Focused Two-Page Primary Source Analysis

This picture attracted me at the first glance, the silent, lonely, and controversial feeling the picture gives out makes it difficult for me to move my eyes but to think about it. I found it as an illustration of the article “Moving people Changing places”, which basically talks about people’s changing self-recognition----identity when confront with different groups and communities or societies: the strong sense of identity of a person may either bond or segregate him from a certain group.

When I first saw the picture, my full attention was caught by the woman sitting in the center of the scene, because she is the most distinct and isolated figure among all the people around her. She is sitting quietly on one level of the marble steps mottled with gray flecks, which feels complicated and depressed to me. The woman is sitting on a black coat; on her left side were two bags and a cup of drink. Her arms wrapped about her knees and she is looking straight ahead. Moving my eyes to people sitting around her, I noticed that they are sitting near each other and seems quite crowded, there are children, men and women. Some looks like family and some looks like friends. Different from the women, people who are sitting behind, before and on her right all seems to have accompanies and doing something, some are eating and some are chatting with each other, with their bags and lunchboxes occupied and open. Then I moved my sight to her left side and I found some men who seem to have a more similar situation as the women. Firstly, there are three men sitting on the left, all of whom seem alone because they neither talk to other people nor have eye contact. Secondly, all of them hold a similar gesture as the woman: folding their arms across their chest and looking at a certain direction silently.

When I observed all the details of the picture, I diverged to the general pattern. First, the picture is taken on a cloudy day, with no sunshine, so the whole picture feels kind of gloomy to me. Second, most of the people sitting on the marble steps are facing in the same direction except some children and adults who are chatting. The most obvious and strange scene is the women’s location relative to others around her: although people are sitting crowdedly near each other, the woman seems to be segregated because there leaves a circle of space between her and the people around.

After observing this picture thoroughly, I raised several questions which I am quite curious about. The First and most important is: why is this woman isolated and separated from other people in location?  Secondly, why the three men on the left side of her who are as single and alone as her are more related to other people? Finally, who is this woman? How her identity affects her location in the picture?

about Thompson library

I always believe that library is the most essential and representative building in an educational institution, this is why the Thomson library is the first building I visited when I settled in on campus, and I love it for its special architectural style, enormous resources and comfortable and inspiring academic atmosphere.

The full name of Thomson library is William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library, first built in 1910, it is a building with a prominent history of over a century. The library is named in honor of the university's fifth president, William Oxley Thompson and is the main library on OSU campus. It is a four-flour building with a basement on the west side. I appreciate its architectural style because I consider it as a fascinating combination of modern and antique styles, which is mainly revealed by its two distinctive exits. The one which is more ancient-styled exit with a statue of William Thompson is connected with the Oval as the most conspicuous landmark on the campus. The other exit which is more modernized is facing the west. The whole library is equipped with updated facilities and myriad resources as well as circulation& assistance desk for inquiry. For me, the Thompson library is a very comfortable place for studying. I especially love those mini sofas. Every time I enter the library, I look up and see the organized hundreds of shelves of books, between trance I feel like I am swimming in an ocean of knowledge and these books are all waving to me. This is a kind of miraculous and inspiring feeling to me.

About place and identity

The concept of place and identity always has a complex and sentimental feelings to me. Basically speaking, when we live in a certain place for long enough and therefore start to get familiar with the surrounding situations, we will gradually generate a kind of inenarrable emotional feelings towards this place. This feeling is especially strong and obvious when we leave the place. For instance, when we travel to other cities or countries, although the new environment is appealing and exciting, we always hold a sense of unfamiliarity deeply in the heart, in other words, this place just do not feel like “home”. Another example would be: traditional Chinese still believe in a perception that “fallen leaves return to the roots”, which means that where you born, where you die. This further indicates people’s territorial complex towards their native place. In one word, the longer we live in a place, the more the place grows on us and gradually becomes who we are- our identity, this is my understanding of the rhetoric of place and identity.

I have been in America for almost ten months, but until recently do I begin to realize a fact that my determination of leaving China and spending my college life in a different country means a total farewell to my previous life with my parents, after four years of college I am going to a graduate school, after graduation I have to find a job, get married and therefore stick to my own family, I will never have the chance to live with my parents like the old days. I am a grown-up now. In the past ten months, I always have the difficulty finding a sense of belonging here, so when I do something, I do it with a sense of responsibility and mission but not with passion because I constantly believe that I am not belong to here, and that I will eventually go back to where I come from one day. But after the above-mentioned idea suddenly occurred to me, I start to rethink about my perfunctory life: since studying abroad is my own choice and I still hold an explicit target about my future, I have to change and start living passionately and actively, if I cannot “take fate by the throat”, I will completely lose control of my own life ˙˙˙˙˙˙

From my personal experience, I further understand the relationship between place and identity. Just like the famous saying states: “there is no place like home”.