Feliks Skrzynecki and Mean Girls
The Poem, ‘Feliks Skrzynecki,’ composed by Peter Skrzyneck, explores a relationship between father and son, and their contrasting experiences of belonging to a new place to call home. My related text, ‘The Perks of being a wallflower,’ a novel composed by Stephen Chbosky, is a story narrated by a teenager who goes by the alias of “Charlie. ” Charlie explains and analyses various scenes in his life by writing a series of letters to an anonymous person whom he does not know personally.
When the story begins, Charlie is shy an unpopular, he is a wallflower, but when he decides to be brave enough to talk to the prettiest girl in the school, Sam, his life transforms and he experiences introversion, teenage sexuality, abuse, drug and alcohol use, and the awkward times of adolescence. The opening line of ‘Feliks Skrzynecki,’ ‘My gentle father,’ allows the reader to predict that this poem can not only be considered a noticeable tribute to the composer’s father, but can also imply a physical journey.
This idea of a journey becomes more evident throughout various areas of the poem including the metaphor used is stanza seven, “After that, like a dumb prophet, watched me pegging my tents further and further south of Hadrian’s wall. ” This line allows the reader to understand that the father could foresee the result of his son’s detachment, but chooses to stay quiet to allow his son to learn for himself.
The line in stanza three, ‘His polish friends, always shook hands too violently” conveys a feeling of discomfort within the son, it is evident that the son feels detached from the “violent” ways of his heritage and feels like he does not belong, like he is an outcast. This line strongly relates to a line on page 8 in ‘The perks of being a wallflower’, “Some kids look at me strange in the hallways because I don’t decorate my locker, and I’m the one who beat up Sean and couldn’t stop crying after he did it. I guess I’m pretty emotional. I feel these two lines strongly relate because they both explain a feeling of being outkast, they create an uneasy mood in which you are positioned to understand that they don’t feel as though they belong. In stanza six of ‘Feliks Skrzynecki,’ an image of peace, security and belonging is conveyed. “My father sits out the evening with his dog, smoking, watching stars and street lights come on, Happy as I have ever been,” This stanza creates a harmonious atmosphere through the accumulation of positive images.
It conveys a constrast between Feliks’ self sufficiency and Peters discontent. This line also conveys Feliks’ capacity to enjoy a sense of belonging that has come through his experiences of suffering. His mind has been broadened to understand what really matters in life. The line, “I laid down on his old bed, and I looked through the window at this tree that was probably a lot shorter when my dad looked at it. And I could feel what he felt on the night when he realized that if he didn’t leave, it would never be his life.
It would be theirs. At least that’s how he’s put it. ,” from my related text related to the previously mentioned stanza through the sense of their fathers happiness. Both fathers have been through pain and suffering and come to the point where they knew exactly what they needed to be happy, to escape the harsh reality. In stanza one, Skrzynecki writes, “Loved his garden like an only child, spent years walking its perimeter from sunrise to sleep. Alert, brisk and silent, he swept its paths, then times around the world. The place that Feliks feels most safe is in his garden, it is his sanctuary, it is where he belongs. His experiences of war had led to a chosen state of positive isolation in a safe and secure place that he could control.
On page 198, Chbosky writes, “I laid down on his old bed, and I looked through the window at this tree that was probably a lot shorter when my dad looked at it. And I could feel what he felt on the night when he realized that if he didn’t leave, it would never be his life. It would be theirs. At least that’s how he’s put it. I feel that these two lines coinside through a sense of belonging, whether it be to a place, a feeling or a memory. At a particular point in time, they were where they belonged. Through evident points, it can be seen that belonging is a feeling of acceptance, as a natural member or part, and that belonging is a basic need for human function and survival. Both texts show a timeline of both good and bad experiences, but convey a feeling of contentness within their chosen ‘homes’ or wherever it is that they feel most comfortable, where they feel they belong most.
For Peter, it was his childhood, when everything was easy and nothing hurt. For Feliks, it was in his garden, his only sanctuary and for Charlie, it was between the two people that made the biggest impact on his life, Sam and Patrick. While the endings to both texts are not overly happy, they challenge the idea of belonging in there own ways and it can be conluded that Social isolation can have negative consequences on an individual or a society and that happiness and belonging go hand in hand. You cannot feel like you belong every second of your life, it just isnt human.
