What I Am Not is What I Am
The star is to the members of a family as a constellation is to family. A family is made up of many individual members, but it has to be on the same page of ideas to be the perfect family image. In “Sagittarius”, Greg Hrbek shows the identity of the household by using the motif of perspective and symbolism to show that a family’s identity can be broken when the individual members do not have harmony.The idea of identity in a family is based off the ideas of similar thoughts and actions. The author wants the readers to understand that for a family to be a perfect family like we see in love stories it must have similar ideas, thus he uses stars to show wholeness in the family. Throughout the story, Hrbek uses perspective
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The stars help the reader understand how important the ideas of the family are. Hrbek says in the story, “As he bounds deeper into the maze of trees night`s first star appears in the night”(106). Hrbek uses the star to symbolize the family`s ideas and how they were scattered. The father wants the child out of his life, but the mother wants to embrace the child. The family`s thoughts are just like the stars. Their family was scattered and they could not create the family identity, just like a single star can not create a constellation. This shows how the family identity is being broken because their thoughts are not in harmony. The family starts understanding each other as the story goes on, and they begin to have similar thoughts and actions. Hrbek also shows how the family identity does become true because of the symbolism he presents at the end. Hrbek also says “Never has he seen a thicker spread of stars” (116). Hrbek yet again uses the stars to symbolize the family`s ideas, but this time the stars are showing how the story progressed and the family became more similar. The father now wants the son to be in the family because he understands that he too is important in the family. Hrbek in the story used many figures of speech to help bring out the point of family