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Anna And The French Kiss Belonging Analysis

857 Words4 Pages

What if we’re the one who prevents ourselves from belonging? Maybe it’s not the society that excludes us, but ourselves. Individuals prevent themselves from belonging due to mental barriers and their fears, these must be overcome to belong and find their home. Good afternoon Miss Collins; Today I’m here to demonstrate how it’s the individual that prevents themselves from belonging, not society. A man once said, “Home isn’t where you are from, it is where you belong. Some of us travel the whole world to find it. Other’s find it in a person.” The contemporary, romance novel, Anna and the French Kiss, by Stephanie Perkins, published in 2010 features the idea of belonging to new people and places and finding where her ‘home’ is. The novel’s protagonist, …show more content…

Anna is forced to attend school in Paris, where obstacles prevent Anna from belonging. Anna believes that the Parisians, “don’t like Americans”, this stereotyping creates a barrier. St. Clair helps Anna overcome this by giving her a Canadian flag, claiming that “Europeans are much more forgiving of Canadians.”. Following this, Perkins uses truncated sentence structure, “I’m going to see Paris. Alone.”, to emphasize Anna’s courage of facing a new place, alone. The unusual sentence structure holds the reader’s attention on this concept of Anna overcoming one of the barriers which prevent her from belonging. Anna’s mental barriers previously prevented her from exploring Paris, not allowing her to interact with her new surroundings, thus preventing her from belonging. By going to explore, Anna is changing the way she thinks and therefore attempting to belong in Parisian culture through her interactions with Paris. Individuals must overcome their own mental barriers to interact with new places, and consequently belong to these places. It’s the individuals’ mental barriers that limit their interactions with new places, therefore limit their ability to …show more content…

St. Clair is afraid to end his long-term relationship with his girlfriend Ellie because “he’s afraid of being lonely”. This fear traps St. Clair in his relationship although he desires to be with Anna. Perkins uses faulty parallelism, “It’s not right. It hasn’t been right, not since I met you,” to disrupt the usual flow of the novel’s writing. The disrupted flow of the sentence forces the reader to focus on how St. Clair’s relationship with Ellie limits his ability to belong. St. Clair’s fear of being lonely prevents him from ending his relationships and thus prevents him from belonging with Anna. St. Clair’s fear is normal, it’s human nature to desire close, personal interaction with others, which is why we remain in relationships we know are not good for us. It’s not others who keep us from belonging, it’s our fears that prevent us. Individuals continue to interact with others they know they don’t belong with because they fear to be lonely, causing them to not

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