This quote relates to journeys, specifically to inner journeys with the intention that many journeys are difficult and if individuals knew how difficult the journey was going to be, then most of us would not even commence the journey.
A journey is simply a movement from one place to another. Physical journeys are gateways to inner journeys, which. Throughout Cosi, the different ways in which the patients escape the depressing reality of the asylum and their conditions become evident. Accomplished Australian playwright Louis Nowra composed the play of Cosi which set in a mental hospital in Melbourne and later adapted into a film during There is a backdrop of social unrest to the play, being set in the time of the Vietnam Conflict which had been going on for 10 years prior to the creation of the novel.
The attitudes and connotations towards the mentally ill in those times were of negative association, which is being proven through the setting of the play, which is in a burnt out theatre with holes in the roof. Nowra uses satire as a genre for literature and performing arts in which they use vices to ridicule society into improving their mindset and behaviours towards these particular individuals.
Contention: Nowra encourages his audience to reconsider their perspective on the mentally ill by highlighting their capacity to not only change themselves, but enact change in others. Topic Sentence 3: Furthermore, as an outsider, Lewis assists the patients in their development, acting as their connection to the real world and ultimately providing a space for them to grow and flourish.
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All guides include bonus videos. As the text is set in the backdrop of rapid Australian modernisation, the novel also depicts the paradoxical nature of technology, as various characters are depicted to be torn between confronting or embracing this fundamental change. Kennedy explores the theme of identity mainly through physical injury, as various characters with physical trauma find themselves to be agonisingly limited within the confines of their condition.
The inherent tension between order and chaos is continually examined throughout the anthology, particularly in Like a House on Fire, in which perfectionistic order and scatter minded disorder are embodied in the unnamed narrator and his wife respectively. As the two individuals are unable to establish a compromise between their contrasting personalities, Kennedy suggests that this lack of cooperation is the core reason for the deterioration of their marriage, and their subsequent misery.
Each protagonist in the collection is portrayed as possessing some object of longing, whether it be material or emotional. Kennedy utilises scattered verses of prose within her writing to communicate these human desires, building upon their significance poetically. In Static , Anthony attempts to negotiate his own wishes with those of his wife and family, leading him to wonder whether anything present in his life has been created by his own will or merely his eagerness to please others.
His desire for various types of happiness, embodied in material concepts such as money or children, suggest that the human condition is built upon the foundation of dissatisfaction; that innate longing is what ultimately defines us as human.
The theme of love is present in each story of the collection, often used as an instrument through which the characters can heal and grow from their physical or spiritual pain. While suggesting that true love endures all hardship in Like a House on Fire , Kennedy also illustrates the various sacrifices one must make in order to protect the ones you love.
The vital importance of communication within families is emphasised in the anthology, as the lack of effective communication perceivably exacerbates dysfunctional relationships.
The crushing regret of a son is explored in Ashes , as he laments his lack of communication with his father who he can no longer speak to. However, Kennedy empathetically depicts the difficulty of communicating potentially painful messages to loved ones in Waiting , as the protagonist anxiously agonises over the prospect of telling her husband that she may have another miscarriage following an excruciating string of lost children.
In tandem with longing, Kennedy asserts that empathy is vital to the survival and happiness of a human being. Similarly, the salient importance of empathy is emphasised in Flexion , as the cold-heated and harsh victim of a brutal tractor incident repairs his marriage by allowing himself to feel more empathy for those who have supported his recovery and been understanding of his bitterness. The anthology centres around the concept of family, as both dramatic events unfold directly due to altercations and misunderstanding within the household.
By depicting both the dramatic and mundane events that contribute to creating dysfunctional families, Kennedy asserts that kindness and understanding is vital to the maintenance of a healthy and loving family. Like a House on Fire.
The Importance of the Introduction. When you think about post-apocalyptic science fiction stories, what kind of thing comes to mind first? Maybe an alien invasion, Pacific Rim style monsters perhaps, and almost always the mad scramble of a protagonist to stockpile resources and protect their loved ones from the imminent chaos and destruction—these are tropes which are tried and tested in this genre.
She interrogates central questions about human society, inviting readers to consider what human qualities can endure even an apocalypse, what qualities are timeless.
Tracing his origins from obscurity to fame, Mandel juxtaposes his philandering and untrustworthy behaviour with repeated attempts to be a better person, or perhaps just be more true to himself, before his death. Arguably equally important in legacy is his first wife, Miranda Carroll , whose comics lend the novel its title.
Her comics survive her in the years following the Flu, and are a source of escape and purpose for others just as they had been for herself. Both of these characters come into contact with Jeevan Chaudhary , a paparazzo and journalist who regularly follows Arthur though his career, photographing Miranda in a vulnerable moment before her divorce, and booking an interview with Arthur years later as he plans to leave his second wife Elizabeth Colton. We see Jeevan struggle with his purpose in life throughout the novel, though it can be said that he ultimately finds it after the Flu, when he is working as a medic.
As the Flu first arrives in America, Clark is just leaving for Toronto, but a Flu outbreak there causes his flight to be redirected to Severn City Airport, where he and others miraculously survive in what will become a key setting of the novel.
We experience the present mostly through the perspective of Kirsten Raymonde , a performer who survived the Flu as a young child. Because she was so young when it happened, many of the traumas she experienced have been erased by her mind, and she struggles to piece together what she lost in a quest for identity and meaning, largely driven by her vague memories of Arthur.
Through the story, they are pursued by the prophet , later revealed to be Tyler Leander , the child of Arthur and Elizabeth who survived and grew up in the decades following the Flu outbreak. A religious extremist, he becomes the leader of a cult of fanatics who amass weapons and conquer towns by force.
Both Kirsten and Tyler pursue the Station Eleven comics, quoted above—they each possess a copy, and resonate strongly with the struggles of the characters created by Miranda. These characters already speak to some of the major themes that formulate the novel. On one hand, Mandel explores various meanings of contemporary or modern civilisation.
We live in a technology-driven age where constraints of time and space mean less than ever before. For example, people are mobile through space thanks to airplanes and telephones, and the internet means that any and all information is available to anyone, all the time.
This lack of purpose, this ennui, is something that tints much of society through the eyes of Mandel. Another major theme which the lives of these characters start to explore is the value of art as a source of purpose. While civilisation is portrayed as fragile and meaningless, art—in all its forms, including creating, reproducing, performing and consuming—is a way for people such as Miranda to understand, process and escape their lives.
This theme is arguably the most important, as it tethers different parts of the novel together; even after the apocalypse, people turn to art as a way of understanding and connecting to others as well as to themselves. Inevitably with this genre, survival and mortality are major themes, as massive populations of people have died and continue to die due to the impacts of the Georgia Flu.
Maybe this is what it means to be human. On the other hand, the Flu also turns others to religious extremity , as is the case with Elizabeth, Tyler and the rest of their cult. This speaks to broader ideas about faith , fate and spirituality —are there greater forces out there who manipulate events in our world?
Certainly, there are enough coincidences in the novel for this theory to be valid; even just Kirsten and Tyler both having copies of Station Eleven and both acting under the influence of Arthur is so coincidental.
However, perhaps the most important theme here is memory. Mandel ultimately puts this as the central question to readers: is memory more of a blessing or a burden? Various symbols—and even the constantly shifting narrative perspective—evoke the epic sense of loss in the apocalypse, and yet encountering characters like Alexandra, who never really knew what the internet was, makes you rethink that loss; perhaps it is better to have experienced the internet at all.
Consider the discarded phones and credit cards in the Museum of Civilisations, all mementos of what the world lost. It is airplanes , however, that serve as the greatest reminder. Their sudden disappearance from the sky becomes a constant reminder of how the world changed, and people still look up in the hopes of seeing an airborne plane; they cling onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, all of this can somehow be reversed. The last flights of the human race—pilots attempting to return home to be with their loved ones—are also made in hope, though their outcomes are consistently unclear.
In this sense, airplanes can also be seen as a source of fading hope, or rather, despair. For one, it was the very mobility afforded by planes which caused the Flu to spread around the world so rapidly.
Now, confined to the ground forever, they represent the immobility of humans in the present. They also take on meanings of death, and in particular, the final airplane that landed at Severn City Airport, quarantined with people still on board, represents the difficult decisions that have to be made in order to survive.
The mausoleum plane also pushes Tyler further into religious extremism, as he reads the bible to the now-artefact in an attempt to justify the deaths of everyone on board. These symbols highlight the jarring difference between the world before and after the Flu, but on the other hand, there are also symbols which connect the two worlds; the importance of print cannot be underemphasised here.
Anything that was printed—photographs, comics, TV guides, books—are all enduring sources of knowledge and comfort for Flu survivors, and basically become the only way for children born after the Flu to remember our world, a world that they never actually lived in.
Head over to our Station Eleven Study Guide for more sample essay topics, so you can practice writing essays using the analysis you've learnt from this blog! This is especially handy in stories that are non-linear, so stories that flip between perspectives or timelines, as this one does. Being across a text like this will give you greater flexibility in putting together your ideas.
I think this might be clearer if I just show you! Instead, she takes us two decades down the track to look at how human society has changed as a result. She also highlights some elements of society that are eternal and timeless, that survive and persevere no matter what. And out of the 5 types, this prompt is character-based, through and through. It poses us the difficult task of deciphering the ethics and morality of an individual in the text.
Immediately, if you write on this prompt, you must know Arthur pretty damn well! The key words in this one are fairly self-explanatory. Go on, do it! However, he also has a philandering or womanising side , and can be neglectful of his family and friends. I would also consider whether or not his legacy was favourable , unflattering , or mixed. Did he leave behind more positivity in the world, or less, when he died?
Arthur is flawed in the way he treats others, manifested in his inconsiderate actions, misogynistic tendencies and raising of Tyler. In terms of mentally rearranging elements of the story, it might be worth noting here how his bad traits manifested in his son, Tyler. Fundamentally, he was never this flaky, unreliable person before he was swept away by fame. Before Hollywood taints him, and after he realises how much he has been tainted, Arthur does actually demonstrate a lot of virtue.
However, overall, Arthur leaves behind a positive legacy that reflects that despite his shortcomings, he is fundamentally a good man who has been tainted by immoral habits and attitudes. In what ways does Arthur live on? And there you have it! Hopefully, you can see what I meant at the start about rearranging bits of the book.
Check it out here. The purpose of a Text Response essay is to show an understanding of a text through analysis. So, it is natural that your essay is marked based on the quality of your analysis of the text. While this may be true in theory, the reality is that your introduction serves as a foundation for your analysis In other words, the introduction sets the direction for your essay, which overall acts as a backbone allowing for a cogent argument to be presented in your piece.
Especially when writing under timed conditions, it can be difficult to produce a detailed plan which lays out the structure of an essay. Here's where your intro can be of great help. When considered carefully, your introduction can set the parameters within which your essay will be contained. In other words, your intro can define the scope of your essay, outlining which themes and characters you are going to explore, and most importantly what arguments you are going to posit throughout your script.
This means that if you get lost, or go blank trying to figure out what you should write next you can refer back to your intro to find a sense of direction and regain a foothold in your essay and. In this way, the intro not only acts as a foundation for your body-paragraphs but also provides a blueprint for them which can guide you from point to point.
At the same time, although an introduction cannot explicitly earn you marks, I would argue that a quality introduction can help position your assessor to immediately categorise your essay as belonging in a higher mark bracket. At the end of the year, exam assessors have hundreds of scripts to mark.
And the truth is, they will not dedicate more than a couple of minutes to read your essay. As such, if you can impress your assessor with a powerful opening, they are more likely to see your piece as one that should earn a high mark. The reality is that assessors can often tell a lot about an essay based on the quality of its introduction. What is crucial, then, is that from the very first line of your introduction you are responding directly and unswervingly to the topic.
I would suggest trying to avoid starting with a cliche contextual statement in favour of a bold response to the topic. Consider opening with a quote which captures your take on the topic. Whether it is between African and Afrikaner or Trojan and Achaean, the capacity for human understanding is upheld as paramount to overcome societal fissures.
These specific ideas should essentially signpost the distinct arguments you are going to present in each of your body paragraphs. This means that the ideas you flag for discussion in your intro, should be logically connected to both the prompt and each other, and you should aim to outline these connections.
The specific ideas which you offer set the parameters for the rest of your essay, so it is a good idea to ensure that these insights take into consideration the implications of the key-terms of the topic, and attempt to take the topic further.
This allows you to consider the text in a sophisticated and conceptual way while maintaining rock-solid links to the topic. Ultimately, the introduction provides you with a great opportunity to show off to your assessors that you can write incisively, fluently, and with confidence.
Introduction Plot Summary 2. Characters and Development 3. Themes 4. Sample Paragraphs 6. The protagonist, Dr Ibaraki, attempts to move forward with life whilst also trying to hide past confrontations as well as any remnants of his past wrongdoings and memories. Another interpretation of the language use is to show that both the Australians and Japanese are just as cruel as each other because they show no respect to one another and use language in such a brutal way.
Ibaraki represents that divide where he can speak both languages, yet still, cannot voice his own opinion or stand up for himself link to theme of silence. Do you agree? Piper reveals that when a person fails to reveal themselves, it can eventually become a great obstacle which keeps them from creating meaningful and successful relationships. Additionally, Piper asserts that it can be difficult for an individual to confront their past and move completely forward with their present, especially if they believed their actions were morally wrong.
Piper acknowledges that some people will find it difficult to open up to others about their past due to them accumulating a large amount of regret and guilt over time. She notes that for people to understand and form bonds with one another, it is extremely important to reveal their identity as masking it only arises suspicions.
Piper postulates that for some, memories are nostalgic; whereas, for others it carries an unrelenting burden of guilt, forcing them to hide themselves which ultimately becomes the reason as to why they feel alone in their life.
Need more help? We've explored themes, characters, literary devices and historical context amongst other things over on our Women of Troy by Euripides blog post. How do the women suffer? In other words, how does Euripides demonstrate to his reader just how dejected the women are as slaves?
We have a list of them for you here. For example, the women consistently lament their disillusionment with the gods. This is not a literary technique in itself, but it is still a literary choice which Euripides has made and which has been deepened with more specific literary devices like metaphor. P1: Euripides juxtaposes the triumphant pasts of the Trojan women with their tragic futures. Note that hope also comes in the form of revenge. At the heart of the conflict in The Women of Troy , lies the anguished 'suffering' 1 of the Trojan women as they confront their fates as 'slaves', and remember their pasts as wives and mothers.
In his tragedy, first performed in Athens circa BCE, Euripides amplifies the conflicted voices of the Trojan women, voices which are by contrast suppressed and disregarded in the Homeric works the Iliad and the Odyssey.
For as Andromache laments, these women have been objectified as 'loot', mere spoils of war to be abused and exploited. Thus, the plight of women as wartime captives is dramatised by Euripides, corralling the audience into an ultimate stance of pity and empathy. It shows you have a great understanding of the text, and reads fluidly as opposed to overly long quotes.
By comparing the two characters to war spoils, he is suggesting that they have been stripped of their free will and autonomy. Yet perhaps what truly emphasises her plight as a slave is her enduring role as a maternal figure of leadership, encapsulated in her regard of the chorus as '[her] children' and her reciprocated address as 'dear queen' and 'your mother'.
Despite the 'death agony' she feels, she chooses to maintain her nobility through the depth of her morality, dramatizing the pitiful nature of her plight 4. Likewise, Andromache laments her past as a dutiful and faithful wife, contrasting her fidelity against her fate as a 'concubine' to the formidable Neoptolemus 5. It is often easy to fall into the trap of creating a generalised essay which only loosely adheres to the question.
Euripides 6 characterises the women by their tendency to clutch on to 'hope[s]' and ideals that are impossible to fulfil. Almost a coping mechanism of sorts, the chorus paradoxically romanticise the Greek landscape in the first episode, lauding the 'sacred halls', 'green fields', 'beautiful river[s]' and 'wealth' of Hellas. Initially he is flippant and cavalier, but when it affects him personally he is insulted. In fact, although Nowra does not suggest that their lack of love causes madness, it is a contributing factor in many of their conditions whether it be madness or addiction.
It is no accident that Roy chooses a play so focused on love, and it this which serves as the basis for underlying ideas of Lewis and the inmates about love and fidelity, regardless of whether or not they are agreement with the play. Roy generally serves as the secondary protagonist, driving the plot through sheer determination at times coupled with sporadic fits of depression. Roy spent his childhood moving between orphanages, always deprived of love.
To balance the presence of love in Cosi , Nowra also injects an element of realism into the play through politics, primarily those surrounding the Vietnam War. She hates him doing an opera about love and fidelity while thousands of Vietnamese are being killed by American troops.
Their attitude to the asylum patients is condescending. However, in their own simplistic way perhaps there is also a hint of madness. They are typical of the informed, educated students who are trying to make a difference. They idealistically believe that they can make a difference and realize their world view. Nick believes that it is possible to make changes.
Absolutely huge. The biggest protest ever seen in Australia. Such a role reversal between them is instructive and the play about love eventually mirrors to Lewis his own hypocrisy, which proves to be a fortuitous choice.
Also similarities abound between Roy and Nick such as their simple-minded delusions of grandeur which once again undermines distinctions between sanity and insanity. Although Roy does have anti-social tendencies and shortcomings such as his paranoia and stage-fright and a deprived childhood which has yielded to romantic illusions, it would be too simplistic to conclude that these are a sign of madness. Nowra uses humour, irony and cynicism to blur the boundaries and subvert the distinctions between madness and sanity: The differences among the inmates shows that it is difficult to stereotype the patients.
Lewis becomes a bridge between the two worlds and his commitment and attachment to the insane reveal his growing awareness of their problems and often their similarities The role reversal between Roy and Lewis and similarities between Roy and Nick shed light on the superficial distinctions.
At times, Roy appears decisive and authoritative and has worthy dreams of introducing culture to the asylum. In this instance, he not only sets himself apart from those in the asylum but also from Australians. Not only is the role reversal between these two main characters an indicator of the inability to typecast people, but there are similarities between Nick and Roy. Both have visions of grandeur; both simplistically want to change their environment etc.
Is this another form of madness? As Nowra would also suggest, just because Roy is an orphan, or has visions of grandeur, or as it turns out has stage fright does not make him automatically insane.
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