Similarities Between Lion And Talking To My Country

Identity encompasses the memories, experiences, relationships and values that can make a person feel belonging to something greater than self. Two texts which explores the concept of identity are Garth Davis’s Lion and Stan Grant’s Talking to my Country. In Davis’ film, the protagonist, Saroo, was adopted into Australia by the Brierley family and developed an identity crisis as he was stuck in between by the flickering flashbacks of his impoverished birth family and his loving Australian adoptive parents. On the other hand, Grant’s memoir, Talking to My Country, explores the disconnection and marginalisation experienced by the Aboriginals in the dominant Australian culture due to the ongoing impacts of colonisation. Despite, these differences,

While this was shown through Saroo’s disconnections between his Indian heritage and his inability to settle with the flashbacks of his childhood, in Grant’s book it was shown through Stan’s marginalisation in the Australian society and him being unable to forgive the traumas his people went through historically.

In both texts, the two protagonists had occasions where they are unable to connect with culturally linked people which weakens the sense of identity. In the university scene, when Saroo is asked whether he is born in Australia, he replied “Yeah” but immediately clarified that he is from “Calcutta”, this reveals that Saroo is in a dilemma as he naturally classifies himself as Australian but still wanting to associates himself with his Indian heritage. After Saroo said this, Prama and Bharat – fellow Indian students from Calcutta – questions “which part” of the city he is from, he subconsciously answered “I’m adopted, I’m not really Indian,” resisting to reconnect with Indian cultural due to his adoption in Australia, revealing

In Davis’s film, after the party scene at night, Lucy argues with Saroo, suggesting he “need to face reality” and stop search for his birth family; however, Saroo can’t settle with the fact that “his real brother and mother spend every day … looking for [him]” and “the pain they are in not knowing where [he is]. This argument resulted in the breakup with Lucy, and they later went back together after Saroo “found home” on Google Earth. Through the use of plot, Davis directs the audience to view the development of Saroo’s identity sparked by love was extinguished by his obsession to search for home due to his inability to overcome his traumatic pasts. Furthermore, during his search for home, he refuses to tell his adoptive parents what he had been up to, and he tells Mantosh that you are “not [my brother], we are different” in the dinner scene, revealing that he is denying his identity as Mantosh’s brother and even as a Brierley. On the other hand, Stan’s struggle to reconcile is due to the historical traumas happened to the Aboriginals. Stan thinks “identity is a two-way street – we need others to see us as we see ourselves.” (p.172) However, during the Olympic games, he sighs “what on earth did we have to rejoice? The theft of our land? The murder of our ancestors? The pillage and plunder of our culture and traditions? …”