Stages In My Life: My Rites Of Passage

1271 Words6 Pages
My Rite of Passage Tarryn Kay Goetsch 6 March 2015 Student number: 15021930 Tasch In this essay the topic of Rites of Passage will be discussed and how I have experienced rites of passages in my life. A rite of passage marks the end of one stage in a person’s life and the beginning of a new part. There are three key stages in any right of passage: the separation, liminality and re-aggregation. I have experienced a rite of passage and the three above-mentioned stages when I moved from Limpopo to Gauteng and had to start high school in English. Coming from an Afrikaans primary school and going into an English school 200 km away from everything you are used to, can be very challenging. I will be making references to the articles by Charles-Arnold Van Gennep, Victor Turner and on Rites of passage and Transitions, Liminality and Communitas and the Venda girl’s initiation. According to Van Gennep there are a lot similarities between these ritual rites of passages, this involves a stage of separation from everyday life, a liminal stage of “transition” from one social status to the next, this according to Van Gennep is also a stage characterized by anxiety and uncertainty, and a process of reintroduction to society or community with a new standing and new expectations within that community. In these phases of rites of passages there are symbolic meaning in the detachment of the individual or a group of people from their previous social structures. In the separation