The Secret River by Kate Grenville Analysis

Posted on February 3, 2017 by Margaret

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English, The Secret River by Kate Grenville in the Victorian Curriculum.

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

Genre and Historical Setting of The Secret River

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

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

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

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

Structure of The Secret River

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Relationship between Conflicts of Space, Place & Identity

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

Language and Dialogue of The Secret River

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

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

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

The Significance of the Title

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

Themes, Issues and Ideas in The Secret River

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

‘Guilt’ in Grenville’s Trilogy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Both Texts Question “Who owns what?”

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

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Island: Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod Basic Notes

Posted on January 2, 2017 by Margaret

Front Cover

This Resource is for students studying Island: Collected Stories in the Mainstream English Victorian Curriculum.

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

**Genre and Structure of Island: Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod**

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

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

Cape Breton Setting of Island

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

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

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

Cape Breton Communities Founded on Tradition and Families

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

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

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

Language of Island

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

Significance of the Historical Setting of Cape Breton

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

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

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

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

Themes and Ideas in Island

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

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

This Resource was created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

Peter Skrzynecki ‘Old New World Poetry’ Basic Notes

Posted on January 1, 2017 by Margaret

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

About the Poet Peter Skrzynecki

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

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

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

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

Skrzynecki’s Style of Poetry

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

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

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

Skrzynecki’s Poetry Rhythm & Imagery

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

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

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

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

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

Synthesising Poems about Birds Compared to Immigrants

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

Poems from The Immigrant Chronicle

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

Belonging in Feliks Skrzynecki

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

Themes in the New Collection

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

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

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

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

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

This Resource is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

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

Posted on July 22, 2016 by Margaret

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

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

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

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

The Prologue

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

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

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

Conflict in the Text

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

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

Writing an Essay on Conflict

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

Ask yourself questions about Conflict

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

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

Conflict also asks you to think about how it arises

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

Finally, Conflict asks you to think about its consequences

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

This Resource is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

I for Isobel by Amy Witting: A Brief Synopsis

Posted on July 19, 2016 by Margaret

This Resource is for students studying in the Mainstream English Victorian Curriculum.

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

Key Knowledge for Writing an Essay on a Narrative Text

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

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

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

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

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

Interpretation of I for Isobel

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

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

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

Isobel Callaghan is Protagonist and Narrative Voice

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

The Opening Chapter 1 “The Birthday Present”

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

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

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

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

May Callaghan’s Cruelty is her Power over Isobel

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Revelation “I am a writer”

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

Themes, Ideas and Values to consider in I for Isobel

Emotional abuse and being a victim

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

Identity

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

Truth and lies

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

Time

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

The word factory

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

Literature

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

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

Love / hate
Rejection / shame
Life / love
Madness / intellect
Isolation / coming in from the cold
Domestic life / artist
Repressed / accepted
Bullied / standing up
Despair / saintly

This Resource is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

The Prologue in Romeo and Juliet

Posted on July 9, 2015 by Margaret

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

The Significance of the Chorus in the Prologue

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

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

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

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

Sonnet = a 14 line poem

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

The Obvious Function of the Prologue

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

“Star-crossed Lovers”

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

This Resource was created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

‘Night’ by Elie Wiesel Basic Notes

Posted on April 5, 2014 by Margaret

Night

This resource is for students studying in the Victorian Mainstream English Curriculum.

**Context of Night by Elie Wiesel**

Night is Elie Wiesel’s masterpiece autobiographical account of surviving the Holocaust while a young teenager. It is a candid, horrific and deeply saddening piece of Holocaust literature. Set in a series of German concentration camps, Night offers much more than a litany of the daily terrors. It records the unspeakable yet commonplace occurrences, the everyday perversion and rampant inhumanity, of life inside a death camp. At times, it is a painful memoir to read but it does eloquently address what the Holocaust was, what it meant, and what its legacy is and will be.

Elie Wiesel records his own terrifying personal experiences of the Nazi death camp horror through his narrator Eliezer. Night traces Eliezer’s journey as a young Jewish boy who agonizingly witnesses the death of his family, the death of his innocence and the death of his God. While Eliezer parallels Elie Wiesel’s own biography and is intensely personal, it also is representative of the experiences of hundreds of thousands of Jewish teenagers during the Holocaust. Night awakens the shocking memory of evil at its absolute and carries with it the unforgettable message that this horror must never be allowed to happen again.

Each chapter raises questions that have haunted the world since Hitler’s rise: How could the world allow such a staggering number of innocents to be persecuted and executed? Why does one man survive when his body, mind and spirit are brutalized for months, even years, when his neighbour, or father, does not?

Non-Fiction Narrative such as Night by Elie Wiesel

The chosen text, such as Night by Elie Wiesel, explores a range of experiences and offers interesting insights into human experience and human condition. Texts such as this help us to reflect on how individuals respond to challenge and adversity, what they value, what gives them hope and why they behave the way they do. The ‘why’ is the most interesting question for students to explore.

Types of Non-Fiction Narratives such as Night by Elie Wiesel

Biography, autobiography and memoirs are popular forms of book-length non-fiction narratives. They tell a story, the story of someone’s personal experience. These texts share many of the structural features of other narrative genres, for example, they usually have a climax and some sense of resolution. Biographies, autobiographies and memoirs give us insights into the lives of others whose experiences are unique. They can increase our understanding of many issues, human suffering and dilemmas. They can present “the untold story” of someone who lives through a situation such as Elie Wiesel during the Holocaust, recount an unknown event that affected the course of history or simply bring us stories of courage, resilience and heroism.

Point of View and Selection of Events in a Biography, Autobiography and Memoirs

To a great extent these texts tell the ‘truth’. They are accounts of real events happening to real people. However, in any genre the writer selects what to include and what to leave out of the story, and this is no less the case for non-fiction narratives. These texts often aim to be detached from their subject and are written from a certain perspective, evident in the information included and what is omitted.

For autobiographies and memoirs, that is first-hand or ‘eyewitness’ accounts, the writer will remember the facts from a particular point of view. For example, the events of Night are narrated by Elie, a Holocaust victim. If a bystander or an officer in the German army was to recount the same events, their recollections would no doubt be different. Therefore the author’s purpose in writing a non-fiction text, whether to give testimony, find answers, reveal a hidden story, can also affect the way in which he or she recalls or shapes the account.

In studying Night by Elie Wiesel it is important to identify the writer’s perspective on the people and events in the narrative. This will help you appreciate the tone and style of the writing and understand why certain themes are explored and certain values are expressed.

Importance of Context and Setting

One way of understanding an author’s viewpoint in non-fiction narrative writing is to undertake research about the life and times of the subject. Studying Night by Elie Wiesel you should research the author and the history of World War II, Nazi Germany, concentration camps, lives of survivors of such camps and the social and political context in which the events took place.

Create a Timeline

Creating a timeline is also useful to record the significant events in the narrative along with the historical significance. Annotating on the timeline any crises and turning points in the narrative, a climax and some sort of resolution as well.

Consider the Subjects – The People of Non-Fiction

Make a summary of the subjects, the people in the non-fiction. List these important facts about them:

Name
Brief words about them
Their appearance
Most important relationship
Most important thing that happens to them
Key quotes, by them, to them, or about them
Main function in the text
Most important thing he or she contributes to our understanding of a main subject or theme

Themes and Values

Identify the central theme of the non-fiction text. Develop some ‘big ideas’ related to the central theme by creating a concept map. Identify values demonstrated in the text by making a summary of the following:

Choose 5 people from the text, the main subject and four other significant individuals
Based on what they say, think or do, summarise the views expressed by each
Make a note of the consequences of their behaviour
Does this show the writer’s approval or disapproval of their values, or of the values of their society?
As Night is an autobiography, how does the writer judge his own actions, decisions and attitudes?

Identify the World View Illustrated in the Text

Ask yourself these questions about the world view illustrated in the text:

ultimately hopeful or doomed?
getting better or getting worse?
a frightening place or a beautiful place?
a place of abundance or dearth?
a place of restrictions or of freedom?

Summarise your conclusions in a few sentences that include evidence from the text that supports your conclusions. This is vital information that you need to write an analytical essay on the non-fiction text you are studying.

Metalanguage for Non-Fiction Narratives

Use metalanguage when writing about your particular texts that includes what is relevant to the subject, the point of view and the type of narrative. Words to include in this list are

autobiography
biography
biographer
non-fiction
memoir
point of view
subject ie. the person or a set of events

Here is some Valuable Research on Night by Elie Wiesel to use for Analytical Text Responses

Use the following research to summarise your reading and understanding of the text to help you respond analytically in an essay.

Background on the Author Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel was born on September 30, 1928, in Sighet, a small town in Transylvania that was then part of Romania but became part of Hungary in 1940. Wiesel’s Orthodox Jewish family was highly observant of Jewish tradition. His father, Shlomo, a shopkeeper, was very involved with the Jewish community, which was confined to the Jewish section of town, called the shtetl. As a child and teenager, Wiesel distinguished himself in the study of traditional Jewish texts: the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament), the Talmud (codified oral law), and even, unusual for someone so young, the mystical texts of the Cabbala.

The Jews in Hungary During World War II

Until 1944, the Jews of Hungary were relatively unaffected by the catastrophe that was destroying the Jewish communities in other parts of Europe. While anti-Jewish legislation was a common phenomenon in Hungary, the Holocaust itself did not reach Hungary until March 1944. The German army occupied Hungary, installing a puppet government under Nazi control. Adolf Eichmann, the executioner of the Final Solution, came to Hungary to oversee personally the destruction of Hungary’s Jews. The Nazis operated with remarkable speed: in the spring of 1944, the Hungarian Jewish community, the only remaining large Jewish community in continental Europe, was deported to concentration camps in Germany and Poland.

Eventually, the Nazis murdered 560,000 Hungarian Jews, the overwhelming majority of the pre-war Jewish population in Hungary. In Wiesel’s native Sighet, the disaster was even worse: of the 15,000 Jews in pre-war Sighet, only about fifty families survived the Holocaust.

Elie Wiesel’s Family Deported to Auschwitz in 1944

In May of 1944, when Wiesel was fifteen, his family and many inhabitants of the Sighet shtetl were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland. The largest and deadliest of the camps, Auschwitz was the site of more than 1,300,000 Jewish deaths. Wiesel’s father, mother, and sisters all died in the Holocaust. Wiesel himself, the only survivor of his family, was liberated by the American Army in 1945.

Genre of Night

As an autobiography, Night is not a formal history, but rather a portrayal of a life and time from a limited point of view. It is not a novel because the events and people portrayed really did exist. The text is a mixture of testimony, deposition and emotional truth-telling which is similar to works in the memoir genre. It is clear that Eliezer is meant to serve, to a great extent, as author Elie Wiesel’s stand-in and representative. Minor details have been altered, but what happens to Eliezer is what happened to Wiesel himself during the Holocaust. It is important to remember, however, that there is a difference between the persona of Night’s narrator, Eliezer, and that of Night’s author, Elie Wiesel.

Summary of the Narrative

Night is narrated by Eliezer, a Jewish teenager who, when the memoir begins, lives in his hometown of Sighet, in Hungarian Transylvania. Eliezer studies the Torah (the first five books of the Old Testament) and the Cabbala (a doctrine of Jewish mysticism). His instruction is cut short, however, when his teacher, Moshe the Beadle, is deported. In a few months, Moshe returns, telling a horrifying tale: the Gestapo (the German secret police force) took charge of his train, led everyone into the woods, and systematically butchered them. Nobody believes Moshe, who is taken for a lunatic.

In the spring of 1944, the Nazis occupy Hungary. Not long afterward, a series of increasingly repressive measures are passed, and the Jews of Eliezer’s town are forced into small ghettos within Sighet. Soon they are herded onto cattle cars, and a nightmarish journey ensues. After days and nights crammed into the car, exhausted and near starvation, the passengers arrive at Birkenau, the gateway to Auschwitz.

Upon his arrival in Birkenau, Eliezer and his father are separated from his mother and sisters, whom they never see again. In the first of many “selections” that Eliezer describes in the memoir, the Jews are evaluated to determine whether they should be killed immediately or put to work. Eliezer and his father seem to pass the evaluation, but before they are brought to the prisoners’ barracks, they stumble upon the open-pit furnaces where the Nazis are burning babies by the truckload.

The Jewish arrivals are stripped, shaved, disinfected, and treated with almost unimaginable cruelty. Eventually, their captors march them from Birkenau to the main camp, Auschwitz. They eventually arrive in Buna, a work camp, where Eliezer is put to work in an electrical-fittings factory. Under slave-labour conditions, severely malnourished and decimated by the frequent “selections,” the Jews take solace in caring for each other, in religion, and in Zionism, a movement favouring the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine considered the holy land. In the camp, the Jews are subject to beatings and repeated humiliations. A vicious foreman forces Eliezer to give him his gold tooth, which is prized out of his mouth with a rusty spoon.

The prisoners are forced to watch the hanging of fellow prisoners in the camp courtyard. On one occasion, the Gestapo even hang a small child who had been associated with some rebels within Buna. Due to the horrific conditions in the camps and the ever-present danger of death, many of the prisoners themselves begin to slide into cruelty, concerned only with personal survival. Sons begin to abandon and abuse their fathers. Eliezer himself begins to lose his humanity and his faith, both in God and in the people around him.

After months in the camp, Eliezer undergoes an operation for a foot injury. While he is in the infirmary, however, the Nazis decide to evacuate the camp because the Russians are advancing and are on the verge of liberating Buna. In the middle of a snowstorm, the prisoners begin a death march: they are forced to run for more than fifty miles to the Gleiwitz concentration camp. Many die of exposure to the harsh weather and exhaustion.

At Gleiwitz, the prisoners are herded into cattle cars once again. They begin another deadly journey: one hundred Jews board the car, but only twelve remain alive when the train reaches the concentration camp Buchenwald. Throughout the ordeal, Eliezer and his father help each other to survive by means of mutual support and concern. In Buchenwald, however, Eliezer’s father dies of dysentery and physical abuse. Eliezer survives, an empty shell of a man until April 11, 1945, the day that the American army liberates the camp.

The Importance of “Night” as a Symbol

The Bible begins with God’s creation of the earth “without form and void; and darkness [is] upon the face of the deep” (Genesis 1:2 New International Version). God’s first act is to create light and dispel this darkness. Darkness and night therefore symbolise a world without God’s presence.

In Night, Wiesel exploits this allusion. Night always occurs when suffering is at its worst and its presence reflects Eliezer’s belief that he lives in a world without God. The falling of night is used by Wiesel to create an atmosphere of darkness, a back drop against which to describe danger and suffering, fear, loss of hope, loss of faith and loss of life.

The imagery of night is repeated throughout the book to help us visualise and make sense of the sketches. Eliezer notes the time of day as the worst things happen at night. This backdrops the association that Wiesel experienced during his time in the camps. It also conjures up dreams and nightmares of the psychological journey Wiesel went through.

The first time Eliezer mentions that night fell when his father is interrupted while telling stories and they are informed about the deportation of the Jews in Sighet. Similarly it is night when Eliezer first arrives at Birkenau/Auschwitz and it is night, specifically “pitch darkness”, when the prisoners begin their horrible run from Buna. It was at night that Eliezer’s faith is utterly destroyed and he can never forget the horror of that night.

One of the Most Notable Quotes

(Page xix in ‘The Foreword’ Modern Penguin Classics Version 2006)

“Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed.

Never shall I forget that smoke.

Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies I saw turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky.

Never shall I forget those flames which consumed my faith forever.

Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live.

Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.

Never shall I forget these things, even if I am condemned to live as long as God Himself.

Never.”

It is perhaps Night’s most famous passage, notable because it is one of the few moments in the memoir where Eliezer breaks out of the continuous narrative stream with which he tells his tale. As he reflects upon his horrendous first night in the concentration camp and its lasting effect on his life, Wiesel introduces the theme of Eliezer’s spiritual crisis and his loss of faith in God. Both the form and content of this passage reflect the inversion of Eliezer’s faith and the morality of the world around him. Everything he once believed has been turned upside down. Eliezer claims that his faith is utterly destroyed, yet at the same time says that he will never forget these things even if he “live[s] as long as God Himself.”

Significance of the Final Passage of Night

“One day I was able to get up, after gathering all my strength. I wanted to see myself in the mirror hanging on the opposite wall. I had not seen myself since the ghetto. From the depths of the mirror, a corpse gazed back at me. The look in his eyes, as they stared into mine, has never left me.” (p.115)

This is the final passage of Night, Eliezer’s final statement about the effect the Holocaust has had on him. Eliezer implies that even though he has survived the war physically, he is essentially dead, his soul killed by the suffering he witnessed and endured. Yet, when Eliezer says, “the look in his eyes, as he stared into mine,” he implies a separation between himself and the corpse. His language, too, indicates a fundamental separation between his sense of self and his identity as a Holocaust victim, as if he has become two distinct beings. The corpse-image reminds him how much he has suffered and how much of himself, his faith in God, his innocence, his faith in mankind, his father, his mother, his sister, has been killed in the camps. At the same time, he manages to separate himself from this empty shell.

The image of the corpse will always stay with him, but he has found a sense of identity that will endure beyond the Holocaust. As dark as this passage is, its message is partially hopeful. Eliezer survives beyond the horrible suffering he endured by separating himself from it, casting it aside so he can remember, but not continue to feel, the horror.

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Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Synopsis

Posted on October 28, 2013 by Margaret

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

Front Cover

Summer of the Seventeenth Doll – A Play by Ray Lawler

**Why is Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Still Relevant Today?**

This ground-breaking piece of Australian drama premiered at MTC in 1955. It is surely dated, with many colloquialisms and morals of the times not heard of today. However, Summer of the Seventeenth Doll (‘The Doll’) still captures an audience. This is not necessarily because of its Australian-‘ness’, but more because of its series of universals. This is a play about ordinary people, which people can immediately relate to.

For sixteen summers, Roo and Barney have spent their long layoff from the cane-cutting season down in Melbourne having a high old time with two Carlton barmaids, Olive and Nancy. However, back for their seventeenth summer, it seems time has finally caught up with them.

The Driving Force Behind Summer of the Seventeenth Doll is Sadness

The driving force behind the play is surely the desperate sadness which permeates the very heart of the play. This sadness is brought about by the fact that a group of people are trying to stay young, and are refusing to realise they are growing old. They have a lack of understanding of the growing process, and so stick with what they know best – their youth; ultimately to their downfall. We see the very young along with the very old in this play, we see the beginnings of a cycle of women in a situation, each one determined to make their life work, although they have seen the downfall of the older woman.

Emma hasn’t had an easy life, and although Olive has seen this, she hasn’t learnt any lessons from her, except that she wants to have it differently. Bubba, similarly, can see that Olive’s life was less than perfect in the outcome, and is determined to make it work for her – she sees the opportunity in Johnnie Dowd, but fails to understand why it is that the group of friends have fallen apart. The audience doesn’t know whether Olive will turn out like Emma, hardened and cynical, but ultimately wise, which is an audience-capturing in the thoughtfulness.

The Joke – Facade of Men Trying to Stay Young

We can see that the men who at one stage came down like ‘eagles flyin’ down out of the sun’ are coming down this summer battered and bruised. They are not the fit young men they were – Roo has a bad back, and Barney has had many blows to his ego regarding the studliness he once enjoyed. Behind his joking facade, we can see that he is actually a rather pathetic man, who is prepared to break the unwritten code of mateship to save his own skin. This act of self-preservation has lost Barney the respect and friendship he once had from Roo, as can be seen when they fight in Act II Scene 2. The audience, however, sympathises with Barney, because they can see that behind his facade he is really hurt and sad when he is laughed at by women. The audience sympthasises with this because everyone knows how it feels to be laughed at.

Nancy is the Only One Who Embraces Change

Nancy, the only main character we don’t actually meet, has realised she is getting old, and wanted to get out of the slowly crumbling dream of the lay-off, consequently getting married, and leaving Barney and the others. She embraced change in a way that Olive cannot understand – Olive believes Nancy’s choice as being traitorous to the dream, “She made a mistake – Marriage is different, and Nancy knew it.” Through this, we can see a crumbling, insecure world with people who cling, like Olive, or change and grow after the coming of realisation, like Nancy and Roo.

Olive Clings to a Reality that Cannot Continue

Olive clings to a reality that cannot continue. Pearl sees this, and is used in this play as a critical voice, so the audience can size up the characters and compare their actions. Pearl sees the lay-off for what it is, “…if you’d only come out of your day-dream long enough to take a grown-up look at the lay-off…” Is it a faith for Olive, or a fantasy? “I’m blind to what I want to be.”

Roo Sees His Future is Doomed Unless he Embraces Change

Roo, however, sees, perhaps too late, that it is doomed, and wants to embrace change in an effort to retain as much as he can. In listening to what Emma has to say, he understands, finally the reality. It is the bluntness with which Emma presents the reality to Roo that makes this scene so appealing. We can see again how ordinary these peoples’ lives are.

Olive Sees Roo’s Change as Being Traitorous

However, Olive sees Roo’s attempt at change as being traitorous. She believes that if Roo leaves with Barney, as he usually does, it is the only thing she has left – the last shred of the dream for her. Her youth has gone, and she suddenly realises that she has lost everything, except for the memories, and the desperate hope that if he leaves, it will all be magically better next time, when Roo says, “Olive, it’s gone – can’t you understand? Every last little scrap of it – gone!” She becomes so intense, she believes that her ideal life has been stolen from her: “You give it back to me – give me back what you’ve taken.”

Roo’s Reality is Profoundly Sad

Roo’s reality is profoundly sad. He refers to it as “…the dust we’re in and we’re gunna walk through it like everyone else for the rest of our lives!” This ‘dust’ he refers to suggests mortality, and the fact that everything has been smashed to dust, and cannot be reconstructed. He smashes the seventeenth doll as a powerful visual image – there is no attempt at resolution, or subtlety – the smashing is borne of a brutal, primitive instinct of helplessness and frustration. This adds enormously to the play’s appeal.

The End is Unresolved

The end is unresolved, and a change from the usual ‘happy endings’, and relies on the vitality of the characters to play it out. The tension between the fantasy and reality is most seen here, as the ultimate theme of mortality is reinforced. This ending shows the brilliance of the play in its theatrical nature – there is no sentimentality in the play – only shocking realities that confront the audience about their own everyday lives.

Impending Doom

These people are so ordinary, but throughout the play we get a sense of impending doom, which makes this almost a Grecian drama – the climaxes show the characters’ humanity, and enthrals the audience. This play has been labelled by some critics as ‘the tragedy of the inarticulate’ – a tragedy of people who feel intense emotion and symbolism, but cannot express their feelings.

Does Olive Suffer from a Psychological Disorder Rejecting the Idea of Growing Old?

Some critics believe that Olive suffers from arrested development, a psychological disorder in that the person rejects the idea of growing old and remains childlike in many ways, e.g. dressing like a child, or carrying dolls etc. It is a detachment from reality that Olive seems to possess, however she also has spirit and vitality, unlike many sufferers of this condition. She has given up the conventional morals of the times, and takes risks to glory in a dream of her own fabrication. Olive has a great wit and we can see some of her mother in her cynical comments. So this view of Olive as having this condition is a rather narrow one indeed.

Is The Play a Representation of the Growth of Australia from Colonisation?

Other critics feel that Lawler had some ulterior motives in writing this play – they believe he draws parallels to the growth of Australia itself; it’s confrontation of colonialism and development to a recognised nation. By the 1950’s the colonialistic view of Australia by its inhabitants and its ‘Mother Country’ Britain had begun to change, and during the World Wars Australia realised how far away from Britain it actually was, and decided that trade deals and treaties were best made with America and the Asian nations, and these would have to be recognised because Australia itself sits on the Asia-Pacific rim, further from Britain than any of her other large colonies.

Themes in the Play

Maturity
Stereotypes (especially male/female of the 1950’s)
Ageing and time
Change
Ideals, dreams vs reality
Mateship and Loyalty
Expectations

The Themes of Mateship and Loyalty are Crucial in the Play

1. Roo and Barney

The theme of mateship is also explored readily in this play; we see the loyalties that each person has, and what they are prepared to sacrifice them for. It especially comes under scrutiny when Barney pretends that his friendship with Roo hasn’t suffered from his leaving him up North. Although Barney offers emotional and monetary support to Roo, Roo knows just how much Barney betrayed him up North, and shows him how their trust and loyalty has broken down over that incident. Barney doesn’t realise until it is too late just how much Roo suffered when he abandoned him, and then tried to pretend that nothing happened.

2. Roo and Olive

Roo is also fiercely loyal to Olive, and he is confronted by Barney about this when Barney wants to leave to go back North. Roo knows how much the lay-off means to Olive, and doesn’t want to abandon her, like Barney did him, because he knows just how much damage that can do, when loyalties are tested like that. Olive also has loyalties to Roo, but her priorities are with the layoff, and her dreams – which is where the loyalties begin to come undone. She doesn’t realise that she cannot have loyalties in something that is based on crumbling foundations.

3. Nancy, Bubba and Emma

Nancy realised she cannot have loyalties in something that is based on crumbling foundations when she left to get married. Although she has moved on, Nancy still sends Barney a telegram to wish them well; which shows her loyalties are still somewhat with them. Bubba is very loyal to the other characters of the play – she has grown up with them always in her life, and believes that this situation is the ideal way of life for. She bases her dreams on what has been the stable elements in her life. Emma is also loyal; for all her wisdom and sardonic comments, her loyalty is to Olive, her daughter. She is also somewhat loyal to Roo, as she sees him as the potential husband of her daughter, so offers to help him out when he is broke, although she knows the value of money very well.

The Play Works Because it Touches our Sense of Compassion

This play ultimately works because it touches our sense of compassion; we feel pity for the breakdown of the relationships in the play, and for the characters, and for the situation – we feel pity for them growing old. We feel pity for the characters’ desire to build an ideal world; we see Bubba’s fears for the future, and her determination to overcome them, and at the other end, we see the outcome in Emma’s wisdom: although she hasn’t built herself an ideal world, she has learned to walk in her ‘dust’ and make the most of what she has. This play is about how ordinary people hurt in themselves, and how they can hurt one another, and how people are reluctant to change – a human flaw that resides, to some extent, in everyone.

Is the Play a Tragedy – Fatal Flaws?

There are indeed ‘fatal flaws’ in the two main characters, Olive and Roo. Olive’s is her naivite, and her strong ideals and the holding on to these ideals that breaks her down in the end. The breaking of the dolls is significant here, because it shows the dissolving of her innocence. Roo’s flaw is his ‘dirty lousy rotten pride’ that is the undoing of him – he won’t recognise that he is too old for the type of work he is in, and the fact that he gets a job in the paint factory shows the extent to which his pride is broken. The characters, however, never seem to be able to manage to talk about what they are losing – they resort to fighting, and smashing things, but never seem to be able to fully understand how they have lost their dreams or why it happened.

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The Quiet American by Graham Greene Basic Notes

Posted on August 12, 2013 by Margaret

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

In applying the theme of conflict to an analysis on Graham Greene’s mid-1950s novel The Quiet American, we cannot avoid the constant, juxtaposed pairing of motifs that create the plot basis of the narrative: non-involvement versus action, neutrality versus commitment, ‘‘dégagé’’ versus ‘‘engagé’’. The idea of conflict is both explicitly and implicitly explored in the text at a societal as well as a personal level. Being set in Vietnam before the defeat and subsequent withdrawal of the French, provides a backdrop to a clash between personal and political ideologies. Throughout the novel there is a running debate on the issue of foreign intervention in Indochina. In terms of political symbolism, it is Fowler and Pyle’s rival attempts to possess Phuong that reflect the West’s attempts to possess and control Vietnam itself.

The Crux of this Novel and the Central Dilemma

The text raises key questions of its protagonist Thomas Fowler. How long can a non-participating observer — a cynical, middle-aged British journalist paid to report only the facts of conflict — stand on the sidelines until he is compelled to pass a personal and moral judgment upon another, and to become involved? Fowler clearly points out to Pyle “I don’t know what I’m talking politics for. They don’t interest me and I’m a reporter. I’m not engagé’’… “I don’t take sides. I’ll be still reporting, whoever wins” (p.88). We are forced to question whether there is any such thing as the moral high ground. Sooner or later Fowler finds out what Captain Trouin tells him is the truth “One has to take sides. If one is to remain human” (p.166).

A Moral Choice

Does Fowler have Pyle killed as a result of his jealousy over Phuong’s desertion of him for the American? Or is he asserting his humanity and taking sides? He sacrifices his friend to prevent further needless civilian deaths but Greene is ambiguous on how far Fowler’s motives are honest. Greene in fact makes Fowler deal with a moral choice but he is left with a guilt that is reluctant to let him go. Human life according to Greene is muddied, even chaotic with dark and contradictory elements in Fowler that leave the reader with more questions than answers at the end of the novel.

The Exposition of Conflict

The exposition of conflict is played out through the relationship between Fowler the journalist, who is also the first-person, confessional narrator of the novel, and Pyle, a young American governmental representative. Pyle, described by Fowler as a “quiet American”, (p. 9) is inoculated with a textbook education — little more than an academic and ideological theory — on how the creation of a political and military ‘‘Third Force’’ might bring the values of American-style democracy to a Vietnam being destroyed by a war waged between French colonialism and the insurgency of nationalist communism during the early 1950s.

Personal Conflict

Complicating and intensifying matters is the more personal conflict arising in Saigon between the two characters when Pyle falls in love with Fowler’s mistress, Phuong; behind the scenes, with the collusion of a ‘‘third force’’ in Phuong’s grasping older sister, Pyle succeeds in winning her. Embittered, and a man accustomed to deserting wives and girlfriends rather than them leaving him, Fowler breaks down in the toilet, symbolically, of the American Legation building: ‘‘… with my head against the cold wall I cried. I hadn’t cried until now. Even their lavatories were air-conditioned, and presently the temperate tempered air dried my tears as it dries the spit in your mouth and the seed in your body’’ (p.139).

Interconnected Conflicts and Love, Personal Relationships and War

This is black comedy rather than tragic drama. It is also one example in the novel of where the wider, large-scale conflict of war and ideology, as viewed from Fowler’s stance, intersects and coalesces with the personal. For Phuong may also be interpreted in a wider sense as representative of the culture, nature and beauty of a ‘‘feminised’’, perhaps idealised image of traditional Vietnam being fought over by an old, tired, cynical Europe and a thoroughly modern, optimistic, yet unworldly United States.

Through Fowler, Greene’s ferocious contempt for the popularity and insidious spread of American values, affluence, behaviour and antiseptic cleanliness is obvious. He even associates the name ‘‘Pyle’’ with constipation and haemorrhoids in one sequence.

For example, although the novel is narrated by Fowler, Greene ensures an alternative — and accurate — point of view through two sequences in which the British journalist receives a letter and a telegram from his deserted and badly hurt wife, in which she refers to Phuong and to his serial emotional insecurity and weakness: ‘‘You pick up women like your coat picks up dust … I suppose like the rest of us you are getting old and don’t like living alone … You say that we’ve always tried to tell the truth to each other, but, Thomas, your truth is always so temporary’’ (p.108-110 ).

Engagé – Commitment

Engagé is foretold in a scene in which Fowler accompanies Trouin, a French air force pilot, on an aerial bombing mission, in which a sampan and its crew are casually obliterated. Who should feel responsible for this, and for the dropping of napalm on villages? The pilot only, carrying out his nation’s orders? Trouin insists that at some point everyone, including Fowler, will be forced to take sides, because you cannot stand aside and be dispassionate: ‘‘It’s not a matter of reason or justice. We all get involved in a moment of emotion and then we cannot get out. War and Love — they have always been compared’’ (p.144).

Fowler’s moment is the realisation that Pyle’s covert activities in organising a ‘‘democratic’’ Third Force have brought bloodshed to the streets of Saigon. Yet it is more complex than this. It is also a moment that deeply involves the personal — ‘‘War and Love’’ (p.144) — for Fowler’s immediate reaction is that Phuong has been caught up in the bombing, and that Pyle is directly responsible. Phuong is safe, but Fowler is fully engagé for the first time: ‘‘I thought, ‘What’s the good? He’ll always be innocent, you can’t blame the innocent, they are always guiltless. All you can do is control them or eliminate them. Innocence is a kind of insanity’ ’’ (p.155).

Dégagé – Professional Neutrality

Ironically, Pyle’s ‘‘elimination’’ at the hands of the local communists can be traced back to Fowler’s non-partisan, dégagé newspaper coverage of the war, and the fact that the communists trust him. ‘‘Mr Fowler, you are British. You are neutral. You have been fair to all of us,’’ (p.120) says one of their sympathisers, Mr Heng. This reputation of professional neutrality from conflict, and the consequent insider knowledge supplied to him by the communists, is precisely the factor that has awoken Fowler to Pyle’s quiet ‘‘insanity’’, and drawn him into engagement.

Is Fowler a Murderer by Proxy?

Regardless of cause, motive and justification, is Fowler, by proxy and at arm’s length, a murderer? At the end of the narrative, with his estranged wife willing to divorce him, he tells Phuong, ‘‘Here’s your happy ending’’ (p.180). But the words are charged with cynicism and self-recrimination. For according to Graham Greene — the unhappy country in which the author’s moral and emotional compass swings and points — there is secrecy, guilt, sorrow, and an aftermath in which peace, a quiet resting place of the soul, will never be realised.

By the conclusion of The Quiet American, the interconnected conflicts of love, personal relationships and war have reached some sense of relief and resolution through the agency of Pyle’s death. In one moment Fowler, whose constant refrain throughout the narrative has been, ‘‘Let them fight, let them love, let them murder, I would not be involved,’’ (p.20) now becomes fully engaged and complicit. Fowler’s usual response to the conflict that surrounds him has been to sit on the sidelines. However, when the conflict comes closer, threatening to undo his carefully cultivated equilibrium, his cynicism does not protect him from the horrors of war.

No Definitive Sense of Personal Redemption for Fowler

At Phat Diem, Fowler is confronted with a canal “full of bodies” (p.43) and at this time his own values are unexpectedly challenged by Pyle’s actions. He is reminded of the truth in what Captain Trouin said that “One day something will happen. You will take a side” (p.143). However, it is the bombing in Place Garnier that is the turning point for the hardened journalist. Haunted by images of the carnage he has witnessed, he realises that inaction can also have lasting consequences. Fowler’s moral conflict is stark. Does he betray the man who saved his life? Does he become complicit in the assassination of another human being? Does he allow Pyle to continue to “… play with plastics” (p.125) unchecked and kill more innocent people?

Yet when he does engagé, Fowler ends up with a hollow victory. While Fowler may have gained in humanity by becoming ‘involved’, inevitably he feels guilt for his role in Pyle’s murder. Paradoxically, he has become like Pyle “… I had betrayed my own principles; I had become engagé as Pyle, and it seemed to me that no decision would ever be simple again” (p.175). Nonetheless, Fowler expresses remorse for the part he played in Pyle’s death. He remarks at the end of the novel “Everything has gone right with me since he had died, but how I wished there existed someone to whom I could say that I was sorry” (p.180). In the end I believe Fowler is fully engagé and complicit.

This Resource is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

Learning Outside the Fish Bowl

Posted on October 15, 2012 by Margaret

This Resource is for Teachers and Students in the Mainstream English Victorian Curriculum.

‘Learning Outside the Fish Bowl’

Have you heard this term before? The fish bowl analogy is related to the term many people say these days as “seeing the big picture”. What does it mean? What requires you to see the big picture and take that leap beyond your current fish bowl?

The fish bowl analogy means that we are all immersed in a paradigm and reality, much like a fish in the water it swims in. A fish can’t distinguish itself from his water, just as most of us don’t distinguish ourselves from our thoughts about the way we learn. We don’t know that there is a new learning reality outside the fish bowl within which we are immersed.

The challenge is to pop out of your current fish bowl or context in order to see the “big picture” to strive ahead far more effectively at school and beyond . Like a man on the flying trapese, we all have to let go of a known way of viewing our learning for the unknown. Everyone of us who aspires to something greater than our current fish bowl or our current grades at school, has to risk this moment of vulnerability. What makes a clever person is their willingness to confidently jump out of the fish bowl in order to see the bigger picture from which to strive ahead far more effectively.

It takes commitment and a capacity to expand one’s reality. In order to let go of the trapeze bar of one level of functioning, in order to swing to and grasp another, you have to be committed enough to let go of what no longer serves your learning. One distinction of a clever person is their willingness to risk failures and their own vulnerability to expand their knowledge to see their potential.

As an English Teacher I can help to hold the bigger picture for my students to leap into. I will endeavour to empower my students to make the leap into learning outside the fish bowl in order to see and act from the Big Picture. I will allow my students to get the big AH-HA moment to shift their paradigm to include this next level of the Big Picture of learning by giving them the tools to write well and achieve academic success.

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This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English, The Secret River by Kate Grenville in the Victorian Curriculum.

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

Genre and Historical Setting of The Secret River

Structure of The Secret River

Relationship between Conflicts of Space, Place & Identity

Language and Dialogue of The Secret River

The Significance of the Title

Themes, Issues and Ideas in The Secret River

‘Guilt’ in Grenville’s Trilogy

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

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

Both Texts Question “Who owns what?”

This Resources is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

This Resource is for students studying Island: Collected Stories in the Mainstream English Victorian Curriculum.

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

Genre and Structure of Island: Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod

Cape Breton Setting of Island

Cape Breton Communities Founded on Tradition and Families

Language of Island

Significance of the Historical Setting of Cape Breton

Themes and Ideas in Island

This Resource was created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

About the Poet Peter Skrzynecki

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

Skrzynecki’s Style of Poetry

Skrzynecki’s Poetry Rhythm & Imagery

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

Synthesising Poems about Birds Compared to Immigrants

Poems from The Immigrant Chronicle

Belonging in Feliks Skrzynecki

Themes in the New Collection

This Resource is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

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

The Prologue

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

Conflict in the Text

Writing an Essay on Conflict

Ask yourself questions about Conflict

Conflict also asks you to think about how it arises

Finally, Conflict asks you to think about its consequences

This Resource is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

This Resource is for students studying in the Mainstream English Victorian Curriculum.

Key Knowledge for Writing an Essay on a Narrative Text

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

Interpretation of I for Isobel

Isobel Callaghan is Protagonist and Narrative Voice

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

May Callaghan’s Cruelty is her Power over Isobel

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

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

The Revelation “I am a writer”

Themes, Ideas and Values to consider in I for Isobel

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

This Resource is created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

This Resource is for students studying Mainstream English in the Victorian Curriculum.

The Significance of the Chorus in the Prologue

Line #

Sonnet Prologue

Explanation

The Obvious Function of the Prologue

“Star-crossed Lovers”

This Resource was created by englishtutorlessons with Online Tutoring of English using Zoom

This resource is for students studying in the Victorian Mainstream English Curriculum.

Context of Night by Elie Wiesel

Non-Fiction Narrative such as Night by Elie Wiesel

Types of Non-Fiction Narratives such as Night by Elie Wiesel

Point of View and Selection of Events in a Biography, Autobiography and Memoirs

Importance of Context and Setting

Create a Timeline

Consider the Subjects – The People of Non-Fiction

Themes and Values

Identify the World View Illustrated in the Text

Metalanguage for Non-Fiction Narratives

Here is some Valuable Research on Night by Elie Wiesel to use for Analytical Text Responses

Background on the Author Elie Wiesel

The Jews in Hungary During World War II

Elie Wiesel’s Family Deported to Auschwitz in 1944

Genre of Night

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

**Genre and Structure of Island: Collected Stories by Alistair MacLeod**

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

**Context of Night by Elie Wiesel**

**Why is Summer of the Seventeenth Doll Still Relevant Today?**