Unpolished Gem Homework Part 3 – What does this section say about “Journey”? Justify your response by referring to the text and quoting from it.

In the third part of Alice Pung’s novel, Unpolished Gem it represents the concept of ‘Journey’ through the text as it highlights the physical journey and also shows the inner journey they take as well. In the beginning of this section, Alice describes her family’s achievement of finally having their own ‘great Australian dream’ come true and how her family see immigrants who just arrived in Australia starting to take their own journey. Alice refers the ‘Great Australian dream’ in this section which is the desire to own a large house and to have decent or well paying job.  Alice’s family in the section seem to have ended their journey in reaching their ‘Great Australian Dream’ as they are moving into their new house. The physical journey conveyed in this section  is the physical moving into their new house, which also has  inner journey aspect of making their dreams come true from when they first moved to Australia. Alice subtly conveys the aspects of inner journey in this section by using several different angles. Many layers of meanings are shown  in her inner journey, example from the text being, “Gone were the days of where a one-dollar plastic brown vinyl coat a birthday present from the government.” This sentence from the text makes the reader look deeper back through her life, like how her family were once immigrants to Australia and how their attitude has changed since then. Alice and her family watch new immigrants arrive like they did once before, but they feel pity, guilt, resentment and have a different understanding. They now understand how to integrate into society by trying to remove the stereotype about Asian’s and peasantry and how they have lost the amazement they once had. Another angle of inner journey Alice expresses in the text is about the pressures she had as a child to be successful for her parents as they work so hard for Alice to have a better life. The text shows this pressure Alice feels as a child, “parents killing themselves with dangerous chemicals just so you can live a comfortable life, there no comfort within” (p.136). This section explores the physical and inner journeys Alice’s family have been through to build their life in Australia.