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About Margaret

Qualified English Teacher, BA/BT UNE, Registered with VIT, located in Berwick Victoria 3806. Contact 0418 440 277, email contact@englishtutorlessons.com.au

The Secret River by Kate Grenville Analysis for Year 11 English

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For students studying Year 11 Mainstream English, The Secret River by Kate Grenville will be studied under Area of Study 1, Unit 1: Reading and Creating Texts.

All pages numbers referenced in this brief analysis are taken from the 2013 edition of The Secret River by The Text Publishing Company (front cover shown above).

Genre and Historical Setting of The Secret River

The Secret River is a historical fiction novel with the characters’ stories told within the larger context of the social, cultural and political surroundings of the early colonial settlement of NSW from 1806 onwards.

Each of the 3 landscapes in the text traces protagonist William Thornhill’s life from London, Sydney and Thornhill’s Place and the different kinds of conflict that arise.

The narrative is a story of colonisation, identity and the relationships between settlers, the land and the Aborigines – it’s a story of belonging, ownership and ultimately the bloodshed that results when a people is displaced.  In The Secret River, the land represents money and a future for the characters of English descent which contrasts sharply with its meaning for the Indigenous Australian characters.  For the Indigenous Australians the land represents their capacity to survive in the present, their future and their past.

The setting of colonial NSW becomes important to the main characters that are caught up in the historical narrative of the settlement and conflict.  It is from Part 2 ‘Sydney’ to Part 6 ‘The Secret River’ that we witness the most obvious conflict between the Indigenous Australians and the white characters.  It is in this colonial setting of NSW that we see William Thornhill’s inner conflict through the complexities and challenges he faces and the extent to which conflict is all consuming.

Structure of The Secret River

Grenville adopts a traditional realist structure and framework of the narrative which is strictly chronological.  The novel is broadly divided into three main sections: those that deal with the characters’ experiences in London, Sydney and Thornhill’s Point.

Prologue: ‘Strangers’ = William Thornhills first encounter with Indigenous Australians

Part 1: ‘London’ = William and Sally’s earliest life in London

Part 2: ‘Sydney’ = Transportation to Sydney, colonial settlement in NSW 1806

Part 3: ‘A Clearing in the Forest’ = The Thornhills move from Sydney to settle Thornhills Point

Part 4: ‘A Hundred Acres’ = Potential for violent conflict with the Indigenous Australians becomes increasingly prominent as the settlers realise the Aborigines are not leaving the land.

Part 5: ‘Drawing a Line’ = The conflict between the settlers and the Indigenous Australians reaches the point where the Governor issues a proclamation that the settlers should shoot the black natives.

Part 6: ‘The Secret River’ = The incidents of theft and violence between settlers and Indigenous Australians climaxes in the poisoning at Darkey Creek and culminating in the massacre at Blackwood’s place.

Epilogue” ‘Thornhill’s Place’ = The epilogue is set 10 years after the massacre and it is pervaded by a sense of remorse by William Thornhill.

Relationship between Conflicts of Space, Place & Identity

The novel has important conflicts of space, place and identity and the relationship between the three which allows distinct comparisons to be made.  It is also important to note that intrinsic to these ideas is the notion of culture, especially the cross-cultural conflict that Grenville is primarily concerned with.  The division of the novel into these sections is clearly differentiated by location which is an important reminder that place is a significant factor in this text.  The structure of the novel also reminds us of another important theme – the importance of a sense of belonging.

Language and Dialogue of The Secret River

Grenville’s prose is designed to complement the historical setting with her characters adopting some phrases and words from the settings both in England and Australia.  Instead of using quotation marks for dialogue, Grenville uses italics so that her characters speak within the text instead of traditional line breaks.  Some of the terminology that Grenville uses was common to the era and often reminds the reader of the cultural background of the characters.

It is an interesting point with the dialogue that Grenville chooses not to use any Aboriginal languages in The Secret River.  Unlike her other novel The Lieutenant where interactions with Aboriginal characters were given in traditional Indigenous language of the Eora people, The Secret River is spoken through William Thornhill in English.  Therefore the focus is on Thornhill’s point of view and readers have no real access to the understandings and perspective of the Indigenous Australians in this text.

A significant distinguishing factor between the white settlers and the Indigenous Australians is not just in the lack of dialogue for the Aboriginals but their lack of names.  William Thornhill is given his surname as his identity but the Indigenous Australians are named by their appearance “old grey beard” and “the younger one”.  The difference in ways of naming highlights the ignorance of the English characters as well as allowing them to be detached from the characters that they are harming.

The Significance of the Title

The title could mean symbolically a river that has held secrets or aspects of Australia’s history hidden.  It could also refer to undercurrents in personal relationships.  The actual river is the Hawkesbury north of Sydney where Broken Bay hides the entrance and is the ‘secret river’ where William Thornhill finds his land.

Themes, Issues and Ideas in The Secret River

  1. Home and Belonging = are constant themes from Thornhill’s childhood in London to his old age in NSW. The need for a home and a sense of belonging are universal in the text implying that the values of love and personal identity are universal human values.  Through his love for the land Thornhill develops his own identity as “something of a king” (p.314) – a man with a home to which he can belong and in which in turn belongs to him.
  2. Ownership = what defines ownership is a major theme in this novel. It is actually the question of ownership that lies at the bottom of the conflict between the settlers and the Australian natives.  The English believed that by “marking” a piece of property with a crop they made it theirs.  The natives, on the other hand, had free rein of the land for decades before Australia was claimed for England.  They saw the settlers as taking over land that had been theirs for centuries.
  3. Conflict = this theme is developed in a variety of forms as between racial groups, between individuals, within families, between beliefs and actions, between dreams/aspirations and reality and between differing philosophies.
  4. Guilt = Despite all his success, Thornhill began to feel a sense of unforgiving guilt for his treatment of the natives. He is considered the richest man in the area, a dream desired since he was a child in poverty.  Yet his accomplishment came at a cost, for his family and himself.  He no longer spoke to Dick and his relationship with Sal grew apart.  Furthermore, Thornhill’s unresolved conflict with the natives is conveyed through his encounter with Long Jack.  He and Sal offer Jack help with food, clothes and utensils in hope of reconciliation between the two.  Jack slapped his hand on the ground and declared “This me, he said.  My place” (p.329).  In the end Jack ‘‘… never put on the britches or the jacket … the clothes lay out in all weathers decaying into the dirt” (p. 328).  The exaggeration of time interpreted through the words ‘never’ and ‘decaying’ forebodes that the time for reconciliation has yet to come for Thornhill.
  5. Clash of Cultures = the clash of civilizations that began when Captain Cook first stepped foot on the land that become known as Australia. Throughout the novel, Grenville juxtaposes British and Aboriginal understandings of several important social concepts: personal property, clothing, hunting and farming, family relationships, and relationship to the natural environment.  The incomprehension with which each culture regards the other leads to the majority of conflicts in the novel.  The British concepts of private property and settlement, backed up by the guns and might of the Empire, eventually win the battle between the two civilizations.
  6. Aboriginal Culture = Grenville presents Aboriginal culture as a lost idyll. Although the novel focuses on William’s journey from the gutters of London to Australian gentry, Grenville places almost equal weight on the Aborigines and their way of life.  She is careful to refute the label of savage that the settlers give to the Aborigines.  Grenville conveys the richness of their culture and their deep attachment to the land.  She contrasts the over-consumption of Western civilization with the Aborigines’ understanding of the delicate balance of nature.  Grenville suggests that the white settlers could have learned much from the Aborigines and, by extension, that the modern world with its disregard for the natural environment should open its eyes to the wisdom of native peoples.
  7. Social Hierarchy = the theme of social hierarchy and its levels of power runs throughout the novel. Beginning with William’s first visit to Christ Church through to the placement of the stone lions on the gateposts of Thorhnhill’s Point, Grenville explores the impact of social ranking on individual development.  The humiliation that William experiences as a waterman in London marks his character for life and informs the choices he makes throughout the novel.  He craves the thrill of wielding power over another person.  For William and the other settlers (the majority of whom are convicts), their status as white men gives them permission to look down on other human beings (the Aborigines), for the first time in their lives.  Their treatment of the Aborigines is informed by their understanding of how one should treat a racial and social inferior.
  8. Self Creation = the story of modern Australia is essentially a story of self-creation. The convicts sent from England were given the chance to receive a full pardon and start their lives over.  The Secret River tells the story of William Thornhill one of those first settlers who arrived in New South Wales as a convict and an outcast and who eventually carved out a place for himself in Australia’s incipient ruling class.  The structure of the novel reflects the importance of this theme.  Grenville opens the novel not with William’s youth in London but with his first night in New South Wales. She ends the novel with William sitting on the veranda of his grand house, Cobham Hall.  He has re-written the story of his life both physically and metaphorically.
  9. The British Class System = The Secret River examines how the harsh British class system of the 18th and 19th centuries condemned people like William to a life of crime. Grenville exposes the harsh choices that people of William’s class faced in order to survive.  It was not a question of good or bad but of starvation or theft.  In her chronicle of William’s life in London, Grenville wants the reader to understand that the convicts who first settled modern Australia were not bad, just desperate.  Australia has chaffed under its moniker as a land of convicts since its inception.  Grenville’s empathetic account of William’s life represents an attempt to embrace Australia’s convict past and give it a human face.
  10. The Disorientation of the Immigrant = through the character of Sal, Grenville explores the disorientating experience of the immigrant. While she works hard and rarely complains, Sal has a difficult time settling in to their new life in Australia.  The very trees with their greyish leaves tell her she is no longer at home.  Sal feels the wild continent pressing in on her from all sides, and she misses the smells and sounds of London.  While William thrives in the new land, Sal finds it harder to adjust because she did not suffer the same level of humiliation as William.  Sal clings on to her memories of Britain, recreating her life in London as much as possible.  Grenville uses Sal to explore the persistence of British culture in Australia and the lingering concept that Britain was ‘Home’.
  11. Fate vs Free Will = at first the poor life in London disempowers Thornwill but as he gets older he sees things happen to him independently of his choices. Ending up in NSW he tends to base his behaviour more on the idea of fate.
  12. Alternate Path of Australia’s Development = Grenville sets up two paths to the development of Australia, embodied in the characters of Smasher Sullivan and Thomas Blackwood.  Smasher Sullivan represents the path of racial, social, and physical domination of the Aborigines that the British did follow in their colonization of Australia.  Thomas Blackwood, on the other hand, represents the choice of peaceful co-existence that was originally available to the British colonists if they had not been blinded by racial prejudice and greed.  Grenville gives the reader a glimpse of the possible development of future generations of Australians through the character of Dick Thornhill.

‘Guilt’ in Grenville’s Trilogy

Grenville’s The Secret River (in 2005) was the first in a trilogy: it was followed by The Lieutenant (in 2008), and Sarah Thornhill (in 2011).  The theme of all three novels is guilt—the guilt of white Australia at its treatment of Aboriginal people.  Guilt poisons William Thornhill’s life, and that of his daughter, Sarah Thornhill.  In The Lieutenant, Daniel Rooke, based on the historical William Dawes, avoids guilt only by disavowing (to his face) the governor’s orders to capture and kill six of the local Cadigal people.

The Message of The Secret River – It’s Relevance in Australia Today

On first reading the text focus of The Secret River is its exploration of the conflict between convict William Thornhill and the local Dharug people – whose land he tries to settle on.  But on closer examination it seeks to make a deeper point, about the relationship of Australians to the past – in this case to the Aboriginal people who were here so long before us.  The climactic event of The Secret River, a massacre of Aborigines on the Hawkesbury River that, in the book’s chronology, is placed at some point around 1814, is intended to place readers in the reality of a situation that we know happened in many places in Australia’s early history.

Actress Ningali Lawford-Wolf explained that “This country has a black history and how they came to be here was through massacres”.  Director Neil Armfield of The Sydney Theatre Company said that the tale of racial divides are, in many ways, still present today.  “That’s the contradictory reality that we’re still living, that actually all First Nation people are dealing with – that there are two different notions of possession” Mr Armfield said.  Trevor Jamieson, a renowned Aboriginal actor, explained there are vivid similarities between past issues and those bubbling today.  Adapting the text for the stage as a play, writer Andrew Bovell, said “I don’t think we can understand who we are as a people, unless we understand who we were”.

Comparisons with The Secret River and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness

It seems obvious that Grenville drew heavily on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness when she developed her protagonist William Thornhill in The Secret River.  In Heart of Darkness, protagonist Marlow acts as an impartial observer of the effects of the ivory trade in Africa.  His journey into the heart of Africa reflects his symbolic discover of his own self and human nature.  In effect Marlow sees the ‘heart of darkness’ (greed and evil) found in all men and suppresses this urge but others like Kurtz succumb to them.

When Marlow discovers Kurtz he has become so ruthless and greedy that even the other managers are shocked.  He refers to the ivory as his own and sets himself up as a primitive god to the natives.  He has written a seventeen-page document on the suppression of savage customs, to be disseminated in Europe, but his supposed desire to “civilize” the natives is strikingly contradicted by his postscript, “Exterminate all the brutes!”  Marlow is careful to tell his listeners that there was something wrong with Kurtz, some flaw in his character that made him go insane in the isolation of the Inner Station.  But the obvious implication of Marlow’s story is that the humanitarian ideals and sentiments justifying imperialism are empty, and are merely rationalizations for exploitation and extortion.

Similarly, in The Secret River, William Thornhill battles with his own conscience when facing challenges to decide on the ‘right’ course of action.  When faced with the poisoning of an entire camp of Aboriginal people at Darkey Creek culminating in the massacre of the Aborigines at Blackwood’s place, William weighs up his own safety and Sal’s happiness against his dislike for Smasher and his methods.

At the end of the novel William still feels regret at his involvement in the massacre so that readers gain the feeling that there is no satisfactory and lasting resolution to the conflict.  In this last section of the novel titled ‘Thornhill’s Place’ it is bitterly ironic as no amount of clearing, building, fencing, planting and killing of Aborigines will ever see Thornhill at peace with his surroundings.  Sitting on the bench at Cobham Hall where he could overlook all his wealth Thornhill felt that “… should have been the reward.  He could not understand why it did not feel like triumph” (p.334).

Both Texts Question “Who owns what?”

Both authors, Grenville and Conrad, highlight the controversy between the imperialistic attitudes of the English towards the natives in terms of possession of land with the same question “Who owns what?”  In Heart of Darkness British colonists saw no reason not to take land and resources in Africa that had not been claimed by either public or private ownership.  In The Secret River the white settlers were quite clear on the concept of “who owned what” in NSW: “There were no signs that the blacks felt the place belonged to them.  They had no fences that said this is mine.  No house that said, this is our home.  There were no fields or flocks that said, we have put the labour of our hands into this place” (p.93).  It was only Blackwood, a man of compromise who warned Thornhill against ‘taking up’ the land he obviously coveted.  Living in apparent harmony with the Aborigines, Blackwood advised Thornhill from the outset “When you take a little, bear in mind you got to give a little” (p.169).

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Island: Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod

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Front Cover

Page numbers referenced in my analysis of Island: Collected Stories is from the Vintage publication dated 2002 (picture of the front cover shown above).

Genre and Structure of Island: Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod

The obvious Genre within which Island fits is that of the short story collection.  Collections generally feature some linking factors.  These may be thematic, cultural, geographical or historical.  With a single-author text such as Island, the obvious shared factor among the stories is their author, but there are stylistic and thematic links too.  However, students should also analyse broader ideas, values and concerns along with recurrent settings, motifs and character types that have differences and similarities across the stories.

The structure of Island contains sixteen stories varying in length but averaging twenty pages.  There are many common themes, values and ideas, recurrent settings, images and relationship types and even commonalities of structure and style.  The stories are ordered chronologically tracing a period of more than thirty years in the author’s life.  Some stories incorporate multiple time frames, moving between past and present (both recent and distant).  Whilst most of the stories’ narrative voices share social and geographical origins and are from a teenager or adult others construct the voice of a young boy.

Cape Breton Setting of Island

Alistair MacLeod’s sixteen short stories, collected in Island, are all set on Cape Breton Island off the coast of Nova Scotia in south-eastern Canada.  Raised in Cape Breton in the 1960’s MacLeod writes primarily about a time and place closely related to his own.  He worked at the occupations he describes – a miner, a logger and a fisherman – before becoming a teacher and professor of English in Ontario.  In this way, his life mirrors the lives of the men who narrate his stories, who labour under great difficulty or who leave their early homes to find a wider world.  MacLeod has an intimate knowledge of the physical landscape he is writing about.  The importance of memory and place is intimately explored in MacLeod’s works.

It is an interesting fact that nearly all the central characters in Island are males, suggesting that MacLeod is comfortable writing from a familiar perspective.

While the stories explore a range of ideas, in each one the landscape of the island features prominently.  As the title of the collection suggests, MacLeod has made the isolated island pivotal to each story.  More than just a setting, Cape Breton features as a character in itself (the landscape and the natural elements are often personified), exerting its influence over the characters who give birth, work and die there.

Cape Breton Communities Founded on Tradition and Families

The communities of Cape Breton are founded on the bedrock of tradition and family.  The people have struggled against poverty, accidents and the elements to hold their lives together and remain constant in their values.  However, MacLeod shows that they cannot keep the modern world from intruding and altering their lives and their landscape.  He presents the tragedy of the inevitable loss of their world.  As traditional work of Cape Breton begins to dry up the men have to go further away to find employment.  As their men leave, the communities feel the strain of separation and the landscape, once bordered by the edges of their little harbour is forced to expand.

Outsiders make their way into the landscape and see the locals as objects of curiosity.  The old culture and music of the fishermen becomes the subject of academic study, like things of novelty.  As progress takes over the old world the beautiful landscape is also seen as a business opportunity for people to cater for the ever increasing number of summer tourists.

The fragility of the old world is shown by MacLeod in the inevitable changes to the landscape that are mourned by the characters.  Even the old Gaelic language spoken by the people on Cape Breton represents the private world they inhabit that seems ‘irrelevant and meaningless’ (p.195) to the new world.  Yet to the miners and others in Cape Breton they try to continue to speak Gaelic with friends and family or sing traditional Gaelic songs as a way of connecting with their own past and culture.

Language of Island

The collection uses descriptive language and often more poetic figurative language.  In times when it is needed, concrete language is used to convey pragmatic facts in stories such as descriptions of landscapes or environments that show great detail but little emotion.  On other occasions descriptions do the exact opposite and serve to show the feelings of the narrator or character.  In some instances descriptions of the imagery of the landscape and animals is matter of fact or business like to describe farming and the killing of animals on the farm as in ‘Second Spring’ (p.218-248).  The descriptions are devoid of figurative language and are kept unemotional otherwise it might become too hard to maintain one’s distance and the killing of the animals would become too distressing to the reader.  In other instances figurative language expresses emotions to create mood and feelings about the home Cape Breton represents to many of the characters.

Significance of the Historical Setting of Cape Breton

MacLeod’s stories are populated with miners and fishermen, and their wives and children, whose lives are shaped by the isolated landscape of Cape Breton Island.  For all the inhabitants, the island is intrinsic to their understanding of themselves and their place in the world.  For some characters, the island ties them to their ancestors and their history.  For others, the island is a suffocating prison they seek to escape.

MacLeod shows how strong the historical ties are that bind the inhabitants to the land. Cape Breton is explicitly associated with its link to the ‘old countries’ of Scotland and Ireland – ‘seeming almost hazily visible now in imagination’s mist’ – is reflected by the many characters who sing and speak in Gaelic.

Since the first settlers settled on the island, generations of the same families have lived on and worked their land.  It is mostly the older inhabitants of the island who see themselves as custodians of the land.

Many of the island’s younger inhabitants, conversely, respond to the island in a very different way, seeking to leave the island to escape the insularity and isolated lives of the tiny communities.

Themes and Ideas in Island

Many of the themes and ideas in Island cross over into other stories so that there is a linking of similar story lines.  This becomes apparent when students start to analyse the stories and see the same inter-linking themes and ideas.  For instance in the first story ‘The Boat’ (p.1-25) the themes of Tradition, Education, Literature and Death are inter-linked with the symbolism of the boat representing a journey through life.

  1. Tradition = Tradition connects family members, both close and distant and members of communities. Tradition in some stories offers continuity and belonging but it can also be a restrictive force on character’s lives that becomes a chain of imprisonment as well as providing strength.  The collection places the value of tradition in opposition to that of individuality so that those who are restricted by tradition are challenged when their individual desires conflict with the paths set for them by tradition.  Stories that cover Tradition are: ‘The Boat’ (p.1), ‘The Vastness of the Dark’ (p.26), ‘The Return’ (p.79), ‘The Road to Rankin’s Point’ (p.143), ‘The Closing Down of Summer’ (p.180), ‘Second Spring’ (p.218), ‘The Tuning of Perfection’ (p.271), ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’ (p.310), ‘Vision’ (p.321), ‘Island’ (p.369), ‘Clearances’ (p.413).
  2. Transition and Change = Change is the opposite of Tradition but MacLeod is interested in Change at multiple levels in the stories. For the whole Cape Breton community change is a turning point as it faces the decline in traditional industry and culture while being exposed to the wider world.  Many of the characters are poised at important points in their lives as they transition from often childhood to adulthood or different stages of their employment on Cape Breton and have to struggle to accept the change.  Some stories embrace change by showing the negative impact on those who cannot accept change in their lives but others are fiercely resistant to change as it takes away their culture and tradition.  Ultimately change is inevitable even though accepting it is a universally difficult task for people to do.  Stories that cover Transition and Change are: ‘The Vastness of the Dark’ (p.26), ‘The Golden Gift of Grey’ (p.59), ‘The Return’ (p.79), ‘In the Fall’ (p.98), ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ (p.118), ‘The Road to Rankin’s Point’ (p.143), ‘The Closing Down of Summer’ (p.180), ‘To Every Thing There is a Season’ (p.209), ‘Second Spring’ (p.218), ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’ (p.310), ‘Island’ (p.369), ‘Clearances’ (p.413).
  3. Education and Literature = Education in particular Literature is a source of conflict between characters in a number of stories. Some value education and what it can provide and others scorn the opportunity to go to school and learn beyond the traditional needs and practices of their families before them.  Education represents new prospects for those characters who want to learn as it gives them a chance to be employed in jobs far removed from the traditional work such as farmers, fisherman or miners.  However, the education also takes them away from their families which cause conflict between characters.  It is often due to the mother or father being frightened or threatened by a new set of values or belief systems of their children associated with a new world outside of Cape Breton.  Stories that cover Education and Literature are: ‘The Boat’ (p.1), ‘The Golden Gift of Grey’ (p.59).
  4. Outsiders and Belonging = Outsiders are people excluded from groups in the text of Island either from outside a family or a culture and defined by their lack of belonging. Many of the older characters in the stories are threatened by outsiders while the younger characters tend to be more welcoming.  This mixed reception to outsiders supports MacLeod’s argument that older generations struggle more with the transition to new ways and habits, while younger generations tend to embrace change more readily.  Belonging is shown clearly in the relationships between those characters related by blood, as with parents, grandparents and siblings.  It suggests that a sense of belonging to a family or a culture provides safety and support for individuals.  Stories that cover Outsiders and Belonging are: ‘The Vastness of the Dark’ (p.26), ‘The Return’ (p.79), ‘The Lost Salt Gift of Blood’ (p.118), ‘The Road to Rankin’s Point’ (p.143), ‘Island’ (p.369), ‘Clearances’ (p.413).
  5. Death = Death is ever-present in the world of these stories. It could be depressing but MacLeod represents death as part of the remote existence of Cape Breton due to its extreme weather that creates life-threatening occasions for people.  Not only does the weather play a part in many deaths, so do the difficult physical occupations of mining, fishing and agriculture that make death a common event for not just humans but animals as well.  The characters grieve and are touched by death including loneliness and a loss of purpose or direction.  As death is inevitable the stories suggest that life should be valued, protected and celebrated.  Stories that cover Death are:  ‘The Boat’ (p.1), ‘In the Fall’ (p.98), ‘The Road to Rankin’s Point’ (p.143), ‘To Every Thing There is a Season’ (p.209), ‘Winter Dog’ (p.249), ‘As Birds Bring Forth the Sun’ (p.310), ‘Vision’ (p.321), ‘Island’ (p.369), ‘Clearances’ (p.413).

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Peter Skrzynecki Old / New World Poetry Year 12 English

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peter1.jpgFor year 12 students studying Mainstream English AOS1 Unit 3: Reading and Creating Texts, either as an Analytical Interpretation or as a Creative Response, you will be analysing and writing essays based on Peter Skrzynecki’s poetry from his Old / New World Poetry Collection.

About the Poet Peter Skrzynecki

Peter Skrzynecki (pronounced sher-neski) is an Australian poet and author of Polish-Ukrainian descent.  He was born in Germany in 1945 and migrated to Australia with his Polish parents in 1949.  After a four week sea voyage, Skrzynecki’s family arrived in Sydney on 11th November 1949.  They lived in a migrant camp in Bathurst for two weeks before being moved to the Parkes Migrant Centre, NSW.  In 1951 the family moved to the working class Sydney suburb of Regents Park where a home had been purchased at 10 Mary Street.  Peter’s father, Feliks Skrzynecki, worked as a labourer for the Water Board and his mother Kornelia found work as a domestic in Strathfield.  In 1956 Skrzynecki began school at St Patrick’s College, Strathfield, where he completed his Leaving Certificate in 1963.

After a year at Sydney University in 1964, he completed a Primary Teacher Training Course at Sydney Teachers’ College in 1965-66 and began teaching in small schools in 1967.  In 1968 he recommenced his university studies at the University of New England where he graduated with a Bachelor of Arts Degree in 1975.  Post Graduate studies include a Master of Arts from the University of Sydney in 1984 and a Master of Letters from the University of New England in 1986.  From 1987 he started teaching at the University of Western Sydney as a Senior Lecturer.

About the Volume Old/New World: New and Selected Poems

Year 12, VCE Mainstream English students studying AOS1, Unit 3: Reading and Creating Texts, will analyse poems by Peter Skrzynecki from his volume of poetry entitled Old/New World.  This volume contains over 180 poems selected from eight collections published between 1970 and 2000 and the 2006 collection, Blood Plums.  The book’s strength is its bringing together of old and new poems in a single collection, allowing the reader to become immersed in Skrzynecki’s poetry and to gauge his development as a poet over many years of writing practice.

Skrzynecki’s Style of Poetry

Skrzynecki mainly writes three kinds of poems, all in a similarly distinctive, almost prosaic style:

  1. the family poem, in which he often displays a deft ability to portray character through description;
  2. the immigrant experience, which ranges between the new and old worlds and often has a documentary quality; and
  3. the landscape poem, which is often idyllic, with a poetic persona not that dissimilar to a boy wandering and meditating in a garden or countryside.

Surprisingly, the poems that focus on family and the poems that observe people, primarily, stand out in this book, rather than specific accounts of the immigrant experience, although this theme is rarely absent from his work.

Skrzynecki’s Poetry Rhythm & Imagery

Skrzynecki’s poetry has a delicate rhythm, which suits (or emerges from) his frequently plain diction, which often takes the form of naming things, usually in a garden or a landscape. There are few fireworks in his writing and his understated, occasionally beautiful images appear all the more striking as a consequence.

Notable examples include the description of the road in A Year at Kunghur (p.189), which is “like a ribbon of dust mended/ with patches of bitumen”, or the moving Elegy for Roland Robinson (p.193), where the desolate cry of a spur-winged plover leads to the conclusion:

that when the cry of such a bird
is lodged in the heart
that moment is the start
of eternity.

In order to look at Peter Skrzynecki’s poetry on a broader level it is worth analysing the poems by a process that includes

  • Describing the poem & annotating it
  • Interpreting the annotations explaining what the words and ideas mean, figurative language, poetry terminology ie. metaphors, assimilation, personification etc.
  • Analysing the poems to look outside the text to search for hidden meaning that links parts of the poems with values and beliefs in the world of the poet
  • Synthesising the poems is the hardest part of analysing as it requires you to think about linking more than just those analysed ideas or themes from the poems but find connections outside the text. Peter searches for belonging in many of his poems and you can look beyond just him but what it means for migrants who have to renegotiate the relationship they have between self and place.

Synthesising Poems about Birds Compared to Immigrants

Symbolically birds in Peter’s poems represent freedom from the petty concerns of the everyday.  Black Cockatoos (p.192) have the ability to express themselves clearly and loudly they screech and even their cries are so loud they can be heard “above the boom and crash of waves”.  If you synthesise the birds in this poem with the immigrants you will see the immense difference in the old domesticated species of the parents (old types of birds) of the immigrants from the old world (Europe devastated by war) against the newer, wilder and brasher new species of birds who represent Australians.

Poems from The Immigrant Chronicle

Poems from Peter’s collection called The Immigrant Chronicle first published in 1975 are some of my favourite poems in his new volume.  In these poems Peter chronicles his own family’s experiences as well as other immigrant’s experiences in 1951.  In Immigrants at Central Station (p.34) Peter reminisces about his family’s immigrant journey and the promise of a new life as immigrants wait with fear and anxiety on Central Station in Sydney to board a train to a new future that they have no control over.  He uses personification in the second stanza as: “Time waited anxiously with us” and a metaphor to describe the choking emotions of the travellers: “The air was crowded with a dampness that slowly sank into our thoughts”.

Belonging in Feliks Skrzynecki

In many poems Peter belongs to his new home in Australia where he has grown up but his father Felik’s bond is still with his past which becomes a barrier to his belonging.  It becomes apparent to Peter that his mother and father find assimilating in their new environment and culture more difficult as they get older.  As such, Feliks never really ‘belongs’ in Australia.  This is evident in the poem Feliks Skrzynecki (p.36).  Feliks recreates his life with his garden, his work and his Polish friends but continues to latch onto the past.  Reminiscing about pre-war Poland reminds him of his youth and happier, uncomplicated times before the trauma of war and the destruction of everything he knew.  As Peter grows, school represents the growing chasm between Feliks and himself.  It is another area where he and Feliks are divided by experience and adds depth of meaning to the battle that ends up occurring between Peter and his father.

Themes in the New Collection

The poems in this new and selected edition represent lived experiences from an often-nostalgic perspective, as demonstrated in The Wind in the Pines (p.228).  Past and present, old and new are embedded structures in the majority of these poems, as the poet revisits landscapes (predominantly Australian) remembering significant places and phases of his life. Birds are often the subject of Skrzynecki’s poems and this collection is alive with ravaging lorikeets, fearless seabirds, mythological bellbirds, sparrows, swans, apostlebirds, finches and black cockatoos. Animals, fish and reptiles also feature.

Skrzynecki’s character portraits capture and express the little details of everyday life that make his subjects live on the page.  Feliks Skrzynecki, the poet’s father, later revealed not to be his biological father, ‘loved his garden like an only child’; we see him sweeping paths, holding the broom with his cement-darkened hands and cracked fingers, smoking on the back steps, watching the stars.

The theme of old and new worlds encompasses the poems of migration, the elegies, the character poems and is used in the poem Leukaemia (p.199) to signify hope:

[waiting] for a new world
to take over your body
so the old can be defeated,
left behind

Old/New World is peopled with a lifetime of poems, chronicling the forging of new lives in new countries and the adjustments to be made when old familiar worlds are changed forever by trauma or grief.  The journey is not merely one of physical travel, but of spiritual quest and emotional travail punctuated by moments of joy and nostalgic remembering.

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Tips on Oral Presentations for English Years 9-12

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 JFK Giving Speech

A few tips on writing your speech:

  • Have a CAPTIVATING introduction sentence; use a short, clear and powerful sentence. You can even ask a rhetorical question of your audience to make them think right at the start.
  • RELATE to your audience so that it keeps them interested so they actually WANT to listen.
  • If you are taking on a persona, firstly study and UNDERSTAND your character. (A persona is how you present your speech, ie. in a friendly voice, a business type strictly formal speech or using lots of colloquial phrases).
  • Don’t forget your persuasive techniques. Use repetition and rhetorical questions, emotive language and inclusive language.
  • Remember that you are writing a SPEECH, not an essay. Instill your oral with emotion, varied tone and sentence lengths.

A few tips on your performance:

Memorise your speech

Always remember that practice makes perfect. Practice as much as possible; in front of anyone and everyone including yourself (use a mirror). Keep practicing until you can recite it.

As for cue cards, use dot points. Don’t just copy and paste whole sentences onto cue cards or else you’ll rely on them too much. Not to mention that it’ll be hard finding out where you are in the middle of your speech. Use “trigger words” so that if you forget your next point, you have something there.

Use your Powerpoint presentation to best advantage. Keep the images relevant to your speech. Have the images not too “busy” so that the audience are looking attentively at the screen and forget to listen to your speech. Make sure the presentation is on mouse click to the next slide or timed so you don’t have to fiddle around with the computer, but remember to keep talking.

But most importantly, if you mess up, keep going. Even if you screw up a word or suddenly forget your next point, just take a breath, correct yourself, and keep going. Do not giggle. If your friends make you laugh, don’t look at them.

Control your voice

Do not be monotone. Give it some energy; be pumped but not “I-just-downed-5-cans-of-Red Bull” pumped. Give it as much energy as it is appropriate for your speech. As you transition through various intense emotions such as anger, happiness and shock, your performance should reflect it. This is achieved in both your tone and your body language (moving around, not jumping around as that will distract from what you are trying to say).

Speak as if you believe in your contention – with passion. If you sound confident, then your audience will think, ‘wow, they sure know what they’re talking about’. Remember, confidence is the key.

Don’t rush through your speech and speak at a million kilometers an hour – or even worse; skipping half of your speech because you just want to get the hell out of there. Also, speak so that the teacher can actually hear you. More likely than not, they’ll be sitting somewhere near the back of the room. Don’t be “too quiet” master the art/power of projecting your voice. It actually does make a huge difference.

Be aware of your actions

Don’t just stand like a statue in one spot. Think about real life – do you know anyone that stands completely and utterly still when talking to you? Make sure you look around the room; you’re addressing everyone, not just one person. Don’t stare at your teacher; it freaks them out. You don’t even have to look at a specific place. Start off looking at the back wall… then as you go through the speech, naturally turn from one back corner of the room to the other. Also, try not to look down because it will make you mumble and be hard to understand or hear. Don’t try to look at your cue cards while they’re right up next to your body. Move it out when you need to have a GLANCE at them then go back to the audience.

Always make sure that you face the audience.

Use some natural hand gestures they don’t hurt either!

Take some long, deep breaths before you go on and tell yourself that you can do it!

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How to Effectively Annotate Texts

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 Image result for pictures of writing booksWhy Annotate Your Texts in Studying English?

Annotating texts is a powerful step in getting to know your text and optimizing your essay responses. Keep in mind as a reader and annotator 2 important questions:

  1. “What is the author saying?
  2. How are they constructing their meaning/values in their text?”

Listed below are some helpful tips in learning how to annotate:

A Definition: To annotate means to add notes to a text where you provide extra comments or explanations (usually in the margins of the book).

Break up the text by using post flags to distinguish sections or chapters

Some texts are large and sections or chapters are not easy to recognise but a good way to identify the sections is to use post flags to break up the text. This will make scanning the book much easier later when you are searching for a specific passage for an essay.

Think of your text as a colouring book

One way is to use different coloured highlighters for different themes. Think of it as creating a trail for you to follow throughout the book. If you don’t like using highlighters, another simple way is to use coloured post flags to highlight certain pages where you can underline the themes with explanations at the top of the page.

Circle new vocabulary

Look it up and then write their definitions next to the word. Using higher level metalanguage in your essays is going to help to gain better marks.

Write notes in the margins or at the top of pages

Here you can summarise the chapters at the top of the page and then other significant points of a passage as you read through the text.

What are the best items to annotate?

  • Character descriptions & dialogues significant to the plot/character development
  • Historical, cultural, social and natural contexts relevant to understanding the text
  • Structure of the text, narrative voice/viewpoint, implications for the plot & characters
  • Themes, motifs & symbols that are connected to characters & plot and how these represent ideas or concepts that show the author’s values and meaning
  • Literary devices such as metaphors, similes and foreshadowing that show how the author constructs meaning and structure of the text
  • Plot changes, major events and how they affect characters and meaning of the text

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Lantana the Film: A Brief Synopsis

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Lantana Movie - DVD (Australia) front image (front cover)

For Students in Year 11 English Studying the Film Lantana

Lantana is a 2001 film Produced by Jan Chapman and Directed by Ray Lawrence with the screenplay written by Andrew Bovell, which was adapted from his stage play Speaking in Tongues performed in 1996. Like novels and short stories, films can recount a fictional narrative using characters, events and settings. To study Lantana for Year 11 English it is advisable to view the movie in full at least twice so you can look carefully at:

  1. key scenes
  2. the opening and closing scenes
  3. the introduction of main characters
  4. turning points
  5. crisis points and
  6. the film’s climax

Look at the Film Style

Besides your focus on what actually happens in the film it is a good idea to notice the look and feel of the film in its style. Pay particular attention to the visual images of lightness and darkness. In a close analysis of the film style look at:

  1. Cinematography = shots in the film set up under instruction from the director to show various camera angles to create different effects = extreme close ups, close ups, medium shots, long shots, aerial shots, tilt down shots, tilt up shots and zoom shots
  2. Mise en scene = Literally means ‘staging the action’ referring to the visual elements within the frame of a shot ie. acting style, setting, costumes and lighting
  3. Sounds = Everything we hear in the film ie. music, dialogue, sound effects, voice-overs, for instance like the frequent sound of cicadas

It is important to identify the key elements of film style and how they work together to create an overall impact on the audience and how they tell a compelling story.

For Example Look Carefully at the Cinematography / Mise en Scene / Sounds in Scene 1 of Lantana which Sets up the ‘Mindscape of Terror’

The names of the key players are superimposed over a backdrop of Lantana, thick, tangled and in blossom. While the plant portends danger, it is also attributed criminal responsibility, both as the scene of Valerie’s death and through a play of alignment with Jane.

This opening shot of the Lantana is accompanied by the din of cicadas, which is a very familiar Australian setting, while visually thrusting us towards a deep, dark void. It evokes memories of the humid heat in which cicadas flourish and become noisy, and the rich sticky smells of plants in that climate. The frenzied chirping of cicadas and other creatures is used at an extremely high volume for effect on this occasion.

This unease and remembered discomfort is then rekindled throughout the film by the regular inclusion of the plant at the edges of sets, at the front of establishing shots, or as the scene of dramatic action. This is an archetypal beginning to a cinematic thriller, prefacing the narrative with the crime at its centre.

The camera slowly pans over the bloodied, bruised body of a woman wearing a wedding ring. The movement of the opening shot is significant, replaying an Australian cinematic convention in which the landscape appears to draw its victims into its depths or barren expanses. It is a tracking shot presented from the victim-character’s point-of-view and seems to follow the desire of that character into mysterious manifestations of landscape.

The camera then cuts away to Scene 2 with Leon and Jane engaging in urgent, impersonal sex. Death and sex are continuously juxtaposed in this manner, giving rise to a feeling of quiet desperation lurking within our everyday lives.

What is Lantana About in a Nutshell?

At first glance, Lantana looks like a murder mystery thriller, an essay in love or a darkly playful assertion of the role of coincidence and chance in our lives. In the opening scene, the camera delves into the undergrowth until it comes upon the dead body of a woman. We don’t know who she is or what happened to her, but it soon becomes apparent that this disturbing initial image is a premonition. One of three women, we begin to suspect; will end up dead in those bushes. Will it be Sonja Zat (Kerry Armstrong), the frustrated wife of an ill-tempered Sydney Police Detective? Dr Valerie Somers (Barbara Hershey), Sonja’s therapist, whose own marriage has been damaged by the murder of her young daughter Eleanor several years earlier? Or Jane O’May (Rachael Blake), who is having an affair with Sonja’s husband? The three seem to be more or less the same height and physical type, and each of them is shown wearing sheer black hose like those we have noticed on the dead woman. Which one is it and why?

These questions will generate plenty of dread and suspense before the answers become clear, but the real mystery of Lantana lies elsewhere. Although its short scenes are tense with danger and implication, and a barely suppressed violence courses through even the most casual snatches of dialogue, the film is not a whodunit or a thriller. The real danger, the real mystery, lies squarely in front of us, in the hurt and puzzlement of daily life. In fact the film takes a view of life in a modern city that is rigorously bleak without being entirely hopeless.

In pretending to be something like a detective story and then refusing the reassuringly balanced equations that the genre offers, Lantana manages to hold complexity and coherence in balance. It is a movie, primarily, about the paradoxes of contemporary marriage, in particular about the ways the most intimate relations engender — and indeed are based upon — secrecy and deceit. A corollary paradox is that honesty is only possible between strangers.

Such pessimism is neither glib nor easy, and the film does not entirely rule out the possibility of love or forgiveness. Nor do the filmmakers — or the actors — entirely overlook the comedy that selfishness, stupidity or desperation can be. All the characters are bundles of flaws and unclear needs, and they blindly collide with one another, setting off sparks of calamity and, occasionally, a glow of recognition.

The Characters are Linked by Proximity and Chance

The characters are linked by proximity and chance, knots in an invisible, shifting web in which work, family and social life intersect:

  1. The central figure is Detective Sergeant Leon Zat (Anthony LaPaglia), Sonja’s husband, who seems capable of only two emotions: morose self-pity and volcanic rage. Leon is a mass of contradictions; he loves his wife and family but is playing around with Jane. Mr. LaPaglia, with his dour presence, is able to suggest a range of feeling that has been drained from Leon by the onset of middle age. Leon carries disappointment around within him like the extra pounds he tries to jog away. His affair with Jane — ”a one-night stand that happened to last two nights” as he brutally puts it — is a desperate attempt to jolt himself into feeling. Sonja’s therapy sessions, which Leon doesn’t know about, serve an analogous purpose: they offer a chance to explore with a stranger the feelings she can’t voice at home.
  2. Sonja Zat is the linchpin that holds the Zat family together as a supportive wife and loving mother of her two sons.       While Sonja has concerns about her marriage she is willing to proactively seek advice from Dr Valerie Somers and enough commitment to try to work through the issues that trouble her. When Leon admits to his infidelity, Sonja forgives him which is testimony to her love.
  3. Dr Valerie Somers, for her part, becomes convinced that another of her patients, a young gay man named Patrick Phelan (Peter Phelps), is having an affair with her husband, John Knox (Geoffrey Rush). There is something superstitious about this idea, which Leon will later latch on to and something seductive as well. Even as she torments herself with the idea of John’s secret sexuality, the thought of him and Patrick together offers an explanation for their domestic misery as neat as the solution to a detective story.
  4. John Knox is Valerie’s husband, a professional academic, Professor of Law. He is a private and reserved man whose response to their daughter Eleanor’s death is diametrically at odds with his wife. He privately grieves his daughter by leaving flowers at the site of her murder. John resents Valerie’s emotional dependence and resists intimacy with her.       By admitting to being home on the night that Valerie went missing it shows the audience he is an equally flawed individual like the other characters in the film. He does love Valerie but admits that “sometimes love isn’t enough” (Scene 72).
  5. Jane O’May is in direct contrast to Sonja.       As the ‘other woman’ in the affair with Leon Jane does not invite our sympathy but we realise she is lonely and vulnerable. She is deliberately looking for new romantic options and joins the Latin dance class as a way to meet people. Jane is driven by disappointment as her marriage has not proved satisfactory, nor is her single status offering the opportunities she had hoped for. She envies Nik and Paula’s relationship and often looks out the window at the comings and goings of the house next door. The final image of her dancing by herself, cigarette in one hand and drink in the other, is testament to what Paula says to her “Haven’t you got anything better to do than spy on your neighbours?” (Scene 56).       The simple answer appears to be no.
  6. Pete O’May is separated from his wife Jane but he struggles with his life without her. The marital break is not of his choosing and he hopes for reconciliation but he is unwilling or unable to move on. Even when Jane asks him for help to mind the neighbours’ children late at night, Pete helps willingly, only to eventually drive away from his home a lonely figure.
  7. Paula D’Amato is a hard-working mother of three young children. Her life is not easy juggling extra shifts at the hospital to cope with her husband Nik being unemployed. Regardless of her considerable responsibility as the family breadwinner she is a contented woman, sustained by her own inner strength and a secure, loving relationship. She loves Nik unconditionally and is prepared to trust him without question. When Nik is a suspect in Valerie’s disappearance, Paula knows Nik had done nothing wrong, simply because ‘he told me’ (Scene 87), which sums up her absolute faith in her husband.
  8. Nik D’Amato is a good-natured, easy going man who loves his wife Paula and family. He is a committed family man who looks after the baby and continues job hunting while Paula works. When he is apprehended by the Police regarding Valerie’s disappearance he calls out for Paul as he needs the reassurance of her love and strength. His generosity gets him into trouble when he stops to give Valerie a lift.       Unfortunately for Nik when Valerie runs frantically into the bush he simply leaves her then disposes of her shoe. Once news of Valerie’s disappearance hits the news, Nik realises he is trapped and asks “Who was going to believe me?” (Scene 85).
  9. Claudia Weis is Leon’s Detective partner in the Police and as a result of their close working relationship, she understands him well. Claudia does not always approve of what she observes and does not hesitate to tell Leon so. She is equally blunt with regard to the marital hole Leon is digging for himself and although she covers for him about his relationship with Jane, she admires Sonja and resents being drawn into any deception.
  10. Patrick Phelan is a client of Valerie’s. He continually tests Valerie’s professionalism as a psychiatrist which in turn threatens her by his provocative manner. As Valerie is emotionally vulnerable she entertains the bizarre, and totally unfounded, suspicion that Patrick is having an affair with her husband John. Patrick sees love as “a contest” (Scene 26) with winners and losers. In the end his married lover goes back to his own family, leaving Patrick alone again.

Structure of Lantana

Certainly Valerie’s disappearance is the catalyst that drives the story line. Andrew Bovell said that “It is like a stone dropped into a still pond, the ripples circling out and affecting all that they touch”. The text commences with reference to her death and then goes back to explore the sequence of events that led to the accident so that the film creeps up on you and you find yourself haunted. However, the plot is also character-driven with a number of interacting narrative threads:

  1. Sonja and Leon’s marital dilemma
  2. Leon’s relationship with Jane
  3. Jane’s estrangement from Pete
  4. Eleanor’s murder and its impact on Valerie and John
  5. The Police investigation into Valerie’s disappearance
  6. Nik’s complicity in the case and its effect on his relationship with Paula
  7. Claudia and her mystery man’s blossoming rapport
  8. Patrick’s affair with his married lover and the way this impacts on Valerie

Significance of the Lantana Bush as a Motif in the Film

Lantana is a noxious weed that has small colourful blooms that hides dense, thorny undergrowth which intertwines itself with other plants and eventually smothers them. The bush is a symbolic motif of the tangled relationships the movie explores — marriage, chance acquaintanceship, the prickly bond between therapist and patient — is clear enough. The movie, accordingly, finds traps and snares beneath the most benign and ordinary interactions as writer Andrew Bovell uses the plant to represent the intertwined relationships in the film. Although the Lantana bush looks beautiful with its brightly-coloured flowers, in reality, it is dense and spiky and this represents how the relationships all look fine on the surface but really there are many factors that contribute to their failings. The epigraph promoting the drama says “It’s tangled”. The Lantana motif also represents the complexity of love itself, its possibilities, its permutations and its dense emotional threads.

Throughout the film the image of Lantana keeps reasserting itself. A common thread is the way in which Lantana hides secrets:

  1. The mystery of the woman’s body at the beginning
  2. The children’s game of hide and seek
  3. Valerie’s shoe
  4. Jane hides from Nik in the thick undergrowth
  5. Eventually when the mystery is resolved, the Lantana yields up its secrets in the form of the body of Valerie

Other Motifs and Meanings in Lantana

Lantana explores the ideals of trust, respect, truth and reality, honesty, love and loyalty, love and marriage, betrayal, yearning and loss through the lens of the many characters in the film. Even characters that are not obviously deceitful are forced into lies or half-truths. Nik lies to Pete about Jane, Claudia covers for Leon’s infidelity, Leon’s son lies to his mother about Leon’s message when he says “He’s sorry, he loves you and he wants you to stop being angry with him”. The film is deliberately constructed to help the audience draw out as much meaning as possible.

  1. Jogging / Running = Jogging or running appears at several key moments in the film. It is often symbolic of a character’s struggle for freedom or escape. Early in the film Leon is seen running, ostensibly to improve his fitness, or may be to impress his new lover. In a very real way he is running from his life and responsibilities, a run that is cut short by the sharp pains in his chest. Even when he is trying to set himself free he is constricted by tightness in his chest, as though his depression has a grip on him. Leon’s collision with another jogger is another reminder of the damage that he is doing to those around him on his quest for personal fulfillment.
  2. Dancing = Dancing appears in the film on many occasions:
  • The Latin dancing classes that Jane, Leon and Sonja attend
  • The Latin Dance Club that Sonja goes to
  • Jane and Sonja dancing together
  • Jane dancing by herself at the end
  • Leon and Sonja dancing together at the end of the film

In many ways dancing stands in for the lack of intimacy in the character’s lives. Sonja seeks the passion that no longer exists in her marriage but in the end Leon is able to rediscover his passion for Sonja and they dance together. Jane is also searching for passion and romance (something that was missing from her marriage). Dancing alone at the end of the film we are aware that Jane is yet to find fulfillment.

  1. Windows = Windows are used throughout the film to signify distance and separation. Jane is constantly watching her neighbours’ ‘happy’ lives unfold through her window but she is not able to participate in this which is an emotional barrier being signified by an actual one. Claudia’s mystery man is seen through the windows of the restaurant highlighting their separation. Then compare this to the end when they meet in the restaurant without any barrier. Valerie and John are kept from their absent daughter by the window at the bookstore but forced to look on and unable to reach her. Patrick is removed from his lover as he looks through the window onto his ‘happy life’ but it is the unattainable he can see but not touch much like Jane. Leon must walk through the windowed door to reach out to Sonja to finalise reconciliation.
  2. Jewellery / Clothing = Jewellery and clothing serve as reminders of things lost in Lantana, drawing out emotion from the characters. Jane’s earring is the first notable personal item, a memento of her past life with her husband Pete, the loss of it during a romantic tryst with another man gives an insight to the audience of the complicated nature of these characters’ lives. Pete also lingers over the pearl earrings when he revisits their home when Jane is out. Both Jane and Valerie’s wedding rings are highlighted at points during the film. Jane discusses cutting hers off as it is on too tight which represents her being unable to extricate herself from her marriage. The marriage has become a burden, a blight and something that needs to be surgically removed, like a cancerous growth. Valerie’s show is the only physical indication of her disappearance, a symbol of Nik’s guilty conscience and later a symbol for Jane’s suspicion as it dominates the sitting room when the Police visit to interview her.
  3. Meals / Eating = Characters very rarely sit together to eat a meal adding significance to the times that they do during the film. They are often times when the characters are able to be open and honest with one another or at least more so than at other times. The breakfast scene with Leon and his family at the start of the film paints him in a sympathetic light, placed at the nucleus of his family home, it would appear to be a moment or normality which is directly juxtaposed with his violence in apprehending a criminal in the next scene. Claudia dining alone at a booth with room for two seems to be waiting, searching for something meaningful to share her life and dinner with. The act of eating together takes on a symbolic value of family connectedness. This idea is further explored in the scene with Patrick’s lover who is sharing a meal with his family while Patrick looks on, isolated and alone.
  4. Cars = Of all the forms of transport, cars are the most isolated and separate from the outside world. Many of the film’s characters travel through the world cocooned inside their cars, disconnected from the world around them, often travelling at night, through the darkness, unable to see what is passing them by. Valerie is forever suggesting to John that they share a car, endeavouring to overcome the distance between them, her suggestions are mostly rebuffed, John preferring to make his own way through the darkness of their lives, he is already disconnected from her. The failure of Valerie’s car, it’s breakdown echoes her own personal, psychological breakdown, she is both literally and figuratively left scrambling around in the dark looking for the way to get ‘back home’. Leon’s final breakdown occurs in his car, it is a personal space where he is protected from the outside world yet he cannot protect himself from his own mistakes and problems, they are locked in with him, his isolation forcing him to face then finally. By getting into someone else’s car (the Latin dance teacher) Sonja is making a connection with another person, a connection which she is essentially uncomfortable with. Nik’s car becomes central to the narrative, it is always on the street / on display / being tinkered with, improved, much like Nik himself his car has nothing to hide. Nik’s car also becomes central to Valerie’s disappearance when he picks her up on a deserted back road.
  5. Recordings / Tapes = The inability of many of the characters in Lantana to communicate directly is emphasized by the use of recordings and tapes to convey important messages. Valerie and Sonja are unable to voice their concerns to their partners but are able to divulge their personal information through the medium of tape. Another symbol of the disconnection between the characters, the tapes serve to bring truth into otherwise confused and secretive situations.
  6. Trust / Deception = Characters in Lantana have an uneasy relationship with the concept of Trust. Sonja and Patrick place trust in Valerie to help them deal with their personal issues as a professional, yet in some way this trust is broken when she disappears. The issues that they come to see her about are to do with whether or not they can trust their partners. Valerie, despite counseling others on the issue, seems to be unable to form a bond of trust with anyone. She assumes her husband is having an affair, she assumes that Nik has an ulterior motive for taking her off the main road. Nik and Paula seem to be the only characters in the film whose relationship is based on trust. Paula’s assertion that Nik didn’t kill Valerie “because he told me” is a damning indictment on the other character’s inability to trust each other.
  7. Grief / Malaise = Both grief and death and grief in relationships are represented in Lantana. Valerie and John’s daughter, Eleanor was murdered several years before, and their marriage has disintegrated as a result of their lack of communication. Valerie has written a book on grief and lectures both publicly and to her patients, but is unable to communicate with her husband. Sonja is grieving for her lost marriage and the distance that has arisen between herself and Leon. Leon’s response to the death of his relationship is more of a malaise, an inability to feel, which drives him towards self destructive behavior and infidelity.
  8. Love / Yearning / Betrayal = Sonja states, in a session with Valerie, that she loves her husband, despite her belief that he is having an affair. For Sonja the pain would not be the affair but the silence that surrounds the affair. Jane has left her husband because she has “fallen out of love with him”. Paula and Nik appear able to weather anything that is thrown at them because they love each other unconditionally. Leon is still in love with his wife but is unable to express this to her until the end of the film. John feels betrayed by Valerie and her public outpouring of grief, his love for her is quiet and painful but very much existent. Patrick is caught out by love, a love that is doomed to end in emotional pain due to the circumstances of his partner.

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Every Man in This Village is a Liar by Megan Stack A Brief Synopsis

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What is Every Man in This Village is a Liar about?

A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Centre on 9/11, journalist Megan Stack, a 25-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information. From there, she travelled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and to other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world, and striving to tell its stories.

Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is Megan Stack’s unique and breathtaking account of what she saw in the combat zones and beyond. It is her memoir about the wars of the 21st century. She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy. She reports from under bombardment in Lebanon; documents the growth of unusual friendships; records the raw pain of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq; and, one by one, marks the deaths and disappearances of those she interviews.

The Prologue

The Prologue is Megan’s way of looking back on 10 years of killing and dying. She says that “… the first thing I knew about war was also the truest, and maybe it’s as true for nations as for individuals: You can survive and not survive, both at the same time” [p.4]. Megan reflects that the US determination in the wake of the September 11 attacks to go out and ‘tame all the wilderness of the world’ was an instinctive response. With the benefit of retrospect Megan surveyed the damage this folly has done to the US, to the affected nations in the Middle East and to her. In the end she judged that September 11 was the beginning of a ‘disastrous reaction’.

The quote “Every man in this village is a liar”

Megan realises that in the new reality of the war on terror, truth is no longer an absolute but the servant of political necessity. In Pakistan someone said to Megan, “Every man in this village is a liar” [p.9]. She explains it as “… one of the world’s oldest logic problems … If he’s telling the truth, he’s lying. If he’s lying, he’s telling the truth. That was Afghanistan after September 11” [p.9].

Conflict in the Text

The text is primarily concerned with Megan’s encounters with violent military conflicts in the Middle East. It does also deal with conflict on many levels. Not only does it examine deadly force used by countries at war it also considers how people subjected to this invasion or assault live with the constant fear of arrest, torture or death.

Megan also contemplates her own survival of what covering these wars has done to her as a person. In effect she documents the political and also moral price of the war on terror for America. She speaks about ‘sacrifice’ in chapter 8 [p.96] in countries that have historical conflict that stretches back over centuries. As a result Megan asserts that “Violence is a reprint of itself, an endless copy” [p.96].

Writing an Essay on Conflict

The challenge when writing a Context Essay is to think outside the box when it comes to the IDEAS that the Context is based on. The task in the SAC’s or Exam is to determine the exact nature of the relationship between an idea and the text. The set texts are chosen so that they reflect the issue of encountering conflict on many levels. It is a good idea to use the characters in the set text as a way to explore the context but also to consider the implications of their actions, responses and efforts to resolve their conflict. The next task is to use the prompt you are given in the SAC or Exam as a starting point for your ideas in your own writing.

Ask yourself questions about Conflict

The Context of Conflict asks you to question the types, causes and consequences of conflict. There are many different types of conflict, ranging from:

  1. Internal conflict: When a person is confronted with a difficult choice to make. It is a mental or emotional struggle that occurs within a character‘s mind.
  2. Conflict of conscience: When a person struggles internally either because they have done something they feel is wrong, or are being asked to overcome their conscience and do something that they feel is wrong
  3. Cultural conflict: When people from different cultural backgrounds disagree, find it difficult to live with one another or even fight because of their inability to understand one another (either literally, in terms of language, or because of different beliefs, traditions and cultural practices)
  4. Interpersonal conflict: When two or more people disagree or fight
  5. Physical conflict: When there is a conflict that leads to physical violence
  6. Familial conflict: When there is conflict between people from the same family
  7. Generational conflict: When there is conflict between people from different generations (this often overlaps with familial conflict)
  8. Class conflict: When there is conflict between people of different social classes
  9. International conflict: Conflict between countries. Think about the text Every Man in this Village is a Liar by Megan Stack where conflict in the Middle East is on a regional level that involves countries after 9/11. Think about the complexities and issues of Conflict and nationhood / Conflict and political power / Conflict and cultures / Conflict in paradox / Conflict without hope or despair /Conflict and conscience.
  10. National conflict: Conflict within countries, such as different ethnic groups.
  11. Local community or neighbourhood conflict
  12. Science and Religious conflict: Conflict between science and religion is based on two conflicting ways of knowing, one based on faith and authority and the other on observation, reason and doubt. Think about the text Life of Galileo by Bertolt Brecht where the great religious powers of the Catholic Church bring all their ideological firepower to battle against Galileo’s science because he was a threat to their supremacy in the universe. Think about Conflict and power / Conflict and morality / Conflict and truth / Conflict and the individual. In terms of more recent conflict with the Catholic Church have a think about writing on the Royal Commission Investigation into Child Sexual Abuse in not only Catholic institutions but also other groups who abused children. Think of the consequences for the victims of conflict and the emotional stress and trauma taking on the might of the Catholic Church long after the physical conflict is over.

Conflict also asks you to think about how it arises

What are the causes of a particular conflict, or conflict in general? The causes of conflict may range from ignorance and prejudice, to self interest and fear, to the struggle for power, justice or truth. One might even argue that conflict is an essential or inevitable part of human life.

Finally, Conflict asks you to think about its consequences 

You might like to think about how individuals, or a society as a whole, respond and react to conflict. The way an individual or a community responds to conflict reveals a lot about them, especially their strengths and their weaknesses. You might also like to think about the lasting consequences of conflict for individuals, families and communities. Conflicts rarely end once the war is over, or the fight has been won. There are winners and losers in every conflict, who remain affected long after the conflict is over. The consequences may range from trauma and physical and emotional pain to more positive outcomes, such as change, opportunity and growth. One thing is certain: people are changed by experiences of conflict.

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I for Isobel by Amy Witting: A Brief Synopsis for Year 12 English

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Front Cover

I For Isobel is a narrative text that tell stories which draw us into circumstances, relationships, fortunes and misfortunes of people’s lives and the themes, values and ideas in the story.

Key Knowledge for Writing an Essay on a Narrative Text

To write a High/Excellent essay students need to know:

  1. How structures, features and conventions such as narrative viewpoint, settings, symbols are used by the author to construct meaning and explain how they impact on the reader.
  2. The characters, ideas and themes in the text. How characters change and develop. How the important ideas and themes are presented can be through the behaviour and beliefs of characters. Characters embody values through their thoughts, feelings, attitudes, beliefs and actions.
  3. Social, historical and cultures values embodied in the test. Analyse how the values are presented that could be through the characters or authorial comment.
  4. Ways in which different interpretations are possible might be through the positive or negative outcomes for the main character.
  5. Analysis and interpretation of the text are closely related but do differ. An analysis of the text looks at key textual features such as plot, narrative voice, characterisation and the role of key sections of the text such as beginnings, crisis points and resolutions. Whereas an interpretation pulls together the different elements of a text to present an explanation of what the text means.

No Viewpoint or Interpretation of a Text is the Ultimate or Right One

In fact interpretations of the text can vary significantly by personal responses in the way readers respond differently. The interpretations and readings can also differ in the literal or surface meaning of a text as well as deeper levels of implied meanings. Many views are possible and may be equally valid. It is a student’s task to support your viewpoint by using compelling evidence from the text and a logical sequence of ideas to create a credible argument. It is important to identify:

  1. What is the narrator really telling you about the world they describe?
  2. Do the characters decide their own fates?
  3. Or are they in a world in which their fates are decided for them?
  4. How you respond to the characters is important because you may lean towards being sympathetic to one and more critical of others. Back up your view identifying the characters using key quotations to focus your interpretation on critical points in the text.
  5. What happens to these characters – are they punished or rewarded in the text?
  6. What is your view of the text’s ideas, themes and values? Do you agree with how the author has presented them?

Interpretation of I for Isobel

In Charlotte Wood’s Introduction to I For Isobel : ‘A Potent Victory’, she describes the text as “… a simple coming of age story, the tale of Isobel Callaghan who must pretend to be nicer, stupider, duller than she is, because the reality of what she is, intellectually gifted, powerfully desiring, is a threat not only to her family but to society itself” (viii).

On the surface, I for Isobel seems to be a simple fictional narrative about a girl growing up in a family and society that show her few kindnesses. Yet, on a much deeper level, I for Isobel is about loneliness, child abuse and the lack of love; it is the story of a girl, who from a young age, is verbally attacked by her mother and mostly ignored by her father. Not surprisingly, this childhood produces an adolescent who has low self-esteem, lacks confidence and is liable to panic attacks.

However, the novel is also a portrait of the artist as a young woman with imagination, intelligence and courage to finally recognise, with joy, her true self and the writer she is to become. The last sentence that Isobel joyfully says “I met someone” (p.181) is a revelation that in fact Isobel has ‘met’ herself attaining a sense of unity and purpose. Isobel’s escape from the forces that shaped her is a victory, a powerful claim for self-hood. It is an irrevocable statement of ‘I’, I for Isobel.

Isobel Callaghan is Protagonist and Narrative Voice

Isobel is the novel’s central character, its protagonist. The novel’s title contains her name and the narrative voice is third person limited perspective meaning that every person, scene and incident is described from Isobel’s point of view. Therefore, as readers learn about the world in which Isobel lives, they also learn about Isobel herself. Sometimes the narrative voice shifts between third person and first person, and between past and present tenses. This technique allows the narrative to shift between the character’s innermost thoughts and feelings, as if permitting the reader to inhabit that character’s consciousness, and a more distanced, detached point of view.

The Opening Chapter 1 “The Birthday Present”

I for Isobel opens with Isobel’s mother, May Callaghan’s words “No birthday presents this year!” (p.3) Every year at the same time May said this, every year Isobel chose not to believe it, but in fact “experience told her that there would be no present” (p.3). While older sister Margaret always received birthday presents, Isobel never does. From the beginning of this narrative it is clear that there is an ongoing pattern of emotional abuse inflicted by May Callaghan on Isobel.

The opening of the narrative is significant because it gives readers a clear path to their own interpretation of I for Isobel (as identified above). What the narrator is telling us about their world, the people in it and their fate is largely determined by the ways in which Isobel tries to satisfy her mother’s expectations, or at least, avoid being punished or scolded. Isobel is repressed, her mother is abusive and she has trouble fitting into school as she is too smart. In effect, Isobel is not acceptable at home or school. Isobel observes the world as warily as an alien trying to pass for a native.

The Opening Chapter tells us about Emotional Abuse and Being a Victim

Throughout her childhood, Isobel is emotionally abused by her mother. The narrative’s unsympathetic portrayal of Mrs Callaghan and its emphasis on the debilitating effects of abuse are integral to the reader’s understanding of Isobel as an alienated artist figure. The narrative charts the writer’s struggle for self-expression against the obstacles placed in her path. Therefore, Isobel’s recognition of herself as a writer is inseparable from her experience of childhood abuse. In fact, one interpretation could be that Mrs Callaghan may represent society’s indifference to the artist or even to art.

May Callaghan’s Cruelty is her Power over Isobel

One fact stands out and that is May Callaghan’s hatred for Isobel is commonplace throughout the novel and it is devastating. It manifests in the most vindictive emotional and psychological abuse of Isobel. Mrs Callaghan insults Isobel at every opportunity, calling her an idiot, a liar and a ‘nasty little beast’ (p.34). May Callaghan’s dismissal and disregard for Isobel is evident in horrible childish competitiveness and the scoring of petty points is so transparent, even nine year old Isobel recognises it.

The unspeakable truth in this narrative is that May Callaghan does not love her child but uses her power over Isobel for cruel purposes. If Isobel refuses to react to her mother’s cruelty, she makes her mother even angrier prompting her to find alternative ways to upset her. However, if she does react, she sets herself up as a victim of her mother’s control. This engenders a form of powerlessness that Isobel must overcome later in her life.

Isobel’s quest for a sense of identity is the story of the novel

How people establish a sense of their own identity both socially and privately are at the centre of the novel’s thematic concerns. Isobel’s quest for identity, including her self-doubts, the obstacles in her path and her eventual sense of purpose and well-being is clearly signposted by the novel’s title. “I” is the first letter of Isobel’s name and it is also the letter/word by which people identify themselves as themselves. Isobel is not so much at ease with the flesh-and-blood people she meets, and least of all with herself, until a lucky encounter and a little detective work reveal her identity and her true situation in life.

The Truth about the Cat Poem and the Cruelty of her Parent’s Deception

In Chapter 5 “I for Isobel”, Isobel revisits the key settings of her childhood, the church, the school and her childhood home in an attempt to discover “… a small authentic piece of her lost self” (p.166). Isobel’s greatest shock is when she meets Mrs Adams, who had been a neighbour of the Callaghan’s. The source of Isobel’s anxiety when meeting Mrs Adams, is a poem Isobel wrote when she was nine, about Mrs Adam’s cat, Smoke, which had been published in the newspaper. Her parents convinced her that Mrs Adams would be furious because her name had been published in the paper. Mr Callaghan’s “…pompous talk about libel and slander” (p.177) was ridiculous but, to Isobel’s childish innocence, seemed terrifying plausible. Her parents’ teasing caused Isobel “… years of misery … years of terror” (p.174). To find the truth that Mrs Adams not only liked the poem but wanted to thank Isobel by giving her a scrapbook strikes Isobel as forcibly as anything in her life. As Isobel struggles with her emotions she cries “Artesian tears, rising from the centre of the earth” (p.177). As Isobel hurried crying along the street she remarked her parents were “Cruel, deceitful bastards” (p.177). Then she roared aloud, “Spiteful tormenting bastards” (p.177).

The Revelation “I am a writer”

Once her tears are released, Isobel gains a new sense of her identity: “I am a writer. I am a writer” she tells herself (p.177). In order to make her new self-belief and identity become real and tangible, Isobel purchases an exercise book from a corner store. For Isobel, reading had been, and continues to be, a means of escaping from the reality of family and social life. Writing, however, involves a retreat from society in order to reflect on and better understand it. The ability to ‘be’ in the world on her own terms leads, in turn, to greater self-acceptance than Isobel has ever known.

Themes, Ideas and Values to consider in I for Isobel

Emotional abuse and being a victim

  • Types of abuse in particular emotional or psychological abuse
  • Isobel’s negative self-image
  • Other victims and the desire to see oneself in others
  • Transformation of victim into writer

Identity

  • Isobel’s ‘double’ personality is related to her uncertain sense of identity
  • Embroidery a metaphor for self-images

Truth and lies

  • Realism versus subjectivity – may be due to Isobel’s tenuous grasp on reality
  • Hope and idealism versus experience

Time

  • Knowing the time is to be able to order experiences
  • Isobel has the opposite experience of never being prepared for events or able to anticipate what other people expect of her

The word factory

  • Is a metaphor for how Isobel perceives the words that seem perpetually inside her head, words are both a gift and a burden to her
  • Speech and tone of voice – during times of great emotion, Isobel is virtually speechless
  • The word factory as a loom – the words are spinning inside Isobel’s head for what reason?

Literature

  • Words and serious literature becomes a medium between Isobel and the world, enabling her to take a more confident and assured place within in it.

Other Values to Consider in Isobel’s Experiences in the Novel

  1. Love / hate
  2. Rejection / shame
  3. Life / love
  4. Madness / intellect
  5. Isolation / coming in from the cold
  6. Domestic life / artist
  7. Repressed / accepted
  8. Bullied / standing up
  9. Despair / saintly

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The Prologue in Romeo and Juliet

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Image result for pictures of romeo and juliet

The Significance of the Chorus in the Prologue

The Chorus was played by a single actor, whose purpose was to explain and comment on the action of the play.  He is not a character and has no personality.

This opening speech by the Chorus serves as an introduction to Romeo and Juliet.  We are provided with information about where the play takes place, and given some background information about its principal characters.

He simply tells us that we are now in Verona, and that this is a city divided by civil war between 2 noble families.  Their quarrel is an old one, an ‘ancient grudge’.  We never learn its cause, it seems to have become a habit for the Capulets and Montagues to hate each other.  However, if we cannot know the cause of the quarrel, we can be warned of its cure.

The words of the Chorus would be used by Shakespeare to silence the audience and settle them into an appropriate mood for the first scene.

Sonnet = a 14 line poem

Line #

Sonnet Prologue

Explanation
1 Two households, both alike in dignity, 2 families of nobility ie. same social status
2 In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, Where the play is set in Verona
3 From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Old violent quarrel that has been long   standing
4 Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean. Civil meaning belonging to fellow citizens where the conflict has been bloody
5 From forth the fatal loins of these two foes Bred from deadly vital organs of both   parents
6 A pair of star-cross’d lovers take their life; Ill-fated lovers appear from these 2   quarrelling families
7 Whose misadventured piteous overthrows Unfortunate disasters are mended by the 2 lovers
8 Do with their death bury their parents’ strife. Their respective children’s death brings each family together
9 The fearful passage of their death-mark’d love, The course of the lovers love for each other is doomed to death
10 And the continuance of their parents’ rage, The parents are enraged at the deaths
11 Which, but their children’s end, nought could remove, But only the deaths of their children can stop the conflict and strife of the families
12 Is now the two hours’ traffic of our stage; The business lasting 2 hours
13 The which if you with patient ears attend, The audience must watch with expectation
14 What here shall miss, our toil shall strive to mend. To fulfil the prophecy of this Prologue as Romeo & Juliet will certainly die

 The Obvious Function of the Prologue

The obvious function of the Prologue as introduction to the Verona of Romeo and Juliet can obscure its deeper, more important function.  The Prologue does not merely set the scene of Romeo and Juliet, it tells the audience exactly what is going to happen in the play. The structure of the play itself is the fate from which Romeo and Juliet cannot escape.

“Star-crossed Lovers”

The Prologue refers to an ill-fated couple with its use of the word “star-crossed,” which means, literally, against the stars.  Stars were thought to control people’s destinies.  But the Prologue itself creates this sense of fate by providing the audience with the knowledge that Romeo and Juliet will die even before the play has begun.  The audience therefore watches the play with the expectation that it must fulfill the terms set in the Prologue.

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Every Man in this Village is a Liar by Megan Stack

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What is Every Man in This Village Is a Liar about?

A few weeks after the planes crashed into the World Trade Centre on 9/11, journalist Megan Stack, a 25-year-old national correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, was thrust into Afghanistan and Pakistan, dodging gunmen and prodding warlords for information.  From there, she travelled to war-ravaged Iraq and Lebanon and to other countries scarred by violence, including Israel, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen, witnessing the changes that swept the Muslim world, and striving to tell its stories.

Every Man in This Village Is a Liar is Megan Stack’s unique and breathtaking account of what she saw in the combat zones and beyond.  It is her memoir about the wars of the 21st century.  She relates her initial wild excitement and her slow disillusionment as the cost of violence outweighs the elusive promise of freedom and democracy.  She reports from under bombardment in Lebanon; documents the growth of unusual friendships; records the raw pain of suicide bombings in Israel and Iraq; and, one by one, marks the deaths and disappearances of those she interviews.

The Prologue in Every Man in this Village is a Liar

The Prologue is Megan’s way of looking back on 10 years of killing and dying.  She says that “… the first thing I knew about war was also the truest, and maybe it’s as true for nations as for individuals: You can survive and not survive, both at the same time” [p.4].  Megan reflects that the US determination in the wake of the September 11 attacks to go out and ‘tame all the wilderness of the world’ was an instinctive response.  With the benefit of retrospect Megan surveyed the damage this folly has done to the US, to the affected nations in the Middle East and to her.  In the end she judged that September 11 was the beginning of a ‘disastrous reaction’.

The Quote “Every man in this village is a liar”

Megan realises that in the new reality of the war on terror, truth is no longer an absolute but the servant of political necessity.  In Pakistan someone said to Megan, “Every man in this village is a liar” [p.9].  She explains it as “… one of the world’s oldest logic problems … If he’s telling the truth, he’s lying.  If he’s lying, he’s telling the truth.  That was Afghanistan after September 11” [p.9].

Conflict in the Text

The text is primarily concerned with Megan’s encounters with violent military conflicts in the Middle East.  It does also deal with conflict on many levels.  Not only does it examine deadly force used by countries at war it also considers how people subjected to this invasion or assault live with the constant fear of arrest, torture or death.

Megan also contemplates her own survival of what covering these wars has done to her as a person.  In effect she documents the political and also moral price of the war on terror for America.  She speaks about ‘sacrifice’ in chapter 8 [p.96] in countries that have historical conflict that stretches back over centuries.  As a result Megan asserts that “Violence is a reprint of itself, an endless copy” [p.96].

Ways to Look at Conflict

Have a look carefully at this brilliant Conflict Flowchart to see what light it might shed for you on the ideas connected with the Context ‘Encountering Conflict’ and the text Every Man in this Village is a Liar.  conflict flow chart

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