Identity In Wild Cat Falling, By Mudrooroo

Throughout our life there are moments where it is detrimental to our sense of self that we feel as though we belong. This could be when we are growing up as a child, which would be arguably one of the most important times of the development of our sense of self, and perhaps as we are teenager’s as we try to fit in socially, and then finally the transition from adolescent to adult as we try to gain a sense of who we are in this life and what our purposes are. This can often be considered as the last major stage of change in our identity. These life stages are vastly influential in our sense of self and most importantly, whether or not we feel as though we belong in these times of our life. From looking at this it is ridiculously easy to understand …show more content…
The author Mudrooroo shows readers in his novel, ‘Wild Cat Falling’, particularly about how when we are growing up as children and how where we feel we belong in this stage is arguably the most influential time frame for the development for the basis of our identities. Readers see the protagonist, “Wild Cat”, have multiple flashbacks of being a child and on the circumstances and the environment he was in, particularly with the stark contrast between how his mother wants nothing to do with the aboriginal community and feels no shred of belonging to the group compared to Wild Cat, who sneaks away from his mother’s watchful eyes to hang out with the Noongar kids because of how he has the closest thing at this age to belonging that he has experienced, his mother wants so badly to fit in with the “white community” that she tries to frighten Wild Cat away from the only other people he feels a connection with, particularly with how she mentions “they’ll take you away like the rest of them” but Wild Cat pays no head and starts to make the building blocks of his identity from how he belonged with Noongar kids and with how he doesn’t belong with the white kids from his school because of how he is forced to interact with them. …show more content…
This terrifying process many of us are going through right now, I am also experiencing, as the final year of high school and the structure we have known for almost all our lives comes to a halt and we are suddenly about to be thrust into the ‘real world’ as we are asked to make decisions that could consequentially shape the rest of our lives and we struggle to determine what part we are supposed to play in this new world we are being pulled kicking and screaming into. I know personally it hasn’t been an easy journey that I am currently still going through, having changed my mind yet again on what I wanted to do after high school I had to make sure that it was a course that was possible for me, I’ve come to terms with not being as smart as I was once told, I’ve never connected more than I have this year with the different friend groups that I strongly feel I belong to and I have come to peace with my sexuality and how I belong in the queer community. The idea that in the next year I will no longer be visiting this school that I have belonged in for 6 years of my life and will instead, hopefully find a new form of belonging within the walls of Deakin University is a daunting and tantalizing thought. I like to believe that I have a strong sense of my identity and who I