‘New Boy’ Theme Essay by Ezra Itaas

How would you answer if someone asked, “What does belonging mean to
you?” For a good number of reasons, belonging to something or someone
is a very important thing for us. As the novel ‘new boy’ written by Nick
Earls, is a very good example for the topic ‘belonging’ and shows many
different ideas, using the perspective of a young boy named Herschelle.
The novel uses these main characters: Herschelle, Max, Lachlan and
Herschelle’s mother. The book shows the character’s relationships with
their thoughts, reactions and actions to particular happenings,
highlighting Herschelle. The theme of belonging is discussed through how
the young boy reacts to the big difference of Australia coming from South
Africa, the bullying affect in racism and how being judgmental is wrong.

When a person doesn’t feel belonging, they feel loneliness & isolation,
everyone wants to be in a place where they are included, safe, feel
comfortable & find happiness. “And we have friends, loads of them, we
never ran out of people to see, here it’s just us”, quoted Herschelle from
the novel ‘New Boy’ (Pg3). This quote describes the comparison between
his old home, South Africa, Cape Town (“And we have friends, loads of
them. We never ran out of people to see”, referring to Africa) & his new
home Queensland, Australia (“Here it’s just us”, referring to Australia).
This shows the reader how much he misses his home, Africa. The busy
place being filled with people to talk to and be friends with, whereas
moving to Australia was a big change. Everything became very calm, quiet
and isolated from each other. Herschelle shows misunderstanding and
confusion when he first noticed how different Australia was and noticed it
being more difficult to make friends and get along with the people he
wanted to be with.

Everyone wants to belong to a type of place or group where they feel most
at their comfort, where they are noticed and liked and not ‘hiding in dark’.
Some people choose their own place to belong by only looking at their
characteristics and appearance first, but is it a good choice? When
Herschelle was told to sit with Max and his other friends after being
introduced to the class, he thought that people are getting the ‘wrong
idea, putting him the ‘nerds’. “Ms Vo has got me all wrong and sent me to
the nerd colony. This is going to give the cool people entirely the wrong
idea”, a judgemental thought by Herschelle (Pg. 26). This shows the young
boy being very judgmental and quite disappointed since he thinks he is
made to fit in with the ‘cool’ people, where he used to be at his old school
and not with ‘nerdy’ category. Herschelle describes the nerdy category by
the looks, how they act and what like to do, for in this case Max and his
friends seem smart and not sporty and the cool kids by how athletic and
popular they are. At this point of the story, Herschelle had many wrong
doings like being judgemental and had complaints and moments of
confusion, but soon after, he realises that he himself has got it all wrong
and changed the way he saw things.

Some people think about particular things, the ‘literal’ way. Like Australia,
there many slang phrases that don’t even define to what they seem they
mean and for especially people moving to different countries globally, they
find it hard to understand theses things. A quote of Herschelle facing a
relevant situation, “Sandshoes? Are they like snowshoes?” This quote
expresses how confused he was when he first heard the word ‘sandshoes’
and found it difficult to understand what it really meant. Since Herschelle
is from South Africa, there’s quite a big difference between their cultural
language and Australia’s cultural language. You can see that he takes the
word sandshoes literally as he also says in the book, “I picture a class of
thirty kids with tennis racquets on their feet as sandshoes, trekking
across a dune. I’m sure there are no dunes in One Mile Creek”. Some
people question another language they can’t get and think of it as strange,
but the best thing to do is ask people for help to understand things.

Needing to have a close relationship with people and not feeling alone,
feeling accepted of who you are and not being judged by your differences
and gaining the sense of feeling safe and happiness is all about belonging.
Through the different perspectives of the main characters, we are shown
many various ideas of belonging. As humans, the need to belong is still
valuably important in the real world no matter if the characters are only in
a book and if the story is just a story like New Boy.