Identity and Belonging

Exploring Issues of Identity and Belonging

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Prompt: ‘Sometimes it is hard to balance belonging to a group with keeping one’s individual identity.’ Text: ‘The Catcher in the Rye’ by J.D.Salinger If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you probably want to know is why I did it in the first place. My story isn’t a psychological thriller of some sort, and it isn’t a crappy soap opera either, if you really want to know the truth. I’ll just tell you about this extreme stuff that happened to me when I graduated from year 10 at Northwood Ladies’ College. Northwood Clone College, if you really want to know the truth. The old cyborgs there have been churning out Barbie clones for the middle classes since 1951. I hate clones, they’re so fake and all that. I’d been there since prep. I have no hair, fat features and a few smarts about things like books and stuff like that. It started with the Lit exam. I failed it. I really did. And I always blitzed Lit. I even liked old Shakespeare. I liked that bit in ‘As You Like It’ that goes, “All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players: They have their exits and their entrances.” Too right. It is all an act, everybody pretending their way through some role or other. Still, I failed the Lit exam. Anyway, my Lit teacher, old Dr Goodbody, called me up to his office to tell me off about it at recess. I sat opposite him, listening to him talking crap about stuff like critical readings and something about punctuation. I followed the busted capillaries across and around his face. “Life is a game, Holly. Like Snakes and Ladders,” he said. “All the way from one to a hundred,” I said just to be pleasant because that’s what girls are supposed to be and all. “It’s a slippery game. Three steps forward, two steps back; four steps forward, three steps back. Sometimes it feels as though you’re not getting anywhere. You lose your footing and begin slipping. Too many snakes. Other

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