Looking For Alibrandi Themes
Where one learns the truth
By Tonia Semovskih
The multi-award winning classic Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta, the novel explores racial, class tensions and allows readers to relate personally and emphasise the adolescent issues. The tragedy and love of the novel are also about discovery, family and freedom. We’re spending time in the life of 17-year-old Josephine Alibrandi, ‘The seventeen that Janis Ian sang about where one learns the truth’. It’s a turbulent year for Josie when she learns the serious truths about herself and her family, fall in love, lose a friend and gain a father. It’s also her last year of high school and HSC year to add to everything else. Marchetta has created an individual representation in Josephine Alibrandi, finding her way, engaging the audience through the author’s construction of plot and teenage issues.
Marchetta raises family and questions traditional ideas of what an ideal home life is. The book presents us many versions of family relationships; while are healthy (although still passionate that of Josie and Christina) the novel grasps fractured relationships. At first, her Italian Nonna and her illegitimacy embarrass Josie, but her preconceptions are challenged, she has to review her ideas
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Josie found her secret. The relationship between Katia and Marcus Sandford had gone further than what was originally said. Josie learns to be more tolerant and accepting towards Nonna, even if she had made a wrong decision according to the community’s perspective. Together the characters add sugar and spice to the novel. The conflict existing helps Josie eventually accept her feelings towards her Italian roots. The paranoid thoughts of Josie herself and memoirs of Katia are reached into the novel, being subject to mockery socially and racially because of her
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