Qualified English Teacher, BA/BT UNE, Registered with VIT, located in Berwick Victoria 3806. Contact 0418 440 277, email contact@englishtutorlessons.com.au
This Resource is for Year 11 English students studying in the Victorian VCE Curriculum.
Look carefully at the similarities and differences between the two main characters Genly Ai and Therem Harth Rem Ir Estraven in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. The list of differences and similarities between the two characters is from my interpretation only and therefore could be added to by students who develop their own interpretation of Genly and Estraven.
For ease of writing I call Genly Ai (Genly) and Therem Harth Rem Ir Estraven (Estraven) in the notes below.
Genly Ai
Genly’s Differences from Estraven
Genly Ai is from Terra (Earth), almost 30 years old
1st Envoy from the Ekumen to recruit the planet Gethen to the Ekumen to become part of a universal and mystical trade venture of planets
Different physical characteristics – tall, black skin, strong, less hair, large hands, not built for cold
Stereotypical male – heterosexual, sexually active all the time considered a ‘pervert’ by Gethenians
Has been in Karhide for 2 years in an attempt to gain favour with King Argaven and convince him and Karhide to join the Ekumen
Inability to trust and uncertainty factors influence his decisions & fear of the unknown
Gender fear of difference especially the feminine traits of Gethenians which he sees as negative traits
Non believer in androgynous Gethenians, can’t comprehend their reactions or faces that he sees as not human but like animals – cat, seal, an otter
Often is impatient, quick to despair and then to rejoice
Lacks insight to understand and seen as an alien in Gethen is not to be trusted
Has trouble communicating and understanding the intricate subtleties of ‘shifgrethor’
Unaware of other people’s motives especially Estraven
Does not have the qualities of the Handdara in regards to intuition or ‘nusuth’
Struggles with too much yang in order to create harmony at the beginning of the novel
Effectively in terms of dualism, Genly is the ‘right hand’ of Estraven (Le Guin stresses that each yang contains it’s yin, each yin contains it’s yang)
Genly’s Similarities with Estraven
Believes in the mission to persuade the inhabitants of Gethen to join the Ekumen for the purpose of expanding trade and interplanetary alliance
Even though Genly has been on Gethen for 2 years he does not give up trying to carry out his mission
This is similar to Estraven in his continued mission to join Gethen with the Ekumen as he believes in the benefits of uniting his planet with other worlds even if it means exile
Genly is loyal, honourable and idealistic like Estraven
They both have sacrificed a lot for their ambitions but see the big picture of helping humanity
Both are in exile, Genly from his planet and Estraven from his home of Estre
On the Gobrin Ice they both pull together for survival
On the Gobrin Ice Genly transforms and understands the significance of the yin and yang in Estraven and the importance of harmony as a whole person
Therefore Genly finally accepts Estraven as an androgynous person not as male/female but as one
The relationship of Genly with Estraven is described by Le Guin as ‘profound love’ and one that changes Genly
Therem Harth Rem Ir Estraven
Estraven’s Differences from Genly
Estraven is from the Domain of Estre in Kerm land, a southern end of Karhide on the planet Gethen (age not sure)
Prime Minister of Karhide at the start of the novel
Different physical characteristics – stocky, dark, with a layer of fat to protect against the cold, black eyes and sleek hair
He is an androgyne, neither male nor female but both, as are all Gethenians
Typical androgyne goes into kemmer
Had a son Sorve to his brother Arek and swore a ‘vow of faithfulness’ to Arek
He had a kemmering with Ashe and they had 2 sons
His personal life has been steeped in profound and tumultuous human emotions, involving love and death, which feed his soul
He is honest, quick minded, wise, versatile and adaptable, courageous, creative in responding to new situations, a shrewd politician, powerful, aggressive when needed & constantly pushing forward
He has a strength of character and diplomacy by preventing Karhide and Orgoreyn from going to war over the Sinnoth Valley dispute
Has highly trained skills of the Handdara which makes him respond intuitively doing no more or no less than what is required
His spiritualism is an important part of his character
He praises ‘darkness’ when it comes and it’s counterpart ‘light’
He is not moved by personal desire, interest or advantage and acts spontaneously in accordance with his true nature as the quality of the Handdara teaches
He uses his feminine intuition as a good quality and has perfected the balance of yin and yang in his harmonious actions which demonstrates that both male and female characteristics are necessary for survival
Effectively Estraven is the ‘left hand’ of Genly and without Estraven, Genly would not have been able to undertake his transformation of character that leads him to a deeper understanding of Gethenians and himself
Estraven is willing to sacrifice his life to achieve the success of the mission and the good of the whole world
Estraven’s Similarities with Genly
Believes in Genly’s mission to persuade the inhabitants of Gethen to join the Ekumen for the purpose of expanding trade and interplanetary alliance
Estraven continues his belief in the mission to join Gethen with the Ekumen as he believes in the benefits of uniting his planet with other worlds even if it means his exile
Both are in exile, Genly from his planet and Estraven from his home of Estre
Estraven is loyal, honourable and idealistic like Genly
They both have sacrificed a lot for their ambitions but see the big picture of helping humanity
On the Gobrin Ice they both pull together for survival
Accepts Genly as different, but it is the likeness, the wholeness that he understands and the importance of harmony
The relationship of Estraven with Genly is described by Le Guin as ‘profound love’ and one that embodies Genly’s physical as well as spiritual journey to greater self knowledge and understanding
This Resource is for Years 10/11/12 Mainstream English students studying Analysing and Exploring Argument in the Victorian Curriculum.
Just as writers and speakers use techniques such as exaggeration, tone and emotive language to manipulate and position readers, so too can cartoonists use many highly persuasive techniques.
Use the same questioning techniques for analysing cartoons as you do for analysing articles. Ask What / How / Why the author uses his/her language with the intention to persuade the audience to Think (Logos) / Feel (Pathos) / Do something (Ethos).
When analysing a cartoon, ask yourself the following questions:
What is the main point of the cartoon? Does the cartoon align with the author’s point of view on the issue in the article you are also analysing? Be mindful, if the cartoon is a stand-alone, it may have its own point of view that is either the same or different to the article.
What is the issue being represented? What is the context of this issue?
Who is the target audience the cartoon creator is aiming for? What is the intended impact/effect of the cartoon on the reader/audience?
Who are the central figures/characters? What are they doing or saying? How are they represented? For example, a cartoonist may represent members of a group as similar to make a point about their powerlessness, their loss of identity, their mindlessness and so on. Sometimes animals are used to represent humans in order to critique behaviour or an individual’s point of view.
What visual strategies are used to persuade the audience to agree with the point of view presented? Look at:
Composition of cartoon – number of items/subjects and their position within the text and in relation to one another
Size of cartoon and characters in connection with composition – are the characters exaggerated
Layout of fonts used in text – can often use small text but big heads on characters to exaggerate the sarcastic tone
Colours and shade – what do the colours symbolise
Black = evil/power/death
White = purity/simplicity/cleanliness
Red = warmth/comfort/anger/embarrassment
Yellow = cheeriness/frustration/attention seeking
Blue = calmness/tranquillity/sadness/misery
Purple = royalty/wealth/wisdom
Green = calm/tranquillity/nature/envy
Brown = earth/nature/strength/security
Red+blue+white = flags symbolise patriotism
The focus and emphasis – where is the reader’s attention drawn to first
Labelling and stereotypes – often characters are stereotypical ie. blond, blue eyed, suntanned, muscular lifesaver is supposed to be typical Australian male but it is not accurate representation
Speech bubbles, dialogue, body text can often state contention or reinforce issue
Loaded language – language that has a deeper meaning than is shown on the surface
Captions – words outside frame of text can state contention, what do they add and how do they persuade
Symbols, motifs, icons – images that represent the ideas or concepts, can appeal to the audience
Angles used and white space ie. blank space left – can draw audience away towards some text to make a further impact on the issue or detract from it
Obvious tone ie political cartoons are often humorous and sarcastic (use verbal irony)
Facial expressions – how do the characters expressions compare to one another, are they expressions we would expect
Context to main issue – does the cartoon support or oppose the main issue
What is significant about the background and foreground of the cartoon?
When writing your analysis discuss how the visual language comments on the issue and how the cartoon creator positions the audience by using the visual techniques. Keeping in mind what the creator’s purpose is and how the cartoonist wants to position the reader – to think (logos) / feel (pathos) / do something (ethos)
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoomfor Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
This Resource is ‘A Brief Synopsis’ only for Mainstream English Year 11 Students studying ‘The Penelopiad’ by Margaret Atwood: AOS1 Reading & Exploring Texts and AOS2 Crafting Texts Year 11 in the 2023 VCE Curriculum
Historical Context
While ‘The Penelopiad’ is a postmodern, feminist short novel (novella) it is a work of narrative fiction with a story and plot, characters and settings and offers insight into human relationships as well as exploring moral, social and political issues. The most significant element in Atwood’s narrative is that she retells Homer’s myth of the Odyssey enabling various interpretations and questions to what led to the hanging of the Maids and what was Penelope really up to? By leaving Homer’s myth of Greece in 700 BCE open to reinterpretation, Atwood suggests that there is not one single undisputed truth in the interpretation. Atwood addresses social and cultural issues of Ancient Greece within the framework of Homer’s myth but she assigns new emphasis to female protagonists like Penelope who have to fight for self and survival in a society ruled by men.
Style
‘The Penelopiad’ is told by Penelope adopting 1st person narrative, from the Underworld, called Hades in Ancient Greek mythology, where she has been for several thousand years. Shown through Penelope’s eyes, Atwood creates a form of conversational dramatic monologue during which Penelope tells her side of the story as she waits the 20 years for Odysseus to return from the Trojan Wars. She presents a kind of tell-all tale of her recount of events that she will “spin a thread of my own” (p.4) addressing 21st century readers in a more modern narrative style that is often colloquial. Penelope uses blunt and straightforward language reclaiming her humanity and rejecting Homer’s account of her. The tone is often ironic and humorous and is at odds with the patriarchal epic poems of Ancient Greek mythology. She urges women “Don’t follow my example, I want to scream in your ears” (p.2). At times Penelope uses quite extreme slang when describing Helen of Troy calling her a “septic bitch” (p.131) in order to reinforce the view of Helen as the main cause of all Penelope’s problems. Through the use of everyday vernacular, Atwood mocks the lofty language of the Odyssey and claims the right for alternative voices to be heard.
Feminist Literature
‘The Penelopiad’ can be considered feminist literature of the 21st century as Atwood takes women from the Odyssey and puts them into a new framework where the narrator Penelope and other female voices, once suppressed by Homer, become the voices heard. Penelope is a capable modern woman, simultaneously trying to cover all roles while Odysseus is away. She clearly does more than weeping and weaving. She raises Telemachus as a single mother, manages Odysseus’ estates and negotiates the politics of the household and the onslaught from the Suitors. Atwood shows Penelope resisting patriarchal dominance and oppression starting from when her father tries to drown her, until we meet her looking back on her life from the Underworld. We see the focus on the way Penelope creates and extends her role of patient wife and mother to the other roles she defines. The text addresses the feminist ideology which asks that “women be free to define themselves, instead of having their identity defined for them”.
Message of Author – Why did Margaret Atwood write The Penelopiad?
As Atwood admits, Penelope has been “in general somewhat neglected for the very simple reason that in the Odysseyshe does weaving, waiting, sleeping and crying to show how much she cares that Odysseus isn’t there, how beleaguered she feels, and how lost and alone and unhappy she is.” Certainly, Atwood could have written about murderous Clytemnestra or scandalous Helen, but she decided to take Penelope, a mythical, dutiful doormat and make her fly. But Atwood conceded that there was much more to Penelope and she wanted to question Homer’s version of her. For Atwood, such ancient myths can still tell us living truths.
Atwood said that Penelope “Had a whole lifetime of keeping her mouth shut. Now that she’s dead, she doesn’t have to do that anymore, because nothing is at stake. It’s like those tell-all’s that people do at the end of their lives.” Atwood also makes her put-upon heroine a shrewd estate manager and stand-in ruler, running the dirt-poor “goat-strewn rock” of Ithaca while the big boys play away from home. “If you come to think of it, she must have been doing a lot more than she’s shown as doing in the Odyssey, because there’s nobody else in charge of the outfit. She must have been a much more active, practical person than she’s shown as being.” Nobody’s fool, Atwood’s Penelope sees through the returning Odysseus’s disguises and shares a flair for fibs and ruses with her errant husband. “There are two ways of fending things off if you don’t want them to happen,” Atwood explains. “One is by force – which is not available to her. The other is by guile. So, she has to use guile. And that is also Odysseus’s big stock-in-trade. When in doubt, lie – but lie well.”
Atwood intersperses Penelope’s narrative with performances from the 12 hanged maids, in 11 of the 24 chapters, who together form ‘The Chorus Line’ to comment on the action and give background from their perspective. The maids perform in a variety of genres such as songs, recitations, dance, an idyll, a sea shanty, ballad, love story, mock heroic drama, an envoi, an anthropological lecture and a farce of a trial of Odysseus. The narratives of the maids are also accompanied by stage directions to increase the sense of dramatic performance. The maids lament the double standards throughout their chorus breaks, constantly reminding the reader or audience of the tragedy that happened.
The importance of the maid’s narrative is to address the treatment of marginalised women in a patriarchal society and Atwood’s need to give powerless women a voice not heard in the history of society or Greek mythology. The maids continue to demand answers ‘Why did you murder us?’ (p. 193) and Atwood gives them the final word in the novella with a short poem, ‘Envoi’, where they again state ‘it was not fair’ (p. 195). Atwood emphasises the injustice of silencing and marginalising women and suggests that women will keep on calling out about it.
Themes & Key Concepts – Consider these Ideas for Connections with your Personal Response or Crafting Texts Response
Truth and Lies
Penelope’s story uncovers lies and innuendos as she takes the unchallenged position of narrator to tell the “plain truth” (p.139) so that deception is attributed by her only from Odysseus. She says she knew Odysseus was “tricky” (p.2) but it seems that both Penelope and Odysseus use lies and deception to cleverly achieve their aims. Penelope’s revelation of herself as an equal liar to Odysseus casts into doubt her insistence that she has nothing to do with the hanging of the Maids and does not know about it until it is too late. It brings into question other matters like her true relationship with the Suitors and her activities when Odysseus is away. Also, as the Maids call out insults to Odysseus concerning their treatment and their pledge to follow him wherever he goes, they taunt him about their murder, clearly referring to him as a careful, clever liar. They make reference to Odysseus being a “grandson of thieves and liars” (p.191) because of the story involving the boar hunting with his grandfather, Autolycus. The questions posed by this probable deceit are suggested by Penelope in the chapter of “The Scar” (p.47). It appears that the clever lies told by both Penelope and Odysseus are used to manipulate others, to get what they want or just simply to survive.
Personal Challenge
Penelope starts her tale by retelling a story from her childhood. She is thrown into the sea by her father, but is saved by a flock of purple-striped ducks. Clearly this episode and its retelling has a profound impact on Penelope and leaves her with the personal challenge of dealing with her reserved personality and learning to manage her innate mistrust of others. So, unlike her cousin Helen of Troy, who is confident and superficial, Penelope’s personality is more inward-focused. This could also account for why she has to much trouble fitting in to palace life in Ithaca and resorts to her own abilities to “learn from scratch” (p.87). Even though Penelope is only 15 when she is married to Odysseus, she is willing to start a new life with Odysseus so she can put her past life as princess of Sparta and her dysfunctional family life behind her. Yet her personal challenges are broad and wide-reaching in Ithaca when Odysseus is away for so many years, she must rely on her own determination to succeed against the odds. Despite much weeping and weaving she finds the strength to handle court politics and running the estates belonging to Odysseus. In her personal challenges she applies her mother’s advice “If you can’t go through an obstacle, go around it” (p.43).
Power
Penelope struggles with a lack of power, firstly as a child in Sparta, then when she is won in a marriage contest by Odysseus and later in Ithaca with Eurycleia and Anticlea. There are fatal consequences when the powerful exert their power and we see two sides to Penelope, the powerful and the powerless. The Maid’s lack of power is evident in the novella and they express this in “Kiddie Mourn, A Lament by the Maids” (pp.13-15). Later they seek justice for the injustices they have faced, including their early and unnatural death by putting their case before a modern court. However, even in that setting they lack the power for a resolution that will see Odysseus face his crimes.
In ‘The Penelopiad’, physical power is embodied in Odysseus who is the self-proclaimed superhuman who had defeated the Trojans and established his political power in battle. More importantly is that power is explicitly in the hands of men in Greece who consolidate and legitimise power physically, politically and economically over women. Odysseus is free to kill Penelope for infidelity and to slaughter the Suitors and the Maids. Likewise, Icarius is at liberty to drown his infant daughter or act in a drunken and insulting manner at Penelope’s wedding because “He was king” (p.41).
‘The Penelopiad’ explores ways in which male power affects different groups of women as a result of class discrimination. For instance, although Penelope is traded “like a package of meat” (p.39) between her father and her husband, as a noblewoman she still has far more power than her Maids. The Maids are Odysseus’ property to the point that he is considered to have acted “within his rights” in hanging them. In fact, their rape is judged as a crime against them as they had sex without his permission (p.151).
Penelope’s “tale-telling” (p.4) is an attempt to seize some power by contradicting the traditional myth that depicts her as the stereotypical faithful wife. Similarly, the Maids demand the right to tell their own version of events and thus achieve a measure of the power that was denied to their sex and class.
Responsibility
A key theme is responsibility; especially how Odysseus sees his responsibility in the tale, as Penelope does not give him the right of reply to accusations made against him. Although Atwood indirectly refers to the puzzle concerning what leads to the hanging of the Maids in The Odyssey, in her retelling of the tale she states clearly that the story “doesn’t hold water” (p.xv). She suggests that whoever is directly responsible might be important in her story with its new emphases. Atwood indicates that Penelope is “haunted” (p.xv) by the death of the hanged Maids and we are told of her great affection for them. On the surface it appears that the responsibility lies with Odysseus however, it is clearly much more complicated. Atwood leaves doubt in the mind of the reader despite the fact that the Maids hold fast in their accusation against Odysseus for their murder. Perhaps Penelope’s responsibility is to put a stop to being “A stick used to beat other women with” (p.2) as she wanted to set the record straight. Yet Penelope pleads ignorance about the killing of the Maids. Nevertheless, responsibility weighs on Penelope in outward statements and inner thoughts, which allows readers to raise questions of who is really responsible for the Maids killings.
Identity
‘The Penelopiad’ explores notions of identity and the ways in which it is tied to physical appearance, self-perception and the expectations of others. Physical appearance with Helen’s beauty sets the standard of physical perfection by which other women (such as Penelope) judge themselves (p.35). The text suggests that beauty can grant women power; in Helen’s case, agelessness as well, invests her with enormous power over men. Beauty is also linked with youth and the capacity to bear children (especially sons) to ensure the continuation of patriarchal power.
A sense of self can also be shaped by other’s perceptions and expectations leading people to question who they are. This is clear as Penelope fails to meet her mother in law’s expectations of a suitable wife for Odysseus (p.62) and the idea he might be “thinking about Helen” (p.64) increases her insecurity. Odysseus cheats if the odds are against him in order to substantiate his heroic status (p.31), he exaggerates stories of his heroism, yet his public identity as a hero is consolidated by his plausible stories that inevitably become “true” (p.2).
Gender Roles
The text explores ideas about being a woman with socially constructed notions of femininity and gender and also highlights the complexities of womanhood in a 21st century post-feminist context. The good mother characteristics of a nurturing, gentle and protective quality with feminine sensibility is shown in Penelope when she gives birth to Telemachus as she is “glad” to have produced a son, gratified that Odysseus is “pleased” with her (p.64) and feels fulfilled by her maternal role. Penelope’s observation that “a mother’s life is sacred” (p.111) reveals the high value society places on nurturing motherhood and the high expectations placed upon mothers.
Yet toxic mothers in law with their reputed hostility to daughters in law is shown by Anticleia who Penelope described as a “prune-mouthed” woman (p.60) who wrinkles up “like drying mud” (p.85). Atwood exploits these stereotypes for the comic or dramatic purpose in the text but Penelope challenges her role by showing the importance of spinning a threat of one’s own (p.4).
Being a wife in Ancient Greece in a patriarchal society meant being a possession like Penelope being handed over like “a package of meat” (p.39) in a bargain struck between powerful men. Penelope is the essence of submissiveness and obedience and only after her death she warns other women that following her example will subjugate and silence them.
Storytelling & the Power of Narrative
‘The Penelopiad’ demonstrates the power of storytelling and the liberating power of taking ownership of one’s own story. Penelope’s spinning of her own “thread” (p.4) disputes Homer’s idealised version of her in the Odyssey so that she is able to complicate the accepted one-dimensional image of her as a dutiful wife and emphasise to the reader her considerable intelligence and resilience. Rewriting of the Odyssey is empowering for Penelope as she can finally negate the many stories about her that she would “prefer not to hear” (p.3). Her authorial control frees her from the burden of being a legend (pp.143-5) and allows her to warn other women not to follow the example she set of keeping her “mouth shut” (p.3).
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoomfor Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
This Resource is for Year 12 English students studying Unit 4 AOS:1 Reading & Comparing Texts in the Victorian VCE Curriculum for 2023. While Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler was compared in 2022 to The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood, the play has a new comparative text in 2023, the novel My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin.
Introduction
Anna Ziegler’s play ‘Photograph 51’ and Miles Franklin’s novel ‘My Brilliant Career’ explore concepts with very different women protagonists. Both protagonists have their own individual personalities, dispositions, ages and external contexts. As such it is important to understand the cultural and social surroundings of each character as well as how they are affected by other people and their settings. In ‘My Brilliant Career’ the characters are all seen in relation to Sybylla Melvyn because it is her ‘yarn’ and so the story unfolds based on her whims and experiences. Within ‘Photograph 51’, Rosalind Franklin is stripped of participation in the narrative and seems completely unaware of her significance or importance to her society or its later historical record of her achievements.
The Historical and Cultural Context of Both Texts is Important in Comparing Them
‘Photograph 51’ is based on the modern viewpoint of Anna Ziegler and her interest in feminist and historical ideas that reconceptualise key events in history. The play’s historical context is based around the results of post WWII and movements in the 1950’s scientific world. ‘Photograph 51’ is a single act play with its action occurring between 1951 and 1953 at a time in Britain when there was a pervasive attitude that a woman’s place was better served in the home than having a career, along with an entrenched gender bias which had tragic consequences for Rosalind Franklin.
‘My Brilliant Career’ was written by Stella Maria Miles Franklin an Australian writer who wrote her novel in 1899 and it was not published until 1901 the year of the Australian Federation. The novel’s historical context of Australia’s Federation plays a huge role in the narrative that describes a masculine society with aspects of Australian rural life that that held women in a constricting place. While Ziegler’s play is feminist in its nature, Franklin’s novel is proto-feminist because it comes before the first feminist movements began. Franklin’s novel was written 7 years before women had the right to vote and they still lacked social and economic prospects. Franklin has Sybylla reflect that “… it was only men who could take the world by its ears and conquer their fate …” (p.61).
Both Texts Explore Ideas About
Power in its various forms, including patriarchal power within society of financial, political and legal power; physical and intellectual power.
Identity and its connections with physical appearance, self-perception and the expectations of others.
Women’s roles/gender are shown in differing representations of the feminine in various types of characters but because both Sybylla and Rosalind were independent and intelligent, neither one conformed to social expectations about gender and destiny.
Storytelling and the power of narrative is demonstrated in the power of taking control of one’s own story. In My Brilliant Career it is Sybylla’s own voice that exposes gender inequality in 19th century Australia and her simple ‘yarn’ becomes other Australian women’s stories of restrictive conformation to society’s standards. However, Rosalind in Photograph 51 who is isolated and vilified, is unable to take control of her narrative.
Truth and Lies is shown in Zeigler’s play suggests that it does matter who found the answer to DNA with Wilkin’s tacit approval of Crick and Watson’s use of Rosalind’s research data is shown in his comment that it doesn’t matter who found the answer. Sybylla narrates her own story that seeks her own personal truth as to how she wants to live her life, knowing that because she is a girl, and ugly at that, her ambitions are continually thwarted.
Ambition for Sybylla is boundless and no matter how hard she tries to fit in to her socially acceptable female role she always longs for the “mystical better things” (p.65) in her wish to achieve something. Rosalind’s ambition is equally intense and her determination and desire to do her scientific work with her personal challenge to be “always right” (p.46), drove her to become a scientist who paid meticulous attention to detail.
Respect for Rosalind is being treated with a level of importance by her male colleagues for the significant work she did for discovery of DNA and being worthy of respect. Unfortunately only Gosling and Caspar truly respect Rosalind but she is disrespected throughout the narrative by the other hypocritical male scientists. With Sybylla’s story a coming of age narrative, respect for and of others is part of her development as she is coming to terms with her true values. Aunt Helen is the only person Sybylla respects; in contrast she loses respect for her father when he drinks and destroys the family’s financial security.
Expectations fall into 3 categories for Sybylla – first, societal expectations of Australia in the 1890’s, second her personal desires balanced against what is expected of her in terms of propriety and correct moral and social behaviour and third a feminist concern of hope for women in a world made for men. While Rosalind looks back reflects on her desires to live with decisions she has made otherwise she dies in “regret” (p.83) but Sybylla looks forward with expectation, tempered with uncertainty, still seeking independence in an unknown future.
Photograph 51 by Anna Ziegler
Structure & Style
As a single act play, it includes six characters each of whom presents their perspective on events unfolding between 1951 and 1953 at King’s College, London. There is a juxtaposition of the past and present which interrupts the linear structure of the narrative. The action of Ziegler’s play mainly focuses upon Dr Rosalind Franklin, a real-life scientist who is arguably the person who discovered the molecular structure of DNA. Her research was crucial to the three men who would ultimately be awarded the coveted Nobel Prize in 1962. Ziegler’s characters are therefore all real people; however, she freely admits to altering the time structure of events, re-arranging facts and creating interactions between characters that allow her to creatively explore the main themes of the play.
‘Photograph 51’ is structured as a circular narrative, not quite from the start but as Franklin and Wilkins return to Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale at the play’s conclusion, our minds are taken back to their discussion of the play that first occurs. This doubling effect, or repetition, brings to mind one of the key symbols of the play, the double helix. Ziegler, as she wants her audience to view events from different perspectives, also ‘relies on characters stepping forward occasionally as a sort of Greek chorus to fill in the background details’. This is often found in the voice of Caspar who questions the behaviour of Wilkins, Watson and Crick about what really happened. There are no traditional scene changes but the play looks to alterations in lighting and character groupings to suggest structural shifts. The action of the play is fluid moving with characters all having equal speaking parts like an ensemble piece.
Ziegler’s stage directions also indicate to the audience when she is instructing one of her characters to break the fourth wall (talk directly to the audience). An example is Rosalind’s line: ‘(To the audience.) I have two tumours.’ With the spotlight on her as she says these words, only the audience is meant to hear.
Feminist Literature & Challenging the Historical Invisibility of Women
The idea of challenging the historical invisibility of women is implicit in the play where the work of an extraordinary woman Rosalind Franklin is made visible. Ziegler’s play highlights the ways in which stories told by men have worked to minimise or downplay the roles played by women. According to Watson Rosalind “misunderstood the terms of her contract” (p.13) when in fact crucial details are “changed” after her arrival. As readers we hope that had Rosalind Franklin lived long enough the Nobel Prize Committee would have surely awarded her a Nobel prize for her conceptual understanding of the structure of the DNA molecule. However, Ziegler’s play recognises Franklin’s contribution even if the sexist attitudes ingrained in science at the time did not.
When asked about Rosalind Franklin as a feminist, Ziegler argued that was not her intention but audiences may interpret the character differently: ‘But more importantly, I agree that Rosalind wouldn’t want to be considered a feminist icon and I didn’t set out to make her into one. All I can say is that, if the play has contributed to that sense of her, I hope it’s not because it paints her as a victim, but because it shows that she persevered in the name of the work and the work alone at a time when she had to ignore that it was difficult for her to do so.’
My Brilliant Career by Miles Franklin
Structure & Style
The novel ‘My Brilliant Career’ has a conventional linear structure with Sybylla’s voice telling her own personal growth story during 19th century rural Australia. Using a male pseudonym Franklin wrote her story of a young woman who was held back socially by a strict patriarchal society. The novel includes an Introduction by Jennifer Byrne (vii-xiv) followed by a Preface by Henry Lawson and a further Introduction by Sybylla (pp.1-3) then the novel extends across 38 chapters. Each voice is of Sybylla’s own perspective of the contrasts between the settings from Bruggabrong, Possum Gully, Caddagat, Five Bob Downs and Barney’s Gap.
The diametrically opposed physical spaces of Caddagat and Barney’s Gap echo the oppositional forces in Sybylla herself (the feminine and the tomboy), and parallel opposing genres of romanticism and realism in the novel. What is important to note is the Federation Drought of the 1890’s that caused enormous stock losses and many landowners became bankrupt. The economic depression was a tumultuous time for the young states of Australia with banks failing and unemployment soaring. Sybylla’s novel provides a palpable insight into the terrible conditions of the time along with her descriptions of the harsh weather of “scorching furnace-breath winds [that] shrivelled every blade of grass, dust and the moan of starving stock filled the air” (p.33).
Proto-feminist Novel Challenges Gender Expectations in 19th Century Australia
At a time when it was considered that the only suitable ambition for young women was to marry and raise a family, Franklin has Sybylla set out of the norm and desire to have a career and wish to live an independent life. In effect, Franklin gives her main protagonist a voice equal to her own abilities. In Sybylla’s own Introduction (p.1-3) she describes her manuscript as a “real yarn” (p.1) addressing her readers as ‘My Dear Fellow Australians’ (p.1) grouping women and men together under one banner and wanting to be heard.
From a young age Sybylla has a desire to write and throughout her narrative she expresses her opinion of marriage, redefines class boundaries and her completely different views of what was expected of ladies of her time. Describing herself as “unorthodox” (p.215) Sybylla is seen as different from the norm and at times does perform many “self-analysis” sessions on herself with one of her biggest regrets is that she is ugly. Forced to acknowledge she is not like the beautiful girls who choose the acceptable pathway of marriage, Sybylla knows she is in a different “sphere” (p.61) intellectually, because her desire is to have a career. Yet she is also egalitarian seeing herself as an “Australian peasant, cheerful, honest and brave” (p.391).
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoomfor Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
It is a graphic novel or actually a graphic memoir since it is a true story. It is a complex story told in pictures and handwritten captions, as opposed to only typeset print. Therefore, it is a piece of visual as well as literary art. By using imagery and limited words, Art Spiegelman has used the art form of cartoons to portray the horrors faced by the Jews as prisoners of the Nazi Regime during World War II.
It is an oral history and a memoir. An oral history is an extended interview where a witness to historical events is asked to recall what he experienced. Someone else writes it down. A memoir is the story of a life written by the participant or another person. Art Spiegelman interviews his father Vladek between 1972 and 1982 to relate stories of Vladek’s horrific experiences in Nazi Germany during which he survived 10 months in Auschwitz death camp. The stories of the past and present clash and collide so readers also become aware of the difficult relationship between Art and his father.
It is the story of one concentration camp survivor; a Jewish Polish refugee and his family: Vladek and Anja, and their son Art Spiegelman. Another son Richieu died in the war; so did the other members of Anja’s and Vladek’s families. After Anja’s death Vladek married Mala also a survivor. It addresses the guilt and fear of survivors from the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau and the subsequent impact on their children.
It is the story of a historical genocide known as the Holocaust. The Holocaust is the name for the systematic persecution and murder of 6 million Jews from 1933 to 1944 by the Nazi regime in Germany. In particular the story focus is on Polish Jews.
What is Maus About?
In Maus, Vladek Spiegelman’s story of surviving the Holocaust is told in tandem with the story of his post-war relationship with the author of the book, his son Artie. Although Artie Spiegelman emphasises the resourcefulness of Vladek to survive and his capacity to overcome the dreadful feeling that he was abandoned by God during the Holocaust “But here God didn’t come. We were all on our own” (p.189). Maus is just as much about surviving life after the Holocaust as it is about experiencing the Holocaust itself. Artie says to his wife Francoise towards the end of the book, “But in some ways he didn’t survive” (p.250). Certainly for Vladek the Holocaust was an emotionally crippling experience, reducing him to what Artie says is a “caricature of the miserly old Jew” (p.133) who is concerned more with “things than people” as Mala said. The need to constantly be resourceful and pragmatic had for Vladek overwhelmed other less material approaches to life.
The cartoon graphically relates the Holocaust story and Vladek’s experiences of horror but it is also Artie’s story as a child of a survivor which is at times humorously and poignantly interwoven in with Vladek and Anja’s story. As these stories of the past and present clash and collide, so readers become aware of the pain of broken, disrupted relationships. The second part of the story ‘And Here my Troubles Began’ from pages 169-296 continues the story of Artie’s parents’ incarceration in Auschwitz but also includes more of Artie’s own personal story as he seeks to understand the delayed trauma of an Auschwitz-related son. One of his most pressing points is that the scars are generational ie. the psychological scars of the parents continue to haunt subsequent generations.
An important part of Artie’s story is relaying a snapshot of his father’s post-traumatic stress that suffocates him as he tries to deal with the enormity of his loss. A touch of black humour conveys this depiction, which is both poignant and mocking. Artie ridicules his father’s neurotic obsession with pills and death and his traumatic relationship with his second wife Mala who Vladek imagines her constantly stealing his money.
What is safe to say about Maus is that the graphic images belie the complexity of the psychological pathology that was a result of the Holocaust both for the survivors and the generation that the survivors gave birth to. What is also true in Maus is that the characters, mostly Vladek and Artie, are burdened with feelings that they don’t always understand are often in conflict with each other. If there is a message in Maus it is this: people are complex and nothing is simple.
The Distinctiveness / Techniques /Symbols of Graphic Novels like The Complete Maus
Pages in graphic novels and graphic narratives are made up of words, images and panels. To read them effectively, and to understand their complex and subtle meanings, requires attention to the ways in which both images and words work independently and together. Each has its own logic and way of organising meaning.
One of the things that is important in writing about Maus, is to write about it as a graphic novel. In other words, how does Art use the elements of the graphic novel to tell the story of Maus in a way that is distinctive from the medium of the novel or film?
The Basic Techniques and Symbols Art uses to tell the story are:
The Panel = Just as the paragraph and sentences within the paragraph are the basic way of dividing up parts of the narrative in a novel, so too is the panel and the speech bubbles the basic way of organising the story in a graphic novel. In Maus Art uses the panels in different ways – with boxed black borders designed to be read from left to right, top to bottom which is a standard way to develop a narrative. The panel boxed within a border conveys the sense that these words, or actions or feelings are happening at this exact point and no other. When there is no border a sense of space or freedom is created – that the words, actions or feelings might link to more than just this point in time. Art also changes the size of panels in order to emphasise the significance or impact of the feelings, words or events within the panel. He does this often at crisis points in the novel such as the arrival of Vladek at Auschwitz. Panels also overlap with other panels to show how words, feelings or events in that panel overlap, impact on or link to the surrounding panels.
Gutters = The space in between panels – known as the gutter is important – we almost need to ‘read between the lines’ or infer what has happened. In many cases, this doesn’t require much effort, because what is depicted in one panel can come almost directly after what was in the previous panel. Sometimes there is a space between panels in terms of place or time which makes us as readers wonder what happened in between In the scene (p.111) the Gestapo have orders to evacuate Zawiercie where Tosha and the children Bibi, Lonia and Richieu are living but Tosha says “I won’t go to their gas chambers. And my children won’t go to their gas chambers” (p.111). In the scene we do not see Tosha administering the poison to the children but we are left to fill that blank in ourselves based on the image of the small, innocent children looking up.
Animal Characterisation = Perhaps the most basic and effective technique Spiegelman uses to tell the story of Maus, is the characterisation of Jews as mice, Nazis (and Germans as a whole) as cats, Poles as pigs and Americans as dogs. In this comic story Art utilises this anthropomorphic imagery of the cat and mouse to depict his parent’s experiences in Nazi Germany which also relates the story of the Holocaust. There are a number of layers to this imagery. The first layer is the idea we immediately associate with mice as innocent and small and cats as big, predators of mice. In terms of characters, the Jews were innocent victims; the Nazis were the sinister predatory killers. The second layer involves a subversion of ideas.
The Language = The story recounted in Vladek’s voice is related in broken English, awkward grammar but giving the impression of spontaneity and authenticity. At times it is extremely sincere but other times it is dramatic but uncaring. Through the language Spiegelman gives his reader a number of cues that can assist in understanding the plot, voice and levels of narrative. It is through the language we are able to comprehend aspects of the characters’ motivations, their relationships with one another and their place in the narrative.
Eyes = Are a fundamental point of characterisation to humanise or dehumanise characters in graphic texts. The eyes of the Jewish mice are nearly always visible throughout the text and convey the feelings of anger, sadness, frustration or determination. However, the eyes of the Nazis are often not visible; they are shaded by their helmets or caps, signifying how their humanity has been shaded by the role they fulfil. When their eyes are seen they are as sinister looking slits of light.
Holocaust dominated by Nazi Swastika = Spiegelman represents how over-whelming the Holocaust was in the lives of the Jews who lived through it and survived by his visual representations of Nazi symbols dominating the landscape within panels or being the dominant background behind panels. The panels of pages 34-35 show the swastika prominent in towns even in 1938 in conjunction with texts “This town is Jew Free” (p.35). The panel on page 127 shows Vladek and Anja walking in the direction of Sosnowiec with the path imagery as a swastika. The imagery indicates Vladek and Anja’s predicament of having nowhere to go because in Poland at that time (1944) all paths for Jews led to the Nazis and ultimately to Auschwitz and death.
Masks = Characters wear masks at two different points in the story. Before Vladek and Anja were captured and sent to Auschwitz, they were able to avoid being caught in Srodula by disguising themselves as Poles (pig masks). Masks at this point are a functional way to avoid detection by pretending to be someone else. In Book II Spiegelman draws himself as a human character wearing a mouse mask which represents his confusion about the suicide of his mother in 1968. He asks questions about why his mother committed suicide. Was it his fault? Why did he feel guilty? How can he move on? Who in fact was he?
Dying faces, dead faces, hanging and dead bodies = The horror of the Holocaust is reinforced throughout Maus by the graphic representations of the dead and dying. Hanging bodies are used at a number of points with a particular haunting effect. They evoke feelings about the dehumanisation of Jews who were left to hang like carcasses and their powerlessness. Often the dead or dying are portrayed with their mouths wide open, screaming in agony, fear and desperation. The images evoke within the reader a picture of true horror of what the Jews suffered during the Holocaust.
Guilt as a Major Theme in Maus
Guilt swirls in the comic strip. The relationship between Vladek and his son is important in the narrative because it deals extensively with feelings of guilt. Of particular relevance is guilt with members of the Spiegelman family. Artie mocks the fact that Maus should have a message and that everyone should feel ‘forever’ guilty. “My father’s ghost still hangs over me” (p.203). The primary types of familial guilt can be divided into three categories:
Artie’s feelings of guilt over not being a good son
Artie’s feelings of guilt over the death of his mother
Artie’s feelings of guilt regarding the publication of Maus
The second major form of guilt found in Maus is thematically complex. This guilt is ‘survivor’s guilt’ which is found in both Vladek and Artie’s relationships with the Holocaust. Much of Maus revolves around this relationship between past and present and the effects of past events on the lives of those who did not experience them which manifests itself as guilt. While Artie was born in Sweden after the end of World War II both of his parents were survivors of the Holocaust and the event has affected him deeply. Artie reveals his guilt to his wife Francoise “Somehow, I wish I had been in Auschwitz with my parents so I could really know what they lived through! I guess it’s some form of guilt about having an easier life than they did” (p.176).
Vladek too appears to feel a deep sense of guilt about having survived the Holocaust while his family and friends did not. Pavel (Artie’s psychiatrist) thinks that Vladek took his guilt out on Artie the “real survivor”. So Vladek’s guilt was passed down to his son establishing the foundation for the guilt that Artie now feels towards his family and its history.
This Resource is ‘A Brief Synopsis’ only for Mainstream English Year 12 Students studying Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel in AOS1, Unit 3: Analytical Study in the VCE Victorian Curriculum.
Introduction
Instead of Covid-19, Station Eleven’s world is devastated by the ‘Georgia Flu’. The fictional plague is more deadly and contagious than Covid-19; this flu virus kills 99% of the earth’s population in a matter of weeks. We, as readers, can see certain parallels with the pandemic that engulfs the world today, such as hoarding of groceries in the early days of Covid-19, overrun hospital emergency departments, face masks and the idea of some similarity to Station Eleven. Life imitating art.
Yet Station Eleven’s world is a story of complete collapse of civilisation and a rebirth in a world of survivors who are devoid of doctors, countries, communities, no technology and where luck or fate picks who lives or dies. Children learn to kill or be killed within an ever-thrumming baseline of danger.
However, Emily St. John Mandel’s novel Station Eleven is ‘speculative fiction’ that if there were a doomsday event, there may initially be a period of chaotic social collapse, but gradually the surviving people would organise themselves into communities akin to our contemporary civil society. Mandel worries that the civilisation we take for granted is fragile and vulnerable, and ‘could fail quite easily’, but she harbours ‘a possibly naïve but stubborn notion that the overwhelming majority of people on earth really just want to live peacefully and raise their kids and go about their business with a minimum of fear and insecurity.’
Emily St. John Mandel
Civilisation in a Post-pandemic World
While Mandel’s central thematic ideas are of truth, hope, love and moral courage, she leaves readers with something positive rather than negative. The characters are more often inspired by art, knowledge and concern for others than by fear, superficial ideas, authoritarianism or self-interest. The novel values: trusting rather than controlling others; connecting with and paying attention to each other rather than pursuing the illusory thrills of self-promotion and fame; and above all, creating rather than destroying. We see how interconnectivity both creates and dismantles civilisation.
Pivotal in the novel’s network of characters is the celebrity actor Arthur Leander, while the ‘Georgia Flu’ provides the pivotal moment of world-wide ‘collapse’ in a narrative timeline which, although presented non-chronologically, spans five decades. Arthur is performing as King Lear in Toronto’s Elgin Theatre when he, and within days the whole society, collapses. After this apocalypse, we follow Kirsten and her companions in the Travelling Symphony, Clark who becomes a museum curator in the airport lounge, and Jeevan the paramedic who eventually lives with his family in a community in Virginia. Readers gradually build a picture of the three decades preceding the apocalypse, as well as the two decades after it, piecing together as the narrative takes us back and forward in time the network of relationships among Arthur, his first wife Miranda, his other wives, his friend Clark, his putative rescuer and erstwhile paparazzo Jeevan, and his son Tyler’s future nemesis, Kirsten.
Perspective on the Text
Emily St. John Mandel’s novel invites readers, not so much to fear doomsday and its dystopian aftermath, as to think about what we truly value in the society we currently inhabit. Each of Mandel’s main characters represents the good in humanity; each of them is engaged in work that either cares for others and builds community or creates art that shows ‘the best of the world’. Kirsten, Clark, Miranda, Jeevan, even Arthur, each is honest, creative, and selfless yet strong, even though they are also being human but flawed in some way.
Structure of the Text
Mandel’s non-chronological narrative pivots around the moment of Arthur’s (and the world’s) collapse. Whilst the narrative point of view is generally omniscient, or third person, readers frequently have access to the thoughts of a character, Miranda, Clark, Jeevan or Kirsten. The reader becomes aware, after a while, that the non-linear recursive structure reflects the nature of memory. The plot unfurls across not only timelines but characters and Miranda’s comic book ‘Dr Eleven’ is the portkey that reveals the tangled web we weave of life.
The Importance of the Arts and Sciences
With Miranda’s art (Dr Eleven Comics) as its central motif, the novel highlights the importance in society of both the humanities and the sciences. We see Mandel’s characters devoting themselves to visual and performing arts because these show the best of a society, and to writing, history and the media because by keeping records of the past, humans have a hope of understanding the present and doing better in the future. We see the characters remembering electricity and aeroplanes, and hoping for the resurgence of these lost wonders of the world since they represent high points in humankind’s scientific knowledge.
Issues and Themes
Survival is insufficient / survival is arbitrary / human instinct
Contagion & disasters / death/ violence & abuse in a tarnished new world / fear
Society & the individual / communitarianism versus individualism
Isolation and loneliness versus community connectedness
Memory / the self & society/ loss / nostalgia / history / regret / remembering the old world / transience of memory
Creativity / arts / sciences / enduring nature of arts and power to reflect reality
Belonging
Hope / optimism / luck in a crisis
Truth
Love
Moral courage
Creating order from chaos
Trust & community
Beauty of life in the old world
Religion
Symbols
Station Eleven
The paperweight
Shakespeare
The Letters to Victoria
Luli the dog’s name
Flight/aeroplanes
Water imagery
Death imagery
Virus as an avenging angel
Analytical Text Response Topics
“Survival is insufficient.” How does Mandel show that there is more to life than mere survival?
“I see you, I see you, I see you.” ‘Miranda, more than other characters in the novel, makes the best of life despite feeling lonely and disconnected.’ Discuss.
To what extent does Station Eleven suggest that a crisis brings out the best in people?
‘Arthur may be the central character in Mandel’s novel, but he is not the main character.’ Discuss.
‘Station Eleven suggests that it is better to be inspired by truth and beauty than by success.’ Discuss.
Discuss the roles played by Dr. Eleven and the Museum of Civilisation in Mandel’s novel.
‘The characters in Station Eleven are sustained by their memories.’ Do you agree?
‘Station Eleven is more about creativity in the arts and sciences than about a post-pandemic dystopia.’ Do you agree?
‘Despite the extreme difficulty of their situation, none of the characters succumbs to fear or pessimism.’ Discuss.
‘The characters in Station Eleven are motivated more by love than fear.’ Discuss.
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
This Resource is for students in Year 12 studying ‘Nine Days’ in AOS1: Unit 3, Reading & Creating Texts, Analytical Text Response, in the Victorian VCE 2023 Mainstream English Curriculum
Introduction
Written by a contemporary Australian female writer, Toni Jordan’s 2012 novel Nine Days is a celebration of family life in inner city Richmond in Melbourne from 1938 to 2006. There are nine different narrators who give their insights into nine days over a time span of more than sixty years that includes stories about four generations of one major family (the Westaways).
Topics raised by the novel, include the impact in Australia of the Second World War; suburban life of the time; housing in Richmond during the mid-twentieth century; aspects of social class, religious sectarianism (Catholic–Protestant) antagonism; social customs, norms and attitudes, particularly as these affect women; views about unmarried mothers and babies born out of wedlock; and the industrial nature of Richmond.
At the heart of the narrative is the love story between Jack Husting and Connie Westaway, some details of which are kept secret until the last chapter. This non-chronological structure of the narrative drives readers to keep going, mimicking life in that it does not always make sense until we look back over it and get the full picture. Like life too, there is both joy and grief and the ways that characters learn to cope and adapt to changed circumstances.
Structure of the Text
The structure of the novel is not in chronological order, so readers must use the details to piece together the connections. The novel focuses on nine particular days, mainly around World War II, and has nine different narrators. The dates of the chapters and narrators are as follows:
The novel certainly values the strength of character shown in each generation as characters face the challenges of their time and place, and as they strive to improve their circumstances, and it does this with a light humour. Familial love is explicitly valued, as is romantic love, although both are represented in different ways by the very different characters involved. Jean, the mother of Connie, Francis and Kip, shows her love in ways that may be seen as bitter and harsh by the modern reader, but she is fiercely devoted to her aspirations for her family. Kip represents an ideal form of domestic masculinity, romantically devoted to his wife Annabel for over fifty years, and a loving father to their twin daughters, Charlotte and Stanzi. The two women of the third generation, idiosyncratic in their differences, ultimately form a very contemporary family, with two mothers (albeit non-gay) for Alec and Libby, who have two different fathers. Thus, Jordan implicitly values contemporary attitudes about family, sexuality and gender.
Romantic Love
Romantic love is perhaps most poignantly portrayed in the story of Connie and Jack, but with a shocking end. When Connie is left, after Jack’s departure, with an unplanned pregnancy, no opportunity to get married, and a mother who herself is already familiar with the (illegal) process of procuring an abortion, the novel’s values seem clear. Its portrayal of Connie bleeding to death on a pavement, and of her brother Kip’s opinions about the importance of contraception, leave us in little doubt that the author values reproductive choice for women, whereas the Catholic Church frowns on contraception, and the State criminalises abortion, both with serious consequences for women. On the other hand, Charlotte, in the next generation, is free to make the decision not to have an abortion.
Themes
Family and Belonging = Nine Days explores the connections within families, changes over time in what constitutes a family, and our ties to each other. Through the focus on four different generations of the Westaway family, readers are shown connections over time. Families are celebrated and valued.
Relationships = The novel highlights family loyalty and obligation, and also shows readers the impact of love, celebrating both young romantic love and the deep attachment of life-long love. This is particularly seen through the characters of Kip and Annabel, as well as Connie and Jack Husting.
Dealing with Adversity = The novel explores how different characters in different decades struggle with adversity, and how they cope with loss, grief, poverty or loneliness.
Life during WW11 = The novel gives readers insight into the impact of the Second World War on the Melbourne population.
Social Attitudes & Norms Affecting Women = The novel follows the lives of female characters in different eras, and in doing so explores social attitudes and norms affecting women. Women’s work in both the domestic and public spheres is shown. Perhaps the most confronting issues the novel explores are about birth control and abortion. Other challenges faced by the women in the novel include the weight and self-image issues that Stanzi has.
Social Class, Religious Sectarianism & Status = Ada Husting, Jack’s mother, views their family as further up the social ladder than their neighbours, the Westaways. The Hustings are Protestant business owners, whereas the Westaways are Roman Catholic wage-earners. The sectarian divisions of the time are also reflected in Jean’s narrative.
Living For the Day = The novel celebrates the notion of living for the day and fully engaging with the people around you. Because of Kip’s early losses, he develops a kind of life philosophy which he attempts to instil in his daughters. He immerses himself fully in everyone and everything around him.
Language and Style
Narrative Voice = Because each chapter is narrated by a different character, each has an individual narrative voice that both reflects the character and includes references to the time in which they live. This kind of interior monologue allows us to see the world through the eyes of the narrator, while the dialogue gives us insight into other characters as well.
Humour = A distinctive feature throughout the text, humour is conveyed in both the dialogue and the interior voice of some characters. The narrative voices of Kip, Alec, Charlotte and Stanzi are particularly light-hearted and humorous.
Symbols
The structure of the novel is held together by several symbols which run through the episodes. These act as integrating devices and help the reader to recognise family connections, as well as each having an underlying significance.
The Photograph of Connie & Jack = The existence of the photograph is not known till late in the novel that provides a climax to Kip’s narration. The photo shows the passion between Connie & Jack that never had a chance to flourish but also represents other sweethearts who were separated by war. It adds to Connie’s sad story that ends in her death through an illegal abortion.
The Shilling = The lucky shilling connects the novel’s different episodes. It is given initially to Kip by Mr Husting, who likes and feels sorry for the cheeky young boy who tends his horse. He swears Kip to secrecy, knowing his wife would not approve. From Stanzi in the next chapter, we learn that it is one of her father’s ‘most prized possessions’.
The Amethyst Necklace = Another integrating device is the necklace, which is introduced to readers as a positive symbol in Charlotte’s chapter. She describes it as ‘my mother’s pendant’ and recounts how she received it for her eighteenth birthday. In this chapter she uses it for the so-called pendant test, which, according to superstition, indicates a baby’s gender. But for Charlotte it has a wider significance: she views the pendant as a link to the life of her family and their love.
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
This Resource is for students in Year 12 studying ‘All The Light We Cannot See’ in AOS1: Unit 3, Reading & Creating Texts, Analytical Text Response, in the Victorian VCE 2023 Mainstream English Curriculum
Introduction
War is a dark event in history
World War II, arguably one of the darkest events of human history, has been the basis of so much writing across so many genres and authors. Anthony Doerr’s novel alludes to the merciless anonymity of death in war, juxtaposes individualism with collective national mindlessness, and seeks out innocence amidst the brutality of war.
Through the Eyes of 2 Children
Doerr ties the lives and fates of the two protagonists Marie-Laure LeBlanc and Werner Pfennig during the time of World War 11 and readers see through the eyes of these two children even though they are on opposite sides of the war. He explores how both of them struggle with identity, morality and hope, each in their own way. Their storylines converge in the bombing of Saint-Malo, demonstrating that war can be indiscriminate in its victims. War does not care if its victims are children or adults, innocent or guilty, French or German. However, their interaction also speaks to the humanity that lies in all of us, no matter how deeply buried.
Aspects of War & Light in Darkest of Times
The novel explores many aspects of the war, including the destruction, the Occupation of France, the development and training of young boys to become Nazi soldiers, as well as the need to protect the vast items of cultural and national significance, which Hitler was determined to have for the German Nazis. Doerr encourages readers to consider the ‘light’ that can emerge even in the darkest of times, to remain always morally vigilant and to applaud the bravery of those individuals who resist tyrannical regimes despite the risk to their personal safety.
Hope and Humanity in the Title
The title hints at literal sight, the limitations of the physical sense of sight, the text then suggests the most perceptive characters are blind or have limited sight. The Frenchman’s repeated plea to ‘open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever’ is a reminder of morality. Humanity is at the heart of the novel, identity, morality and hope shape what it means to be human but characters struggle with all these qualities at the same time. The focus on war is not about glorifying battles but on praising individuals who have the courage and strength to bear witness to the destruction and not give up hope.
Structure of the Text
Epigraphs
The Novel includes 2 epigraphs at the beginning introducing key themes and situate the text as a work of historical fiction. The first quote by historian Philip Beck details the destruction of Saint-Malo. The second from Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels, introduces the idea of the influence of the radio the Nazi’s would not have been able to take power without it. These epigraphs introduce the idea that scientific knowledge can be deployed for useful purposes but also for senseless destruction.
14 Sections Marked by the Date
The novel contains 14 sections marked by the date to allow the reader to follow the non-chronological narrative. The first of these is titled ‘Zero’ and is set on 7 August 1944, the key date of the bombardment of Saint-Malo. Connotations of ‘ground zero’ are suggested by numbering in this manner, and every second section of the novel returns to the key dates of August 7, 8 and 9 when the lives of Marie-Laure, Werner and Von Rumpel intersect.
Short Chapters with Perspectives of Characters
Within each section are short chapters with deceptively simple titles that provide the reader with key information. The perspectives of Marie-Laure and Werner are prioritised throughout the novel with their points of view generally alternating to establish the similarities and differences in their experiences. Other characters narrate chapters to allow readers to understand how people other than the two teenagers were apprehensive about the war and to observe the callousness of those people in the Nazi regime as well as citizens who were willing to collaborate with the enemy for personal gain.
General Plot Overview
Chronologically, we start in 1934, five years before the war. Marie-Laure is a French girl who lives with her father Daniel Leblanc, working at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. As she starts to go blind, Daniel teaches her Braille, and makes her wooden models of their neighbourhood to help her navigate. Six years later, the Nazis invade France, and they flee the capital to find Daniel’s uncle Etienne, who lives in the seaside town of Saint-Malo; Daniel was also tasked with safeguarding a precious gem, the Sea of Flames, from the Nazis.
In Saint-Malo, Daniel also builds Marie-Laure a model of the town, hiding the gem inside. Meanwhile, she befriends Etienne, who suffers from agoraphobia as a result of the trauma from the First World War. He is charming and very knowledgeable about science, having made a series of scientific radio broadcasts with his brother Henri (who died in WWI). She also befriends his cook, Madame Manec, who participates in the resistance movement right up until she falls ill and dies.
Her father is also arrested (and would ultimately die in prison), and the loss of their loved ones prompts both Etienne and Marie-Laure to begin fighting back. Marie-Laure is also given a key to a grotto by the seaside which is full of molluscs, her favourite kind of animal.
On the other side of the war, Werner is, in 1934, an 8-year-old German boy growing up in an orphanage with his sister Jutta in the small mining town of Zollverein. They discover a radio, which allows them to listen to a broadcast from miles away (it was Henri and Etienne’s), and Werner learns French to try and understand it. One day, he repairs the radio of a Nazi official, who recruits him to the Hitler Youth on account of his ingenuity (and his very blonde hair and very blue eyes, considered to be desirable traits by the regime). Jutta grows increasingly distant from Werner during this time, as she questions the morality of the Nazis.
Werner is trained to be a soldier along with a cohort of other boys, and additionally learns to use radio to locate enemy soldiers. He befriends Frederick, an innocent boy who was only there because his parents were rich. Frederick would eventually fall victim to the brutality of the instructors, and Werner tries to quit out of solidarity. Unfortunately, he is sent into the army to apply his training to actual warfare. He fights with Frank Volkheimer, a slightly ambiguous character who a tough and cruel soldier, but also displays a capacity to be kind and gentle (including a fondness for classical music). The war eventually takes them to Saint-Malo.
Also, around 1943 or so, a Nazi sergeant, Reinhold von Rumpel, begins to track down the Sea of Flames. He would have been successful ultimately had it not been for Werner, who stops him in order to save Marie Laure. As America begins to turn the war around, Werner is arrested and dies after stepping on a German landmine; Marie-Laure and Etienne move back to Paris. Marie-Laure eventually becomes a scientist specialising in the study of molluscs and has an extensive family of her own by 2014.
Characters
Marie-Laure LeBlanc
One of the two protagonists, Marie-Laure LeBlanc is an inquisitive, intellectually adventurous girl. She became blind at the age of six, but learns to adapt to this and continues to explore and discover. For most of the novel, Marie-Laure is a teenager, but by the end of the novel she’s an old woman. Marie-Laure is a warm, loving girl: at the beginning of the book, she loves her father, Daniel LeBlanc, before anyone else. After 1941, when Daniel leads her to the seaside town of Saint-Malo, she becomes close with her great-uncle, Etienne LeBlanc and her cook, Madame Manec. Marie-Laure is capable of feats of great daring. With Daniel’s help, she trains herself to walk through large cities using only her cane, and when the conflict between France and Germany escalates, she volunteers to participate in the French resistance. In spite of the joy, she gets from reading and exploring, Marie-Laure’s life is full of tragedy: the people she loves most disappear from her life, beginning with her father. As she grows older and becomes a scientist of molluscs, Marie-Laure comes to appreciate the paradox of her life: while she sometimes wants to be as stoic and “closed up” as the clams and whelks she studies, she secretly desires to reconnect with her loved ones.
Werner Pfennig
Werner Pfennig is a young, intelligent German boy and one of the two protagonists. Werner has whitish-blond hair, blue eyes, and is strikingly intelligent, so he seems like a model of the Nazis’ “Aryan ideal”—except that he has a stronger moral compass and a lesser sense of racial superiority than most of his peers. During his adolescence, Werner is close with his sister, Jutta Pfennig, with whom he lives at an orphanage (their father died in a mining accident, and their mother’s fate is unknown). As a respite from their oppressive surroundings, Werner and Jutta develop a love for science and the broadcasts they hear via their radio (broadcasts being made, unbeknownst to either of them, by Marie’s own grandfather Henri). As Werner grows older, he develops an aptitude for engineering and science, but is morally challenged when he is accepted into Schulpforta (a prestigious Nazi school) and then during his stint in the German army. Werner uses his skills to help Volkheimer and other soldiers murder hundreds of people—some of them civilians—and wonders, again and again, if he’ll be able to live with his choices. Throughout his time in the army, Werner remains devoted to his sister, Jutta, and often thinks back to their carefree days together in the orphanage. His favourite memory of Jutta—listening to radio broadcasts in the orphanage—ultimately contributes to his decision to spare Marie-Laure’s life when he realizes that she is connected to these broadcasts.
Daniel LeBlanc
Marie Laure’s father, Daniel LeBlanc, is selflessly devoted to his daughter—indeed, he spends long hours teaching her Braille and crafting elaborate models of Paris (and later Saint-Malo) to teach her how to walk through the city without her eyesight. In general, Daniel is clever and good with his hands—a talent that makes him an accomplished locksmith at the Museum of Natural History before he’s forced to flee the Germans along with his daughter. Because his employers at the Museum have tasked him with the protection of a priceless diamond, the Sea of Flames, Daniel leaves his daughter in Saint-Malo, is later imprisoned, and eventually dies of influenza. Daniel’s absence in Marie-Laure’s life is one of the defining and most tragic themes of the novel—a sign of their sincere love for one another.
Frank Volkheimer
Frank Volkheimer is the huge, intimidating, and morally ambiguous staff sergeant who works as an assistant at Werner’s school, the National Institute, and later commands Werner through his time in the German army. He can be tough and cruel, especially with prisoners of the German army, but he’s always gentle with Werner, and saves Werner’s life on more than one occasion. It’s left unclear how loyal Volkheimer is to the German army—it’s suggested that he’s willing to ignore orders from his commanders because he values his friendship with Werner more highly. In spite of his sins during World War II, Volkheimer is arguably “good” at heart, and his loyalty to Werner motivates much of the action in the final 100 pages of the book. At the end of the war, he is left a shell of his former self and like Frederick represents a victim of the damage war does when he is haunted by his wartime experiences and lives a life subjected to PTSD.
Jutta Pfennig
Werner’s beloved sister Jutta is the moral constant against which Werner measures his own sins. Jutta is intelligent, loving and artistic and has a well-developed sense of moral decency that enables her, even from a young age, to see through the German war propaganda and question the rightness of the country’s actions in ways others do not. This means that even when Werner is recruited for the prestigious Nazi school Schulpforta. Jutta is disgusted and when he’s sent off to fight in the Nazi army, she fears he will develop a dangerous loyalty to Nazi Germany. Nevertheless, Jutta and Werner remain extremely close with one another, and throughout World War II, they think of each other and remember their carefree days as children through memories and letters. Years after Werner’s death, Jutta continues to love and remember her brother, and his lasting influence leads her to eventually make contact with Marie-Laure.
Frau Elena
Frau Elena is the head of the orphanage where Jutta and Werner grow up. She’s a gentle, kind woman, and treats all her children well like a mother figure, despite a severe lack of resources. When the Nazis rise to power in Germany, she’s bullied for being a Frenchwoman—but her decision to teach all her children to speak French leads (years later) to the thematic centre of the novel: the encounter between Werner and Marie-Laure in Saint-Malo. She bolsters Werner’s self esteem by believing in him thinking ‘you’ll do something great’ in the future.
Great Uncle Etienne LeBlanc
Etienne LeBlanc is an old, eccentric, and extremely reclusive (it’s implied he has post-traumatic stress disorder from World War I) man who lives in the seaside town of Saint-Malo, France. When his nephew, Daniel LeBlanc, and his grandniece, Marie-Laure, come to live with him following the Nazi invasion of Paris, he becomes close with Marie-Laure, often spending long chunks of time reading books to her. As time passes, Marie-Laure’s courage inspires Etienne to take his own actions against the German soldiers, and he bravely aids the French resistance by broadcasting important information about the German troops on his radio. Etienne’s love for Marie-Laure is confirmed when, frightened that she’s been arrested, he overcomes his terror of going outside and rushes out of his house to find her. He later tells his grandniece, “You’re the best thing that has ever happened to me.”
Frederick
Frederick is a fellow cadet with Werner at Schulpforta and they become friends. He demonstrates a mix of character traits, is patriotic and loyal to the Fuhrer and the Nazi cause and believes it is right to be at the school but at the same time he does disobey an order that he considers morally wrong. When he refuses to throw water on a prisoner, he represents a person with a strong conscience than any of the other students and does not retaliate when he is selected as the weakest of the group and punished with floggings at the hands of the teachers and fellow students. He inspires Werner to consider standing up against the regime but in the end, he receives injuries at the hands of his peers that ensure he will never function again normally, brain damaged and in need of care from his mother. He represents a moral character and like many others is a victim of the damage of the Nazi regime during the war.
Madame Manec
Worked for the LeBlancs since Etienne was a child. She is kind, insightful, dedicated, generous and warm and develops a strong relationship with Marie-Laure. She is actively involved in the French Resistance encouraging Etienne to become involved. She is one of the characters that Doerr considers is a strong person who put themselves at risk to oppose the German occupation of France. The novel shows that all kinds of people could find ways of fighting against the Nazis and remain loyal to France.
Sergeant Major Reinhold von Rumpel
His motivation is to locate the real Sea of Flames in the hope that it will cure his cancer and give him immortality. He chases his target unrelentingly and later in the besieged city of Saint-Malo he waits in Marie’s house but Werner kills him and saves Marie. He represents the evil of the Nazi regime and the destructive nature of war where great art works and culture was looted by the Nazi’s for their own personal gain.
Themes & Symbols
War, destruction, victims & perpetrators
Nazi Regime & propaganda
Occupation of France & French Resistance
Fate
Free will
Pride, duty, loyalty & nationalism
Family loyalty & love
Science & logic
Sight, ways of seeing & perception
Blindness
Memories
Morality & integrity
Conformity & resistance
Weakness & strength
Purpose & belonging
Humanity
Hope
Light & dark
Hitler Youth & loyalty to Fuhrer
Sea of Flames
Models of Paris & Saint-Malo
Whelks, Molluscs & Shells
Radio
Power of art, artefacts & culture
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
This Resource is for students in Year 12 studying ‘Never Let Me Go’ in comparison to ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’ in AOS1: Unit 4, Reading & Comparing Texts, Analytical Text Response, in the Victorian VCE 2023 Mainstream English Curriculum
Introduction
Novels ‘Never Let Me Go’, by Kazuo Ishiguro (2005), and ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’, by Steven Amsterdam (2009), offer thought-provoking views into alternative realities so close to our world that the parallels are obvious. Advances in medical treatments through gene therapy, and experimentation with cloning, are current issues where technological capability is, at times, ahead of the ethical considerations and restraints. Similarly, the Covid-19 pandemic, the environmental impact of climate change, the rise of oppressive political regimes, and the divide between the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’ are also much-debated topics in our own society.
Why Compare these 2 Texts?
Whilst these are two quite different novels, they both have young first-person protagonists who are exploring the worlds in which they live, searching for meaning and exploring their identities within this context. They form close friendships, fall in love, and create a sense of family and belonging. They also face loss, betrayal, and existential crises of a very real kind.
Speculative/Sci-fi or Dystopian Fiction?
Set in a parallel present or recent past, both novels can be categorised as speculative, sci-fi or dystopian fiction. The societies created in each text are recognisable to readers, even quite ordinary in the case of ‘Never Let Me Go’, but with a twist that jolts readers to question occurrences that might have once seemed acceptable by giving us a different viewpoint. In the case of ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’, we start somewhere familiar (Y2K panic) then are soon catapulted into an environmental catastrophe and a pandemic (Covid-19 or plague similarities) —although not beyond the bounds of belief—and the resulting social and political chaos. As with most speculative fiction, the texts ask ‘what if…?’ and try to answer it with their narratives.
Both Question Survival
Each text leads us to question what we are prepared to do to ensure our survival, collectively and individually. Both novelists position readers to see that human beings will ignore what they know is right, that they will bend their values and change their moral belief systems to get what they want, or need, to survive. Would you be prepared to steal, lie and cheat to meet you and your family’s needs? Would you be prepared to sacrifice the lives of other beings for your own?
What Makes us Human?
The novels, however, also come back to ideas about what makes us human. What is the essence of our ‘humanness’? They both suggest that what humans need above all is to belong, to find a tribe to protect them and to know who they are. Most times, these tribes are beneficial, but they can also be exclusive, divisive and threatening. The texts offer views of each of these. Mostly, however, each novel shows the importance of family or the need to belong to a family by whatever definition you give to this.
How much can we Control?
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, many of us have come to recognise that we can only control what we can control. Both of these novels celebrate this idea. Whilst the characters cannot control everything around them, what they do show is their resilience, their ability to adapt and change like the narrator of ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’, or their ability to find the positives in the people around them like Kathy in ‘Never Let Me Go’. This is all we can control.
Narrative Perspective & Style
Both have 1st Person Perspective of the Protagonist
Both novels are written in the first person, from the perspective of the protagonist. Amsterdam’s unnamed narrator relates events in a fairly straightforward manner with not a great deal of internal monologue. The dialogue is narrated as it happens, and is often direct dialogue, related without any commentary from the narrator. It is written in the present tense and the readers are positioned to feel a close affinity with the narrator as he progresses through episodes of his life. Perhaps because of the nature of the discontinuous episodic structure, he is rarely shown to think back over his life to past events. Readers observe the way that the pragmatic narrator moves forward to deal with the next thing and then the next.
Contrastingly, readers meet Ishiguro’s narrator, thirty-one-year-old Kathy H. at a crucial moment in her life and in a state of emotional reflection, and all that is revealed is filtered through her memories. Written in the past tense, in a nonlinear time scale of memories Kathy uses a conversational and colloquial tone with use of analepsis (flashbacks) and prolepsis (flash forwards). However, the novel often positions readers to feel less sure of the accuracy of the naïve Kathy’s interpretation of the people and events of her past. In a sense, even though Kathy is recalling her own past, the author makes it clear that she is, at times, an unreliable narrator. Her interpretation of Ruth’s motives, for example, are somewhat naïve. Further, Ishiguro sometimes gives us Tommy’s dialogue as a differing perspective, but this perspective is also filtered through Kathy’s fond memories. The narration of ‘Never Let Me Go’ is complex and invites further consideration as do the writer’s intention.
Structure & Questions in ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’
In ‘Things We Didn’t See Coming’, the episodic structure of 9 stories /discontinuous narrative/ gaps can make it a frustrating read for those readers who might want a continuous narrative with neat resolutions. The first story ‘What We Know Now’ takes place on December 31, 1999 and the other stories are progressively later. For the most part, each new chapter opens a new episode without any reference to the events or people who were in the previous one.
The novel asks a number of ‘what if’ questions which it attempts to answer:
What if climate change immediately impacted our country?
What if the country and city divide became political?
What if the planet was overcome by a plague of insects?
What if a virus wiped out the majority of the population?
CHARACTERS IN ‘THINGS WE DIDN’T SEE COMING’
Unnamed narrator/protagonist in all 9 stories
Otis narrator’s father in ‘What We Know Now’ & ‘Best Medicine’ stories
Cate narrator’s mother in ‘What We Know Now’ story
The grandparents of narrator in ‘What We Know Now’ & ‘The Theft That Got Me Here’ stories
Liz & Jenna are mother and daughter who protagonist meets in ‘Dry Land’ story
Margo is narrator’s love interest in ‘Cakewalk’, ‘Uses for Vinegar’& ‘The Forest for the Trees’ stories
Juliet is corrupt politician in ‘The Forest for the Trees’ story
Jeph 14-year-old orphan who has the narrator as a guardian in ‘Predisposed’ story
Karuna interviews narrator in ‘The Profit Motive’ story
Structure & Questions in ‘Never Let Me Go’
In ‘Never Let Me Go’ the novel is divided into 3 parts, with further chapter divisions. Part 1, chapters 1-9 is set in Hailsham. Part 2, chapters 10-17 is Life after Hailsham. Part 3, chapters 18-23 is Kathy’s life as a carer. The novel starts in ‘England, late 1990’s’ following narrator Kathy H. as a thirty-one-year-old carer who is about to become a donor and explores her memories of the past.
The novel asks a number of ‘what if’ questions which it asks the readers to consider their answers:
What makes us human?
What rights must all humans have?
What does an individual ‘owe’ society?
How we live our lives in order for it to be meaningful?
Why we should fight to ensure equality amongst all humans?
Why is organ trafficking unethical?
Is human cloning the future or is it unethical, just playing God?
CHARACTERS IN ‘NEVER LET ME GO’
Kathy H. narrator/protagonist
Ruth best friend of Kathy at Hailsham
Tommy student at Hailsham/has relationship with Ruth & later Kathy
Chrissie & Rodney veterans of the Cottages
Miss Lucy guardian at Hailsham
Miss Emily head guardian at Hailsham
Madame Marie-Claude founder of Hailsham and collects creative work of students for her gallery
Miss Geraldine guardian at Hailsham
Keffers looks after maintenance at The Cottages
COMPARISON THEMES IN BOTH TEXTS
dystopian society
humanity & compassion
human nature
forms of power & control
conformity & acceptance
survival
identity & freedom
dangers of technology
Information & knowledge
love & friendship
family
fear, hope & despair
empathy & compassion
impact of politics on people
bildungsroman
love & relationships
personal agency
memory, the past & time
fate, free will & choice
science without ethics
individual versus society
science fiction versus realism
manipulation of truth
exploitation & inequality
constant surveillance
dehumanisation
corporate domination
KEY CONCEPT
IDEAS FROM NEVER LET ME GO
IDEAS FROM THINGS WE DIDN’T SEE COMING
ENRICHED UNDERSTANDING OF THE KEY CONCEPT
The Importance of Connection
The students support each other through childhoodThey drift apart in adulthoodThey revisit their close bonds when the donations begin
Relationships can sometimes be destructiveWe need connection to others to surviveAt the end of our lives, connection matters
While we may drift apart from those we love over the course of our lives, both authors emphasise the importance of connections during hard times
Memories & The Present
The past can be a refugeThe details of the past can be hazyWe can get trapped in our memories
The past can be irrelevant, or at worst, a burdenThe present is what matters
While memories of the past can offer us safety and comfort, they cannot protect us from the present or our futures
Power & Control
Power structures exist that keep people in their place in societyThere is little point in struggling for control
Power structures are ambiguous and temporaryWe have control over our own lives
In the face of ever-changing and increasingly authoritarian power structures, the only control we have is over how we live our lives
Ethics & Morality
In the future we will be forced to make increasingly difficult ethical choicesWhat is a life worth?What is human?
Difficult circumstances lead to tough moral decisionsThere is rarely any clear ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ for every situation
Both authors reveal how difficult moral and ethical situations impact entire nations and individuals
Hope & Despair
The clones are capable of hope despite the knowledge of their fatesHumans are hopeful, even in the face of impending death
Some people fear the future and they may be proved rightSome people are willing to do whatever it takes to survive
In the face of our mortality, both authors demonstrate that life is filled with moments of both hope and despair
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
This Resource is for students in Year 11 studying’Minfields & Miniskirts’ & ‘Wilfred Owen War Poems’ in the Victorian VCE Curriculum
Structure of the Play/ Plot / Set / Music / Title Symbols / Motifs
Begins with the sounds in the distance of military drums on an Anzac Day march in 1980’s, where the women meet, and ends to the sound of the military band at an Anzac Day march at the end of the play. The marches celebration of returned soldiers is a time of mixed emotions of joy and sadness for the characters. Significantly, the play comes full circle at the end with the return to the march and the return of the women to Australia which has brought them a new level of understanding about their experiences in Vietnam. The link to the song at the end of the play is Joni Mitchell’s ‘The Circle Game’ as all the women sing together of their lives going ‘round and round’ after their ‘life altering experience’ in Vietnam.
The play is organised into 11 scenes. While each scene has a particular theme that joins the stories of the 5 women together, each of the women’s stories has a quality that makes it distinct from the other character’s stories. The plot is carried by the 5 characters, so that plot and character are very closely related. While there is no direct interaction between the characters on stage or any dialogues between them, we do see them join in singing 1960’s songs together, for example, Scene 2 ‘Off to War’ Sandy, Eve, Kathy & Ruth sing together ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane’.
O’Connell has drafted the script in such a way as to imply clear links and shifts in perspective between the characters, so that different points of view are cast on the same events. He has also set the monologues within a theatrical choreography of the stage space, to add a sense of realism to the scenes, which otherwise consist solely of the 5 spoken monologues. The play agglomerates the anecdotes of each of the women into a group narrative that typifies the particular scene in which it occurs. The effect of this grouping is to bring the women’s stories together, even as they have their key points of difference.
The set of the play is a mash up of ancient Vietnamese, colonial French style and modern American capitalism ‘Coca Cola’ street furniture and the physical environment of Vietnam. The opening set includes a silk stage curtain with a bleached-out handwritten message celebrating the Australian women who went to Vietnam. The audience also hear music from famous Vietnam War era films allowing them to be drawn into the world of Vietnam. Even though the women had different backgrounds, as much as their experiences, they have one thing in common, which is explored poignantly in the final sentence: ‘Vietnam transformed their lives and haunted their memories’.
The title of the play is an illusion to 2 deeper thematic concerns that rule life – sex and death. The ‘miniskirts’ are a symbol of liberated female sexuality and ‘minefields’ are a symbol of maiming, disfigurement and death. These 2 elements were in evidence during the Vietnam War. The young soldiers were in their 20’s and sexually virile but many came back with their bodies and minds broken and shattered or in body bags as 521 Australians died. All women return from Vietnam profoundly changed by their experiences. Helicopters form a dominant motif that are heard constantly hovering in the background of the play to remind the audience of the women’s memories of the war.
Characters
Margaret The Vet’s wife – the first to speak in the play and she is both the outsider of the group of 5, and the one who comes closest to experiencing the violence of the Vietnam War directly in her own home. Her husband James brings back the Vietnam War with him, in fact he is still fighting the war as he steps through the front door and continues fighting the war until the day he commits suicide by gassing himself to death in the car. Margaret represents many thousands of wives who had to nurse their veteran husbands who returned from seeing action in Vietnam with profound psychological disturbances.
Sandy The entertainer – Sandy’s motivation for going to Vietnam is to exploit the captive audience she will find there, as she entertains the troops as one of the Velveteens. She is attracted by the glitz and glamour of being a show-girl, strutting up on stage in her pink feathers, and performing in front of hordes of GI’s and so we recognise early on in the play that Sandy enjoys being the centre of attention. Her life in Vietnam is a step-up from performing on stage ‘in my miniskirt’ in some unheard of ‘suburban club’ and her socio-economic background propels her towards Vietnam as her options and possibilities for success in Australia are severely limited.
Kathy The nurse – Kathy comes out of a military family and volunteering for service in Vietnam is a natural thing for her to do, war service is in her DNA. Her father is a man of some influence and she is able to communicate back to him the kinds of conditions she is experiencing on the front-line hospital and field work, and the appalling lack of equipment. She is proud to be serving, but she also becomes disillusioned fairly quickly or has a reality check realising the supposed enemy soldiers are no better or no worse than her own side and resolves to treat everyone equally.
Eve The volunteer – Eve heralds from a devoutly Christian family and feels it her mission to volunteer herself to those suffering in the war. She leaves with her parents’ blessing but throughout proves to be a perceptive observer of both other people and herself. She realises fairly soon that in her experience ‘It was hard to believe in my God in Vietnam’ and understands the moment she comes in to land, upon seeing an old man ploughing his paddy field as an aerial battle was raging around him, that the Vietnam War could never be won. This perception of the nature of things was lost on the politicians and military men conducting the war.
Ruth The journalist – Ruth comes to Vietnam as a dare by a fellow journalist but the urge behind her decision is motivated also by her desire for excitement and adventure beyond editing the women’s pages of the local tabloid. We realise that Ruth is in some ways equally exploitative of the new situation, as she tries to get ‘an in’ with the locals and uses her overt physical features to get herself invited to parties. While in Vietnam the injuries and deaths that surround her do not move her beyond wearing the Star of David that her Green Beret soldier husband-to-be wore before his death. While she admits the Vietnam War made her feel ‘alive’ she does not gain any deeper perception about herself as a result.
Themes
Social content of the Vietnam War
Freedom to kill at random / no conscience
Counter culture of 1960’s drugs
Freedom to exploit or harm others
Psychological effects of war
PTSD / psychotic effect of war
Women exploited / rape / no moral power
Language & power / feelings
Noble ideal vs corrupted ideal of war
South East Asia reality of Communist domino effect
Plot Outline
Scene 1: Prologue The opening scene is set at an Anzac Day march and the 5 women give us a snippet of the stories that are about to be told in the main body (scenes 3-10) of the play.
Scene 2: Off to War The women give the background to their decision to leave Australia for Vietnam and their personal motivations – Sandy for glamour, Kathy to carry on a family tradition of helping out in times of war, Ruth to embark on a new step in her career as a journalist, and Eve through a general sense of dissatisfaction with expectancies of her getting married and settling down. For Margaret, it is her husband who goes ‘off to war’.
Scene 3: Hello Vietnam The 4 women describe the unreal world that greets them upon their arrival in Vietnam – human body parts being eaten by dogs, grenade-lobbing acid-tripping GIs and jealous prostitutes in Saigon.
Scene 4: A Workaday War The bizarreness of everyday life during the Vietnam War is expressed in each of the women’s stories. Margaret describes the return of her husband as ‘a ghost’.
Scene 5: Children This scene contains stories that involve children and tell us a universal truth, that if truth is the first victim of war, then ordinary people including children run a close second. The stories emphasise Eve’s perception as she arrives in Vietnam in the Prologue – that the war could never be won.
Scene 6: Human Beings The title of the scene refers to the story Ruth tells of being unable to report on the Vietnamese as human beings, and the scene shows the enormous human cost of the war, as ordinary civilians are executed on mere suspicion of being involved with the Viet Cong. A story of hope ends the scene as Kathy tells of a baby’s birth in a field, a new life amongst so much senseless death.
Scene 7: RandR – Romance & Rape While many of the women did find genuine romance in Vietnam, these dalliances were often tinged with danger. Meanwhile, back in Australia, Margaret’s husband is even more dangerous and psychologically deranged, and rapes her. At the end of the scene the women are introduced and sing as “The Velveteens”.
Scene 8: War Does Become Normal The weirdness and strangeness of the Vietnam War begins to become normalised. Many of the women tell bizarre stories with surreal and sometimes disturbing juxtapositions. A dying GI hallucinates his wife onto Eve, Ruth witnesses a rudimentary electro-interrogation, and Sandy gets a thrill out of firing an M16 off the back of a jeep. The scene ends with the music of Bing Crosby, singing “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas”.
Scene 9: Goodnight Saigon The women describe their hasty evacuation following the fall of Saigon, and the end of their experiences. Margaret’s husband commits suicide, Sandy’s entertainment dreams end in the story of 6 GI’s raping her girlfriend in a hut.
Scene 10: Aftermath Returning to Australia makes the women realise the extent to which their experiences in Vietnam have affected them. Their reactions are either of frustration and boredom, or a continuation of their responses in Vietnam. Ruth harangues a film theatre audience for laughing in MASH, Sandy dives into the gutter when she hears some Hare Krishnas, Kathy will only date Vietnam Vets, while Eve’s health has been affected by the chemicals.
Scene 11: Epilogue The play returns to the Anzac Day march, and the women reiterate the profound effect that their Vietnam experience has had on them. They end all singing together with the lyrics of a Joni Mitchell song “The Circle Game”, symbolising the return of the plot to its starting point and the experiences of the women in Vietnam that are life altering and will never be forgotten.
All Resources created by englishtutorlessons.com.au Online Tutoring using Zoom for Mainstream English Students in the Victorian Curriculum
Look carefully at the similarities and differences between the two main characters Genly Ai and Therem Harth Rem Ir Estraven in Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. The list of differences and similarities between the two characters is from my interpretation only and therefore could be added to by students who develop their own interpretation of Genly and Estraven.
