating styles are the children’s most preferred and the competing style the least preferred.

A conformity-oriented family values the harmony and interdependence of family members, conflict avoidance and children’s obedience to parents (Fitzpatrick, 2004; Koerner & Cvancara, 2002; Ritchie 1991). A conversation-oriented family values the individuality and independence of family members and spontaneous and unconstrained interactions (Koerner & Cvancara, 2002; Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 1997; Ritchie, 1991). The second article I chose was Family Communication Patterns and the Conflict styles Young Adults Use with Their Fathers by Rebecca Dumlao and Renee A.

Botta. This study examines the link between family communication patterns between fathers and young adults to conflict styles and management. The levels of conformity and conversation encouraged by the young adults’ fathers also encouraged styles of managing conflict (Dumlao & Botta, 2000). Collaborating and accommodating were found to be the most consistent styles of conflict predicted by father type. Collaborating requires significant commitments of time and communicative effort to find a solution that mutually beneficial.

A father who promotes substantial communication is more likely to raise children who us this skilled style (Dumlao & Botta, 2000). Accommodating is when on person gives in to another’s wants which often correlates with a family that encourages conformity. Young adults with fathers who encouraged conformity were often more accommodating during conflict. Comparison and Criticism: Both articles vary drastically but still offer good insight in regards to families and how factors such as cultural background or parent-child relationships can have a great effect on how conflict is resolved.

In the first article, I found it interesting how culture can be a major influence on how conflict is handled and perceived. According to Hall (1976) “Chinese culture is high context, collectivistic and has large power distance”. Before reading the article I assumed, since the Chinese tend to be a more reserved and high context people that they would be more likely to avoid conflict. Traditional Chinese culture places great emphasis on harmony, face, relationship, and filial piety, which gives rise to the preference of conformity orientation (Ho, 1986; Hsu, 2002; Wu, 1996).

That being said, it was very interesting to see that my assumptions were wrong. I was somewhat surprised to see that study findings show how Chinese parents have moved from conformity orientation to conversation orientation. Zhang (2007) states “The shift of family communication patterns might actually reflect the gradual transformation of Chinese culture from a highly hierarchical society to one that endorses equality and freedom”. Although the second article does not have to do with cultures it still touches on families and the way conflict is handled and resolved.

What intrigued me about this article is that it takes about conflict with young adults and specifically their fathers. I’ve always been close with my father so I was interested to find out how different parenting skills can affect young adults in how they deal with conflict now and in the future. There were various hypotheses during this study but one that stood out to me was that “young adults with protective fathers will use higher levels of both accommodating and avoiding styles with their fathers than those whose fathers are not protective” (Dumlao and Butta, 2000).

I found this interesting mainly because I felt like I could relate to that assumption and it was fascinating to see the hypothesis to be proven true. In the findings it states that there are limited options for an individual who may come from this type of family those being to give in or don’t get involved at all. This spoke volumes to me because this is how tended to act/react in my relationship with my father, who was in fact, very protective. Once again, the articles are different but at the same time very similar. Both deal with conflict, families, and relationships between a parent and child.

I don’t think us, as a society, realize how cultural backgrounds, parent-child relationships, and environment can affect us at such an early age in how we deal with and resolve conflict with one another. I’m not too sure how I could apply this to my daily life or future endeavors since my conflict style has slowly been embedded in me since I was a child. I have taken the time to analyze myself though and reflect on how my culture and upbringing have effected the decisions I make and reactions towards conflict. Recently, in another class

Both mothers and fathers contribute to their full extent and provide us with utmost facilities. The try to give their children with best clothes to wear , provide good foods to eat etc , so that their children get proper development. All that parents earn is for their children so that they can have settled life . They provide their children with best possible education so that their children can stand on their own and compete in the world later on .

Most of the fathers do jobs so that they best earn for their children and provide their families with a happy life. The fathers usually become the role models for their children . Meanwhile , the mother take full care of their children and teaches them manners of how to live . The both parents are the best teacher for any child . Both parties have their important role as parents , and an ideal child is one that gets the support of both . However , now the question arises that who is better between the two?

Whom do the children love the most. The mothers are one those who give birth to a child and suffer the pain during the early nourishment of a child . Most of the working women , when turns into a mother , have to sacrifice jobs , earnings etc . The mothers are more nurturing by birth . Every wife has a dream to become a mother ,so that she can give her love and care that God has gifted to her . It is by-nature that mothers are more loving and close towards their children than fathers .

It doesn ‘t mean that fathers are not close to their children , but the feeling that a mother is gifted , cannot be matched by the fathers . Women also stay with their children more than men because men tend to be busy working. Most women are usually at home with their children, This provide children someone to be close to and who understands you. Once a women becomes a mother , she leaves her everything and her main goal is to give the child best care . The best time for a mother is to spend with their children .

The mothers are by-nature more emotionally to their children . The mothers do everything for their children without complaining to anyone . Such as she cleans off all the mess of their children and feeds them. Due to psychological perspective, is that children are more important to their mothers than to their fathers. So at the end if you reflect on the facts and how the society think of it always goes to the women side. The children are more into their mother than father because of the treatment, love and care they get from their mother.

Unfortunatly, Mariam’s relationship with her father leads her to an abusive marriage which she cannot prevail due to her role as a women. Mariam being forced into an arranged marriage accepted by Jalil. One of mariams main conflicts is She is forced into an arranged marriage with a person who is much older to her in age. Mariam’s submission to destiny and adversity is not limited to leading an abusive and unhappy married life. She unfortunately is not able to conceive a child which makes Rasheed more violent and angry towards Mariam. Rasheed is often agitated that she is not fertile and his ambition to have a son is not materializing.

Her childless marriage to Rasheed eventually forces Mariam into a life of submission and misery. Mariam is under terriable adversity, that Rasheed is not worth loving and ulitamtly she is not able to have a child to love. All of Mariams sources of having a loving family is sealed and she finds no strength to prevail the life that’s ahead of her. In the scene Mariam recollects how she played with pebbles her father had gave her when she was a child, and how the pebbles represented a sense of family of love and self belonging towards Mariam. But when Rasheed made her “CHEW” the pebbles due to her lack of love in her food.

She spit out blood breaking too molars . Mariam realizes the powerful adversity she is facing and to add to her hurt Rasheed spits at Mariam saying ,”Now you know what you have given me in this marriage. Bad food and nothing else”[104]. This quotes reveals that mariam is facing adversity in her life,due to the effortless tastless food she made for Rasheed. She had given up and lost this hope of having love and self belonging she was longing to have. Hosseini suggest about mariam that her marriage to Rasheed had created more adversitites in her life, and giving up the hope and strength to prevail against this powerful adversity.

What particular insight into an understanding of belonging have you gained from Raimond Gaita’s representation of his father’s life in Romulus my Father in the early chapters of the memoir, and how his choice of language, style, voice and the use of the memoir influenced your response to his story so far In the early chapters of the memoir Gaita gives us images and ideas that he himself acquired from his father, for example ‘Though the landscape is one of rare beauty, to the English or European eye it seems desolate and even after 14 years my facer could not become reconciled to it’ is a quote said early on in the book describing Romulus’ disdain for the Australian landscape which Raimond originally also shared until his enlightenment. Romulus does not feel like he can belong in Australia early in the chapter because he still has the images of the lush, green European landscape in his mind and this leads to a sense of not belonging because he hungers for his homeland. The idea that the landscape shapes your identity and sense of belonging is something that Gaita reinforces. Another insight into belonging that Raimond tries to convey is that people gravitate to those who share similar values/language to them. Romulus is a migrant and feels lost in this country but he then finds other Romanian people and bonds with them.

The house at frogmore which was isolated helped shape Gaita’s sense of belonging because he felt safe and free there, this is another example of the place where you grew up shaping your sense of belonging. Time and time again Gaita reinforces the idea that his father was a hero and someone who should be admired. This devotion and love for his father is seen throughout the memoir and we are told anecdotes explaining how Romulus made the hard decisions and tried to raise his son as a good person even going so far to beat him to reinforce these ideals such as lying is bad, respect your parents and not to steal. The repetition of this admiration is used to show the bond between a father and his child.

The depression motif gives another insight into how hard it is to acquire a sense of belonging. Many characters in the memoir have depression and this is to emphasis the feeling of loneliness, desolation and non-belonging because of the migrant experience and even Romulus himself goes through states of madness during his life because of the migrant experience. Acceptance by all people is something that people must have to belong or else the sadness/loneliness may drive them to madness also. Christina is an example of this because she has no sense of belonging, travels a lot and has a lot of lovers. Gaita never says she is a bad mother even because of these things, he only reminds us she that she has problems and it is not her fault.

Her attempted suicide story is used to make us feel sorry for her and pity because she has never been able to connect with anything, ‘alone, small, frail…forsaken”, this accumulation of adjectives gives us a more descriptive picture of what was happening and how she felt. The narrative is in first person narrative and gives us a firsthand experience in what had happened. The memoir seems more real to us because it is real and therefore we can relate to it better and use it to better our lives. Though his language is more matter of fact at the beginning of the memoir, his eventual ascendance changes his language style so much that is clear that is a wiser and smarter Raimond speaking now. This higher intelligence lets us communicate with him better and so we can fully grasp what he is trying to tell us about belonging and how it is to get that true sense of belonging.

When we look at the struggle for American Independence, most of us think of the war that the original patriots fought and won against the British. We look at some of the most historical figures in American history such as George Washington along with John Adams and credit them with independence of our nation. What many of us oversee is the man who inspired our weary, undermanned, unmotivated and ill equipped nation; Thomas Paine. Paine was a man who was not even born in the American Colonies.

He was born in Norfolk, England and immigrated to the British colonies amidst the revolution in 1774. Amongst his stay in the American Colonies, Thomas Paine quickly realized the desperate situation the colonies were in. Using his skills as a political activist/author, he created a book called “Common Sense” which lit the fire in the hearts of many of the colonial Patriots; it gave them the inspiration they needed to wage a war that would forever change the course of history. His influence was so desirable and effective that “without the pen of Thomas, the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain” (John Adams, The Sharpened Quill).

Originally titled, “The Plain Truth” he was urged to retitle it to “Common Sense” because it provided American Patriots exactly what they needed to have them open up their eyes to what was in front of them. Paine’s arguments of how it was the right time to claim independence definitely puts him up for the running as the father of the American Revolution. Being from England, Paine was more than suspected to the ways of the Monarchy. He understood the necessity of a government within a population of people.

His sense of brilliancy comes from his logical view of a government. He tries his best to come up with a way that invoked the colonists into a way of thinking that would both negate the government in a bad sense, but would also shine light upon the idea of a leading group of people. With this, he speculated the argument that “Society in every state is a blessing, but government even in its best state is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one; for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries by a government” (Paine, Common Sense, 4).

One of the reasons Thomas was successful in being a political activist, he had obviously appealed to those who had a sour taste of a tyrannical government, and he also took it into his own hands to redefine what a government was and its role to its people. England’s constitutional monarchy gave Thomas a decent sense of what not to do in terms of leadership. During his time in America, he saw that a majority of the Patriots were already displeased with the current system and he also saw that they were susceptible to return to the old ways because of the low morale to take things into their own hands.

One of the things Paine wanted to do was sway the American people out of the idea that a king is necessary. He goes along doing this by formulating an argument that “In the early ages of the world, according to the scripture chronology, there were no kings; the consequence of which was there were no wars; it is the pride of kings which throw mankind into confusion” (Paine, 9). His argument against the crown then made sense to people because they then knew that having a king would lead to all sorts of complications with history repeating itself.

Thomas did not see the point in exalting one man and making him better than others. He validated his points by using the ultimate weapon in political history: religion. Using evidence of the “scriptures” he articulates a dictation using, “As the exalting one man so greatly above the rest cannot be justified on the equal rights of nature, so neither can it be defended on the authority of scripture; for the will of the Almighty, as declared by Gideon and the prophet Samuel, expressly disapproves of government by kings” (Paine, 11).

There are many instances that Paine brings religion to his argument, but I feel like this is where he excelled at it the most due to his hatred toward a government that is a monarchy or any type of government that exalts one man and exempts him from the rights of an individual. As far as being politically motivated, he also formulated a list from a military aspect that gave the Americans a rough number on what they would need to protect their seas and borders. He also made it clear that the American colonies were not going to win a war in numbers, but in unity.

The colonies themselves were small enough to unite a single front and take on the British. No war would come without money you say? Paine suggested that to gain help from foreign powers, we would incur a ton of debt to help fund professional armies. What was his solution? The west had unclaimed land that we could use to pay off this debt. Giving the United States a Foreign presence, this would boom trade and inevitably open the country to expansions that they would never see before.

Of course he knew that with the opening of new trade routes we would need to protect them. “No country on the globe is so happily situated, so internally capable of raising a fleet as America. Tar, timber, iron, and cordage are her natural produce. We need go abroad for nothing” (Paine, 20). Paine formulates how much money it would cost the British to focus a war with America, drawing troops from other theatres of war in the world.

Showing the revengeful Americans that they would inflict a huge blow to British pride as well as create a hole in their wallets, enticed them to band together and get building. They didn’t need to rely on any foreign help to amass their own navy. He also foretold of a peace with the British because the British needed the Americans for their raw resources and valuable materials. He created an ideology that “the mercantile and reasonable part in England, will be still with us; because, peace with trade, is preferable to war without it” (Paine, 23).

In conclusion, Thomas Paine will always be one of the original American Hero. For being someone not of “American” descent, he came from the homeland of the British Isles and incited a revolution that brought forth one of the most powerful nations in the world. With a sense of honor and dignity, Paine did the unimaginable; started a revolution amongst people who should not have won. He gave them the “common sense” that was needed in order to be successful. “On these grounds I rest the matter.

Instead of gazing at each other with suspicious or doubtful curiosity, let each of us, hold out to his neighbor the hearty hand of friendship, and unite in drawing a line, which, like an act of oblivion, shall bury in forgetfulness every former dissention. Let the names of Whig and Tory be extinct; and let none other be heard among us, than those of a good citizen, an open and resolute friend, and a virtuous supporter of the rights of mankind and of the free and independent States of America” (Paine, Conclusion).