'Without mortality and fallibility, humility cannot exist.' Compare how the two texts explore the importance of humility.
Compare the ways the two texts explore the efficacy of different leadership types.
"In a world that is also subject to chance." (Ransom) "Under the bludgeonings of chance; My head is bloody, but unbow'd." (Invictus). Compare how chance influences lives and societies in these texts.
Compare how these texts examine the societal consequences of conformation and rebellion.
Compare how Invictus and Ransom explore resistance to change.
'Forgiveness can correct any miscarriage of justice committed.' Compare how this idea is demonstrated in these texts.
'Leadership and sacrifice are never mutually exclusive.' Compare the connections between leadership and sacrifice in Invictus and Ransom.
Compare the ways the two texts explore the power of shared experiences.
'...let his name, from now on, be Priam, the price paid" (Ransom) Compare how Invictus and Ransom show the roles of the past in determining one's future.
"But the women's presence is stronger than [Achilles']. This is their world." (Ransom) Compare what these texts say about the power of women in societies focused on masculinity and male experiences.
'Family can have many interpretations and meanings.' Compare the ways family is perceived in these texts.
Compare how the two texts explore intergenerational relations and their importance.
Compare how, in Invictus and Ransom, the aftermath of forgiveness is both redeeming and transient.
"Words are powerful. They too can be the agents of what is new, of what is conceivable and can be thought and let loose upon the world." (Ransom) "Just words. But they helped me to stand when all I wanted was to lie down." (Invictus) Compare how words shape one's hope for change is explored in both texts.
'Stories hold unseen truth and potential.' Compare how the two texts explore the importance of storytelling.
Ransom and Invictus is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing). For a detailed guide on Comparative, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.
Now quite sure how to nail your text response essays? Then download our free mini-guide, where we break down the art of writing the perfect text-response essay into three comprehensive steps.
To elaborate further on the example using Macbeth and Animal Farm:
Avoid simply drawing connections between the texts which are immediately obvious. It is clear that both Napoleon and Macbeth are powerful leaders. The questions below start to delve into a more insightful comparison between the two men (comparative words are bolded):
Macbeth and Animal Farm: common theme = power
How do they achieve power?
In Animal Farm, Napoleon is sly about his intentions and slowly secures his power with clever manipulation and propaganda. However, Shakespeare’s Macbeth adopts very different methods as he uses violence and abuse to secure his power.
How do they maintain power?
Both Napoleon and Macbeth are tyrants who go to great length to protect their power. They believe in killing or chasing away anyone who undermines their power.
What is the effect of power on the two characters?
WhileMacbeth concentrates on Macbeth’s growing guilty conscience and his gradual deterioration to insanity, Animal Farm offers no insight into Napoleon’s stream of consciousness. Instead, George Orwell focuses on the pain and suffering of the animals under Napoleon’s reign. This highlights Shakespeare’s desire to focus on the inner conflict of a man, whereas Orwell depicted the repercussions of a totalitarian regime on those under its ruling.
Reckoning & The Namesake are studied as part of VCE English's Comparative. For one of our most popular posts on Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing), check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.
Contents
Inheritance of Trauma
Identity and Naming
Memory and Retrospect
Magda Szubanski’s memoir, Reckoning, and Jhumpa Lahiri’s bildungsroman, The Namesake, follow misguided protagonists as they attempt to reconcile and ‘reckon’ with complicated family histories. Magda is burdened by her father’s legacy, whilst Ashoke’s distressing train accident lays the foundation for Gogol’s uncertainty, exposing the inescapable and often inscrutable marks that trauma leaves on the identities of later generations. With a large focus on inherited trauma, identity and memory, we’ll be breaking down some crucial quotes from each of these texts to better understand these key themes.
Whether it be the hardships of war or the adversity of misfortune, both texts observe family timelines steeped in history and trauma. Magda and Gogol are inadvertently burdened by their parents’ experiences, which remain obscure and confusing to the two protagonists and only complicate their identities.
Reckoning
We were tugboats in the river of history, my father and I, pulling in opposite directions. He needed to forget. I need to remember. For him, only the present moment would set him free. For me, the key lies buried in the past. The only way forward is back. (p. 13)
This quote is intrinsic to the authorial intent behind Szubanski writing her cathartic memoir. The experiences of Magda’s father in war-torn Poland are, as Magda expresses, ‘passed on genetically’. Yet, with Zbigniew’s instinct to ‘[clamp] down tight on all feeling’, his trauma remains unrevealed and unexamined during much of Magda’s life. This impenetrable history impresses onto Magda as intergenerational trauma, which leaves her an ‘unregulated mess’, constantly ‘ricocheting between feeling nothing and feeling everything’.
As Magda accurately describes, both she and her father are metaphorical ‘tugboats in the river of history’, drawn in completely opposite directions to resolve their traumas. For her, digging into the ‘buried’ past is vital to understanding her father and herself. As she puts it, ‘the only way forward is back’. This is entirely the opposite for Zbigniew, who is unwilling and unable to articulate his trauma in anything other than ‘incoherent…jottings’ and ‘fragments’. Burdened by his past, Zbigniew prefers living in the present moment where he can suppress and avoid the past. However, this difference in how the two approach trauma leads to a strained father-daughter relationship founded upon a lifetime of misunderstandings and secrecy that only deepen their inability to understand one another.
‘Even at that young age,’ Mum told me, ‘I knew, I knew I had done something wrong.’ When she told me this her face caved in, stricken with remorse. Actors can never replicate this look. Meg didn’t punish her, but ‘Oh! The look of disappointment on my poor mother’s face.’ Now, today, more than eighty years later, my mother still feels the stinging sense of guilt.
History repeats. That story of how, when I was six, I got blood on my best dress before a trip to take Dad to hospital. Mum slapped my leg in hasty anger. I understand now, of course, that it was herself she was slapping. Her life-loving, disobedient six-year-old self. We are bookends, she and I. (p. 346)
Intergenerational trauma surfaces as ‘patterns’ within the Szubanski family, where regret and resentment are passed down as ‘hand-me-down trinkets of family and trauma’. Magda uses the metaphor of ‘bookends’ to describe her and her mother’s remarkably similar experiences dealing with familial trauma. In other words, both Magda and Margaret are mirror images of each other, both having a shared experience of supporting and living with ill fathers. When Magda gets ‘blood on [her] best dress’ before another trip to the hospital, Margaret ‘slap[s her] leg’. Although Magda initially mistakes this reaction as ‘hasty anger’, hindsight allows her to understand that Margaret was preoccupied with a ‘stinging sense of guilt’, and was reprimanding herself - the ‘disobedient six-year-old self’ who had similarly ruined her own ‘special dress’. This realisation suggests that even though trauma ‘repeats [like]…history’, there is a generational difference in the way individuals are able to process and respond to situations of grief, poverty and war.
The Namesake
And suddenly the sound of his pet name, uttered by his father as he has been accustomed to hearing it all his life, means something completely new, bound up with a catastrophe he has unwittingly embodied for years. "Is that what you think of when you think of me?" Gogol asks him. "Do I remind you of that night?"
"Not at all," his father says eventually, one hand going to his ribs, a habitual gesture that has baffled Gogol until now. "You remind me of everything that followed." (p. 124)
Just as Magda inherits Zbigniew’s harrowing war experience, Ashoke’s own ‘persistent fear’ from the train derailment that cripples him lives on through his son’s name. His chance rescue whilst ‘clutching a single page of ‘The Overcoat’’ is meaningful and life-altering. For Ashoke, naming his child after the ‘Russian writer who had saved his life’ emphasises his profound appreciation for surviving the accident. His son Gogol is a comforting reminder of ‘everything that followed’. In this way, Gogol acts as a symbol of both redemption and hope, representing Ashoke’s optimistic appraisal of his accident and his determination to make the most of his miraculous rescue.
But for Gogol, the memory of his father’s accident is entirely foreign and lacks any real meaning for him. His childhood pet name ‘Gogol’ - which he has always resented for making him feel out of place around other kids - suddenly becomes ‘something completely new’ when he discovers the truth about Ashoke’s accident. Gogol feels enormous pressure to live up to his father’s expectations as he represents a ‘catastrophe he has unwittingly embodied for years’. This is the source of much of Gogol’s guilt, confusion and resentment (towards his name, father, family and entire culture) and gradually erodes his sense of self. However, this inscrutability of the past only deepens Ashoke’s and Gogol’s similarity, whilst complicating and straining their father-son dynamic. Ashoke is unable to recognise the burden he has placed on his child, whilst Gogol alternatively cannot appreciate or truly understand being a miracle and source of salvation for Ashoke. Like with Magda and Zbigniew, here, father and child are unable to understand each other, creating a schism in their relationship which they are never able to reconcile. In any case, Lahiri conveys that the actions of enduring and processing trauma are intertwined and often leave permanent traces across future generations.
But Gogol is attached to them. For reasons he cannot explain or necessarily understand, these ancient Puritan spirits, these very first immigrants to America, these bearers of unthinkable, obsolete names, have spoken to him, so much so that in spite of his mother’s disgust he refuses to throw the rubbings away. He rolls them up, takes them upstairs, and puts them in his room, behind his chest of drawers, where he knows his mother will never bother to look, and where they will remain, ignored but protected, gathering dust for years to come.(p. 71)
Lahiri also indicates generational similarities in how individuals relate to trauma. As a second-generation migrant who has always felt displaced from his culture, Gogol’s graveyard field trip allows him to experience a semblance of belonging in Massachusetts for the first time and relate to America’s ‘very first immigrants’. While Ashoke profoundly connects to the Russian writer Nikolai Gogol, his son Gogol refuses to get rid of the etchings of archaic names. These ‘ancient Puritan spirits’ with similarly ‘unthinkable, obsolete names’ like his own provide Gogol with a source of relief and offer proof that he is not alone in his differences. He feels protective of them - conveying his own desires to defend himself against childhood bullies, and also providing a way to preserve this first true moment of belonging.
Just as ‘The Overcoat’ resonates with Ashoke, Gogol feels connected to the etchings and conceals this single page from his mother Ashima, who is resentful of the peculiar American school excursion. Similarly, Ashoke struggles to convey the deep significance behind his own liberating ‘single page’ from the Russian book. In this way, both pages remain ‘ignored but protected’ and, for both father and son, symbolise the power of literature and storytelling to salvage their profoundly intimate and life-altering moments that are unfathomable to others.
2. Identity and Naming
Both Reckoning and The Namesake suggest that hasty personal reinventions can only temporarily suppress, rather than truly resolve, trauma. The ‘self-made man’ Gogol strives to be, and the ‘mostly-self created…Little Englishman’ identity that Zbigniew carves for himself, are simply ‘bandaids plastered over’ unresolved grief and hardships. Cut off from family and history, these facades only worsen their inner discontent and complicate identities.
Reckoning
For my father Australia was love at first sight. The moment we landed he knew he had done the right thing. The blast-furnace heat invigorated him. Only mad dogs and my father would go out in the midday Australian sun. He wouldn’t just go out in it…he would mow the lawn in it. We had a big, bumpy, untamed backyard and when the mercury hit 103 degrees Fahrenheit he’d be out there dragging the lawnmower across every inch of it. Wearing Bombay bloomers and a terry-towelling hat, singing Polish songs over the din of the mower. (p. 44)
Escaping battle-scarred Poland and the origins of his trauma, Zbigniew is a migrant who ‘could not shed his Polishness fast enough’. He ‘crosse[s] the world to get away’ from his destroyed and tarnished home. Zbigniew begins a ‘second life’ as Peter, and like the Polish amber Magda’s cousin gifts her, Zbigniew is ‘transformed by pressure’ (a metaphor for the natural formation of amber) into the ‘Little Englishman’. This persona is a role he takes with grave determination - an echo of the ‘killer instincts’ he suppressed from his abandoned life as a Polish assassin. Bewildering the rest of his family, Zbigniew relishes the ‘invigorat[ing]…blast-furnace heat’ of Australia, and acts the part of a true Aussie in his ‘Bombay bloomers’ and ‘terry-towelling hat’. This characteristically Australian ensemble essentially functions as another battle armour he equips himself with to protect his blemished soul, tainted by a history so ‘bizarrely awful’ that his only way to survive is by ‘clamping down tight’ through an ironclad persona.
Magda recalls him ‘forever trying to tame th[e] lumpen block’ of ‘untamed’ and ‘unpredictable’ soil in their yard, ‘dragging the lawnmower across every inch’. This crystallises the truth of his life: no matter how committed Zbigniew is to perfecting any project, simply plastering order (trying to tame the lawns by mowing them) over chaos (heat + lumpen, untamed, unpredictable soil) leaves the trauma unresolved.
The rest of it went smoothly and before too long I had my entire sharpie uniform. Only one thing was missing—a Conti. This smart striped cardigan, worn high and tight, was the centrepiece of the ensemble, the definitive wardrobe item of the sharpie. But none was available, not in Croydon anyway. We had to settle for a plain cardie, rolled up at the bottom until it sat under my boobs. I never did get a Conti. I think it was a sign. (p. 126)
Like her father, Magda toys with personas herself. Identity is fluid and inconstant for Magda, often fluctuating between a form Zbigniew would be proud of, one she hopes would trigger any emotional reaction from him, and one desperate to fit within the social climate of Croydon. She cultivates a variety of comic personalities and, like her father, pursues her own ‘tennis madness’ by becoming madly obsessed with the sport and playing competitively. Magda also attempts to embrace the dutiful Catholic ‘good girl’ personality she believes would satisfy her father, but she rebels when he continues to ‘display [no] emotion at all’ and embraces the Sharpie youth gang uprising in her neighbourhood. However, Magda ruefully mocks the contradictory nature of her Sharpie persona, describing her conversion as a hybrid - a ‘convent-school Sharpie’ - rather than the ‘true Sharpie chick’ she aspires to be. But, while all of these personas attempt to unite the ‘disparate, confusing parts’ of her identity, they just suppress the ‘real girl’ behind the mask and leave her more dissociated from herself than ever before.
Magda goes to great lengths to ‘smoothly’ acquire the perfect Sharpie disguise, but even with the ‘entire Sharpie uniform’, her facade is flawed; she lacks the Conti cardigan, which is the ‘definitive wardrobe item of the sharpie’. Her Sharpie identity becomes a parody of the authentic Australian youth gang. The flaws behind her imitation persona are worsened when Magda tries to replace the Conti ‘centrepiece’ with a simple ‘plain cardie, rolled up at the bottom’. Magda only realises this when she barely avoids a ‘beating’ by a ‘predatory Sharpie’ whilst vulnerable, dressed in her convent-school uniform, and unrecognisable as a fellow gang member. Here, she is finally able to concede that she has only been ‘playing at being a bad girl’ and laments, ‘I never did get a Conti. I think it was a sign’ - wryly foreshadowing the inevitable dissatisfaction of teenage facades.
The Namesake
"I'm Nikhil now," Gogol says, suddenly depressed by how many more times he will have to say this, asking people to remember, reminding them to forget, feeling as if an errata slip were perpetually pinned to his chest. (p. 119)
Gogol’s place in the world as an ‘American Born Confused Deshi’ (ABCD) is his own ‘awkward [truth]’. Like his own name which he scornfully labels a ‘scratchy tag’, his status as an ‘ABCD’ is another brand he is ‘forced permanently to wear’. He is both ashamed and resentful toward his second-generation migrant identity and feels ‘neither Indian nor American’ whilst mocked for his nickname that is ‘of all things Russian’. Indeed, Gogol’s entire adolescent experience is eclipsed by his confusion about ‘who he is’ as he struggles to obtain any stable foundation for his identity.
Unlike the costumes and disguises that Magda and Zbigniew embrace, Gogol takes action by solemnly changing his name to Nikhil, the ‘one that should have been’ given to him all those years ago. But even Gogol is acutely aware that this ‘scant’ persona leaves him having to repeatedly reinforce and assure others (and himself) of his identity. Gogol actually rejects the name ‘Nikhil’ on his first day of preschool, foreshadowing the inward dissociation he experiences later in life. He is again ‘afraid to be Nikhil, someone he doesn’t know.’
Similarly, the flask Gogol’s sister Sonia gives to him for his thirtieth birthday, inscribed with his new initials NG, becomes a symbol of his inability to ‘break from that mismatched name’. Lahiri indeed suggests that identities are unavoidably ‘engraved’ with the layered ‘randomness’ of their lives and cannot be easily dissolved.
And then he returned to New York, to the apartment they’d inhabited together that was now all his. A year later, the shock has worn off, but a sense of failure and shame persists, deep and abiding. There are nights he still falls asleep on the sofa, without deliberation, waking up at three A.M. with the television still on. It is as if a building he’d been responsible for designing has collapsed for all to see. And yet he can’t really blame her. They had both acted on the same impulse, that was their mistake. They had both sought comfort in each other, and in their shared world, perhaps for the sake of novelty, or out of the fear that that world was slowly dying. Still, he wonders how he’s arrived at all this: that he is thirty-two years old, and already married and divorced. His time with her seems like a permanent part of him that no longer has any relevance, or currency. As if that time were a name he’d ceased to use. (pp. 283-284)
For the majority of his life, Gogol alternates between feeling irritation and resentment for his Bengali heritage, and profoundly longing to be truly Indian. Gogol has several failed relationships and romantic encounters: Kim, with whom he introduces himself as Nikhil ‘for the first time in his life’, then Maxine, who attracted him with the ‘gift of accepting her life’. But, like his indulgence of and immersion in the Ratliff’s self-satisfied American life, the interactions with these women feel like a ‘betrayal of his own’ culture, family and identity.
It is ‘familiarity’ that draws him to Moushumi, a childhood Bengali family friend with whom he ’s[eeks] comfort’ in their shared culture. For Gogol, his relationship with Moushumi represents the possibility of salvaging a childhood he spent disliking, but for Moushumi it’s a betrayal of her principles of independence. She has ‘turn[ed] her back’ her Indian and American ties to embrace a third culture in France, a country with ‘no claim’ on her and none of the cultural pressures of her heritage.
Gogol longs - ironically - for stability and ‘fall[s] in love with Gothic architecture’; he equates his failed marriage with Moushumi to a ‘building he’d been responsible for designing’. This is essentially Gogol’s way of dealing with the trauma of his divorce, translated into a form he can understand and process. And yet, even a year after their separation, a ‘sense of failure and shame persists, deep and abiding’ - Lahiri suggests that trauma, grief and heartbreak are embedded into our identities and we don’t require a set length of time to accept them.
Both Moushumi and Gogol come to realise that they were sustained merely by ‘the same impulse’ to erase discomfort, their marriage ‘collaps[ing] for all to see’. Their relationship becomes meaningless and their time together dissolves like a ‘name [Gogol had] ceased to use’. Lahiri conveys that re-entering and recreating a life once discarded (as harshly as Gogol discards his own name) is impossible, even irrational.
3. Memory and Retrospect
It is no surprise that retrospect and remembrance emerge as central themes in both Reckoning and The Namesake. Gogol’s resented ‘namesake’ itself is a conduit for redemptive memory, whilst Magda ascertains the value of history to ‘salvage’ the present.
Reckoning
I wanted to know; I didn’t want to know. Without realising it I plotted a course somewhere between the two. My father, unable to get any further with his own attempts at a reckoning, had simply closed the door on the past. And now I was about to open that door. (p. 290)
Retrospect specifically becomes a vital motif in Reckoning as Szubanski uses her memoir to ‘join up the dots of [her]self’ and gain perspective on her father’s ‘unresolved and unexamined feelings’. Through her adult perspective, she reflects on her early doubts as she is finally able to appreciate and understand her heritage, reading ‘Dni Powstania’ and ‘Exodus’ on the Poles’ shame. Although Magda and Zbigniew ‘[pull] in opposite directions’ for most of her life, only by becoming the ‘collector of [Zbigniew’s]…stories’ and taping his ‘confession’ are the two brought to some level of understanding. Magda is finally able to ‘rozumiesz’ (to understand) that her father had ‘never helped the Nazis’, and on some level, ‘feel the feelings [her] father could not allow himself’. Perhaps more importantly, Zbigniew is able to share the paradoxical nature of his guilt - ‘what he had done in the name of good’ - feeling neither ‘ashamed’ nor ‘proud’ of his past. His reflection through the outlook of a ‘half old, half young’ version of himself mirrors Magda’s own introspection - in this sense, the ways in which Magda and Zbigniew are resolving (or at least learning to accept) trauma are ‘repeat[ing like]…history’ in their family.
I was never told anything much about Luke. But my mother’s eyes—beneath the humour—were haunted by a deep, fretting sadness. Behind the querulous hypervigilance, the nitpicking, the irritability, there cowered a terrified child. A child full of panicky uncertainty about everything. I wanted to reach back and grab her hand and pull her through time and…what? I wanted to hug my mother when she was a child, to tell her everything was all right. (p. 336)
Szubanski observes how generations of poverty and war have shaped her mother’s ‘flinty’, unyielding determination to ‘just…get on with it’ and move on from adversity. Her ‘deep, fretting sadness’ hidden ‘beneath [her] humour’ is compassion and grief for her father, Luke, who ‘woke every night screaming’ after the war. This resonates strongly with Magda because her own father’s war experience mirrors Luke’s. The two families (Magda’s family, and her mother’s family) are forced to ‘[walk] on eggshells for fear of detonating [them]’.
However, Magda is able to understand that her mother’s capricious tendency to ‘cling like a python then turn and snap like a crocodile’ is a product of her trauma, which allows Magda to understand Margaret’s character on a more intimate and genuine level. Magda, as a neglected and ‘terrified child’ with ‘panicky uncertainty’ herself, empathising with Margaret’s own troubled childhood allows Magda to offer her mother the comfort and support she craved when struggling alone beneath Zbigniew’s ‘exacting…standards’. Through this, Szubanski seems to suggest that although the legacy of trauma is an ongoing and deeply complex process, ‘reach[ing] back’ to process unresolved traumas together becomes a precious and vital way to ‘salvage’ bruised relationships.
The Namesake
There is no question of skipping this meal; on the contrary, for ten evenings the three of them are strangely hungry, eager to taste the blandness on their plates. It is the one thing that structures their days: the sound of the food being warmed in the microwave, three plates lowered from the cupboard, three glasses filled. The rest of it—the calls, the flowers that are everywhere, the visitors, the hours they spend sitting together in the living room unable to say a word, mean nothing. Without articulating it to one another, they draw comfort from the fact that it is the only time in the day that they are alone, isolated, as a family; even if there are visitors lingering in the house, only the three of them partake of this meal. And only for its duration is their grief slightly abated, the enforced absence of certain foods on their plates conjuring his father's presence somehow. (pp. 180-181)
Even in death, Ashoke’s spirit is able to heal his fractured, grief-ridden family - truly and ultimately ‘transcend[ing] grief’, fulfilling the destiny his name’s meaning set out for him. Surrounded by meaningless condolences and forced sympathy - the ‘calls’, the ‘flowers’ and the ‘visitors’ - the Ganguli family is left ‘unable to say a word’ or process their loss in a safe and judgement-free space. The ‘mourner’s diet’ that sustains them, even in all its ‘blandness’, is able to ‘slightly [abate]’ their grief; it ‘conjur[es Ashoke’s] presence’ and unites the ‘isolated’ Gangulis ‘as a family’. Ironically, these cultural traditions that young Gogol so adamantly refused become the ‘only thing that seems to make sense’. Preserving and honouring Ashoke’s memory, this forsaken custom becomes an unanticipated lifeline for a family torn apart by cultural expectations, irreconcilable differences and shared tragedy.
"Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey, that we went together to a place where there was nowhere left to go." (p. 187)
Unlike Magda and Zbigniew who are able to reconnect in life, Gogol’s own poignant flashbacks with his father are cherished only after his death. However, it is only with this hindsight that Gogol is truly able to appreciate these initially resented, perhaps forgotten, moments as meaningful connections to his family. Gogol’s relationship with his father is tragically underpinned by a lifetime of misinterpretations and misunderstood trauma, the two unable to understand each other’s disparate outlooks on life and culture. However, when they visit Cape Cod both Gogol and Ashoke are, if only momentarily, pioneers. They are exposed to the world, just as Ashoke had been when he migrated to America; the two travelling ‘together to a place where there was nowhere left to go’.
Gogol indeed grapples with a desire for stability and meaning throughout his entire life, bewildered by the ‘unintended’ series of ‘defining and distressing’ events. However, family indeed becomes the source of true security for Gogol. ‘Remember[ing]…always’, he preserves the memory of his father, and resistant to time and change, it remains a comforting constant amidst the ‘randomness’ that characterises and complicates his family’s life.
I am Malala and Made in Dagenham is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing). For a detailed guide on Comparative, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.
Compare the importance and role of idols and role models in I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Describe the role of fear and obligation as an obstacle to progress by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
‘As we change the things around us, the things around us change us’. Discuss the extent to which this is true by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Discuss the benefit of adversity in strengthening one’s will to persevere by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Resilience is more important than success. Discuss whether this is true within the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Compare the role and importance of family within the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Compare both I am Malala and Made in Dagenham in relation to the importance of language as a device (spoken and written).
Compare the forms of resistance displayed by protagonists Malala Yousafzai and Rita O’Grady in texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham and decide why they chose these methods.
Analyse the effectiveness of small triumphs creating ripple effects in wider communities by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Discuss whether support networks are intrinsic for a single figure to create positive change by comparing I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
The main protagonists are galvanized by the people they wish not to be like rather than their role models. Discuss to what extent this is true by comparing the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Made in Dagenham and I am Malala explore the vices of deceit, appeasement and scapegoating. Discuss these by comparing both texts, commenting on how they pose a threat to the causes of both protagonists.
What role do interpersonal relationships play in the texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham? Can these relationships be both positive and negative? Discuss.
Change cannot be immediate but gradual. To what extent is this true in texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Examine the role of the media in driving social change by comparing texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham
A patriarchal society is invariably one that is repressive. Discuss this statement and its truths or falsities by comparing texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
Discuss solidarity in relation to social, historical and cultural progress and whether it can be both positive and negative by comparing texts I am Malala and Made in Dagenham.
What's up everyone! So, I want to get a new segment started and it's pretty much the ‘essay questions with Lisa Tran’ segment. And basically, what this includes is every now and then I will choose a topic on one of your suggestions of whatever book, or film you’re studying, and break that down together with you on camera, on YouTube. So, if you like the idea of that, then make sure you give this video a thumbs up so that I know that this is something that you're super keen on and that you'll find helpful.
So, I've taken liberties (since this is the first one that we've ever done) of choosing my own essay topic that I was interested in doing. It's based on The Handmaid's Tale, and if any of you have read this or watched it (it's a TV series on Hulu) I have read and watched both and it has just been sensational, so I wanted to basically break down this prompt with you. If it's something that you haven't watched, or if you haven't read it, that's not a problem at all because the skills that I will be teaching you when it comes to breaking down an essay topic will be invaluable when it comes to actually applying it to your own studies. So, let's get started.
The Handmaid's Tale Quick Summary
Just as a really quick summary (that will probably butcher the overall meaning and the experience that you get from the book, but I don't want to really spoil it for you either), The Handmaid’s Tale is set in this future world where America, or the United States, has become a dystopian society, and women in particular are reduced to nothing more than just a child bearing species. Men are in charge and these women, who are deemed to be people who can give birth, are kept alive and kept around in these rich people's homes or people who are higher up in the hierarchy, and they basically have to have sex with the male leader of the home and just create children, and that is their purpose. If they're no longer fertile, then they'll pretty much be out-casted from society and rejected.
As a book, it's very thought-provoking because it's set in the future. Of course, this is something that we cannot guarantee won't actually happen. It's really scary to see how a world that was progressive (because they lived in modern American society, there was a lot of free movement happening, there were same-sex relationships that were out in the open, people were taking contraceptives) regressed, and it went back to a lot of old values that we had moved on from. It really opens up a pot of questions that you can ask about where we’re going as a society, where we think we're going as a society and where we'll actually end up.
That's just my quick two minute spiel. If you wanted to get your hands on the book then I highly recommend it - I'll pop it down in the description box below (on Youtube).
Part 1: Brainstorm
The question here is ‘Atwood’s concerns in The Handmaid's Tale go beyond women's freedom’ Discuss.
So, the first thing I always do is I look at the keywords; we've got ‘Atwood’s concerns’, ‘go beyond’ and ‘women's freedom’.
The reason why we look at keywords is because we want to confirm to ourselves (as the writer of this essay), that we are going to stay focused and not go off topic with the essay topic, and the keywords will ensure that not only we stay on topic, but they emphasize the ideas that we really need to focus on. So, let's break down each of the keywords individually.
‘Atwood’s concerns’
This means that we have to focus on the author's intention or message in writing The Handmaid's Tale. We'd be thinking about ‘what ideas does she criticize or condemn?’, or ‘what does she endorse on the other hand?’
‘go beyond’
So, ‘go beyond’ is a very straightforward way of saying that an essay that is only focused on women's freedom probably won't be holistic or well-rounded enough. We have to look beyond the obvious.
‘women’s freedom’
The third one is ‘women's freedom’. So, what does this mean? To live in a patriarchal society, to be constantly monitored by guards and potential eyes.
It's very easy to slip into just speaking about handmaids. Like I mentioned before, there's a male lead in the house who is the highest up in the hierarchy. He has a wife as well. Serena Joy is a perfect example of someone who on the surface ranks as the highest in female roles, because she is the wife of the commander. So, we see things from her perspective.
Part 2: Main Arguments
From this exploration of the key words, I can come up with two main body paragraphs. The two ideas are one:
‘To live in a chilling, post-modernism dystopia, Atwood showcases the evils of the patriarchy’
My second one is:
‘Moreover, Atwood reveals how, despite being at the top of the female hierarchy as commander’s wives, even they suffer’
Let's have a look at both of these ideas individually.
‘To live in a chilling, post-modernism dystopia, Atwood showcases the evils of the patriarchy’
Some of my rationale behind this idea include one: Offred, who is our protagonist. Offred is actually not her real name, and because Offred is not her real name, she therefore represents any type of handmaid. She's just another one of them with a name assigned to her. Our identity is connected with our name, so her identity, which is what makes her feel human, is completely shredded from her. She has trouble remembering what she even used to look like.
The second thing is that it's dehumanizing. It doesn't matter whether Offred is intelligent, educated or even beautiful, what matters are viable ovaries and therefore, she's classified as a handmaid, and this is her last chance at being able to survive in this type of society.
The third one is that she isn't even given the freedom to take her own life. Suicide is almost impossible, “I know why there was no glass in front of the watercolor picture of the blue irises, and why the window opens only partly and why the glass in it is shatter-proof. It isn’t running away they're afraid of. We wouldn't get that far. It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge”. For us as humans, we get the opportunity to do things that we want, but even to take her own life away, to save herself from the world that she's living in, is impossible.
Onto our second idea.
‘Moreover, Atwood reveals how, despite being at the top of the female hierarchy as commander’s wives, even they suffer’
The first example I have for this is how Serena Joy, the commander’s wife, actually used to have her own television show. She used to be really popular, she was a celebrity, and yet she's been reduced to basically just being the commander's wife, where she lurks around in the house. She really doesn't do that much anymore, she's just there to support her husband and that is her role.
The second example is that she's forced to partake in a ritual where her husband has sex with a handmaid, “Which of us is it worse for, her or me?” (her meaning Offred). So, you can see that even for a commander’s wife, somebody who is in a high position in this society (she's the elite basically of what women could be), even she is suffering.
Going back to our keyword of ‘go beyond’
This means that in fact, we should speak about other major issues in the novel and not just about female concerns. Our first two ideas revolve around female concern, but let's see what else we could discuss. To me, another major issue revolving around freedom that's important to talk about is ‘has the Gilliad society actually influenced men and men's freedom?’ It's super easy to just target men and say that, you know, men are in power now and so it's all about the women, but there are ample examples that show that even the men are suffering.
Of course there are heaps of other issues that are brought forward in The Handmaid's Tale, but the ideas that I’ve discussed here are the ones that personally interest me the most, meaning that I've got a lot more to say and a lot more opinion to offer in my discussion.
At this point, I'll leave it up to you guys. If you have read or watched The Handmaid's Tale, tell me what you think or ask me any questions you have about how you would structure this essay. I'd really love to have a productive discussion with you that includes some critical thinking on your part. So, let's get it started.
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It's 32 degrees today for the first time in Melbourne, in like forever, so I'm going to the beach and I'm going to spoil myself right now. I'll see you guys next week. Bye!
The Crucible is a four-act play that portrays the atmosphere of the witch trials in Salem. As an allegory of McCarthyism, the play primarily focuses on criticising the ways in which innocent people are prosecuted without any founded evidence, reflecting the unjust nature of the corrupted authoritarian system that governs Salem. It starts off with the girls dancing in the woods and Betty’s unconsciousness, which causes the people of Salem to look for unnatural causes. People start scapegoating others to escape prosecution and falsely accuse others to gain power and land, facilitating mass hysteria which ultimately leads to the downfall of the Salem theocracy. The protagonist John Proctor is one of those that decides to defy the courts and sacrifices his life towards the end of the play, ending the play on a quiet note in contrast with its frenzied conflict throughout the acts.
The Dressmaker shows the audience the treatment towards Tilly Dunnage upon her return to fictional town Dungatar years after she was wrongly accused of being a murderess. Rosalie Ham critiques the impacts of rumours on Tilly and Molly, also establishing her condemnation of the societal stigma of this isolated town. Tilly starts making haute couture outfits to transform the lives of the women in the town and help them present themselves as more desirable and elevate their ranks. However, the townspeople still see Tilly negatively, except for some individuals who are able to look past the opinions of others and get to know Tilly themselves. Ham’s gothic novel garners the audience’s sympathy towards the outcasts of the town and antagonises those who find pleasure in creating drama and spreading rumours about others.
2. Themes, Motifs and Key Ideas
Through discussing themes, motifs, and key ideas, we’ll gain a clearer understanding of some super important ideas to bring out in your essays. Remember, that when it comes to themes, there’s a whole host of ways you can express your ideas - but this is what I’d suggest as the most impressive method to blow away the VCAA examiners. Throughout this section, we'll be adhering to the CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy to help us easily find points of similarity and difference. This is particularly important when it comes to essay writing, because you want to know that you're coming up with unique comparative points (compared to the rest of the Victorian cohort!). I don't discuss this strategy in detail here, but if you're interested, check out How To Write A Killer Comparative. I use this strategy throughout this discussion of themes and in the next section, Comparative Essay Prompt Example.
Similarities and Differences (CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT Ideas)
Social Class
Both The Crucible and The Dressmaker talk extensively about class. By class, what I mean is the economic and social divisions which determine where people sit in society. For instance, we could say that the British Royals are ‘upper class’, whilst people living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to get by are ‘lower class’.
Ultimately, both The Crucible and The Dressmaker are set in classist societies where there is no opportunity for social advancement. Whilst Thomas Putnam steals the land of poor Salemites accused of witchcraft, the McSwineys are left to live in absolute poverty and never leave the ‘tip’ where they have lived for generations. Dungatar and Salem view this social division as a ‘given’ and reject the idea that there is anything wrong with certain people living a life of suffering so others can have lives of wealth and pleasure. As such, for both Salem and Dungatar, the very idea that anyone could move between the classes and make a better life for themselves is inherently dangerous. What we can see here is that class shapes the way communities deal with crisis. Anything that overturns class is dangerous because it challenges the social order – meaning that individuals such as Reverend Parris in The Crucible, or Councillor Pettyman in The Dressmaker may lose all their power and authority.
For The Crucible, that’s precisely why the witchcraft crisis is so threatening, as the Salemites are prepared to replace Reverend Parris and deny his authority. Although Abigail and the group of girls thus single-handedly overturn Salem’s class structures and replace it with their own tyranny, Parris’ original intention was to use their power to reinforce his authority. In The Dressmaker, Tilly is threatening because she doesn’t neatly fit in to Dungatar’s class structure. Having travelled the outside world, she represents a worldly mindset and breadth of experiences which the townspeople know they cannot match.
For this theme, there’s a DIVERGENCE of ideas too, and this is clear because the way that class is expressed and enforced in both texts is vastly different. For The Crucible, it’s all about religion – Reverend Parris’ assertion that all Christians must be loyal to him ensures the class structure remains intact. More than that, to challenge him would be to challenge God, which also guides Danforth in executing those who don’t follow his will. In the case of The Dressmaker, there’s no central authority who imposes class on Dungatar. Rather, the people do it themselves; putting people back in their place through rumour and suspicion. However, by creating extravagant, expensive dresses for the townspeople, Tilly inadvertently provides people with another way to express class.
Isolated Communities
CONVERGENT:
The setting forms an essential thematic element of The Crucible and The Dressmaker. Both communities are thoroughly isolated and, in colloquial terms, live in the ‘middle of no-where’.
DIVERGENT:
However, what is starkly different between the texts is how this isolation shapes the respective communities’ self-image. For Salem, its citizens adopt a mindset of religious and cultural superiority – believing that their faith, dedication to hard work and unity under God make them the most blessed people in the world. Individuals as diverse as Rebecca Nurse and Thomas Putnam perceive Salem to be a genuinely incredible place. They see Salem as the first battleground between God and the Devil in the Americas, and as such, construct a grand narrative in which they are God’s soldiers protecting his kingdom. Even the name ‘Salem’ references ‘Jerusalem’, revealing that the Salemites see themselves as the second coming of Christ, and the fulfilment of the Bible’s promises.
Not much of the same can be said for The Dressmaker. Dungatar lacks the same religious context, and the very name of ‘Dungatar’ references ‘dung’, or beetle poop. The next part of the name is 'tar', a sticky substance, creating the impression that Dungatar's people are stuck in their disgusting ways. The townspeople of Dungatar are acutely aware of their own inadequacy, and that is why they fight so hard to remain isolated from the outside world. Tilly is therefore a threat because she challenges their isolation and forces the men and women of Dungatar to reconsider why their community has shunned progress for so long. In short, she makes a once-isolated people realise that fear, paranoia, division and superstition are no way to run a town, and brings them to acknowledge the terribly harmful impacts of their own hatred.
On top of that, because Salem is literally the only Christian, European settlement for miles, it is simply impossible for them to even think about alternatives to their way of life. They are completely isolated and thus, all of their problems come from ‘within’ and are a result of their own division. For Dungatar, it’s a mix of societal issues on the inside being made worse by the arrival of people from the outside. The township is isolated, but unlike Salem, it at least has contact with the outside world. All Tilly does, therefore, is show the people of Dungatar an alternative to their way of life. But, for a community used to the way they have lived for decades, it ultimately contributes to its destruction.
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3. Comparative Essay Prompt Example
The following essay topic breakdown was written by Lindsey Dang. If you'd like to see a completed A+ essay based off this same essay topic, then check out LSG's A Killer Comparative Guide: The Crucible & The Dressmaker, written by 50 study scorer and LSG tutor, Jordan Bassilious!
[Modified Video Transcription]
Compare the ways in which outcasts are treated in The Crucible and The Dressmaker.
Step 1: Analyse
Before writing our topic sentences, we need to look at our key words first. The keywords in this prompt are outcasts and treated.
So, who are considered outcasts in the two texts? Outcasts can be those of traditionally lower classes, they can be characters with physical flaws, those that are different to others or those who do not abide by the standards of their respective societies.
In TheCrucible: Tituba, Abigail, John Proctor or even Martha Giles can be considered as outcasts.
In The Dressmaker: We can consider Tilly, Molly, The McSwineys, etc.
We also need to look our second key word ‘treated’. How would we describe the treatment towards these characters? Are they treated nicely or are they mistreated and discriminated against? Do ALL members of that community have that same treatment towards those outcasts or are there exceptions? Remember this point because we might be able to use this to challenge the prompt.
We’re going to skip Step 2: Brainstorm today, but if you’re familiar with LSG teachings, including the THINK and EXECUTE strategy discussed in my How To Write A Killer Text Response ebook, then you’ll be good for this part.
Step 3: Create a Plan
ARGUMENT 1
Both texts portray outcasts as victims of relentless accusations or rumours, seeking to engage the pathos of the audience towards those who are marginalised.
In The Crucible, Tituba the ‘Negro slave’ is the first person to be accused by witchcraft in Salem. Her ‘consequent low standing’ is also shown through her use of language ‘You beg me to conjure! She beg me make charm’ which is fraught with grammatical errors, compared to Judge Danforth who uses legal jargon and the Putnams who are much more well-spoken.
Similarly, the McSwineys are also those of lower class and are seen as the outcasts of Dungatar. Their names show us their position in the social hierarchy because they are associated with swines which are pigs. This is confirmed by Sergeant Farrat who said ‘Teddy McSwiney was, by the natural order of the town, an outcast who lived by the tip’. Even when Teddy McSwiney died, the townspeople still did not reflect on the impacts that their prejudice and bigotry had on him, eventually forcing the McSwineys to leave the town because they could not find a sense of belonging living there.
Tilly is also poorly treated due to the fact that she is fatherless, being bullied by the kids at school especially Stewart Pettyman and also used by William as a leverage to marry Gertrude, threatening Elsbeth that ‘it’s either her [Gertrude] or Tilly Dunnage’
Also discuss Giles Corey’s death and the significance of his punishment as the stones that are laid on his chest can be argued to symbolise the weight of authority
ARGUMENT 2
Miller and Ham also denounce the ways in which outcasts are maltreated due to their position in the social hierarchy through his antagonisation of other townspeople.
There’s also a quote on this by Molly ‘But you don’t matter – it’s open slather on outcasts'. Herein, she warns the audience of how quickly outcasts can become victims of rumours and accusations as the term ‘slather’ carries negative connotations.
Similarly, the theocracy that governs Salem dictates the rights of their people and children. He specifically states 'children were anything but thankful for being permitted to walk straight, eyes slightly lowered, arms at sides, and mouths shut until bidden to speak', which explains the girls’ extreme fear of being whipped. Salem is very violent to children, slaves and helpers and it can be seen that this is the result of the social hierarchy and the Puritan ideology.
For The Dressmaker, also discuss the ways in which they name others in this quote ‘daughter of Mad Molly is back – the murderess!’ Likewise discuss how Goody Osbourne the ‘drunkard half-witted’ and Sarah Good an old beggar woman are the first ones to be named. You can talk about Martha who is accused of being a witch just because she has been ‘reading strange books’, and Sarah Good due to the mere act of ‘mumbling’. The normality of these actions underlines the absurdity of the accusations made against these individuals, furthering Miller’s chastisement of the fictitious nature of the trials and also the ways in which outcasts are the first to be scapegoated.
ARGUMENT 3
However, there are still characters that are driven by their sense of morality or remorse instead of mistreating the outcasts of their community.
Both Sergeant Farrat and Proctor are motivated by their remorse to make amends. Proctor’s evasion of ‘tearing the paper’ and finding ‘his goodness’ is motivated by his desire to atone for his sin (having committed adultery with Abigail), and Sergeant regretted sending Tilly away. He, in his eulogy, says ‘if you had included [Tilly], Teddy would have always been with us’, expressing his regret for the ways outcasts are treated in Dungatar. Similarly, Teddy McSwiney also has a pure relationship with Tilly and treats her differently instead of judging her based on the rumours about her being a ‘murderess’.
While those who can sympathise with outcasts in The Dressmaker are either outcasts themselves or are remorseful (or both), there are those in The Crucible that are purely and solely motivated by their moral uprightness. Rebecca Nurse is neither an outcast (as she is highly respected for her wisdom) nor remorseful (as she has remained kind and pure from the beginning of the play). She is always the voice of reason in the play and tries to stop authoritative figures from convicting and prosecuting outcasts. A quote you can use would be ‘I think you best send Reverend Hale back as soon as he come. This will set us all to arguin’ again in the society, and we thought to have peace this year'.
4. Sample Essay Topics
1. 'I say—I say—God is dead.' —John Proctor, The Crucible. Explore how communities respond to crisis.
2. People must conform to societal expectations in The Crucible and The Dressmaker. Do you agree?
3. Discuss how The Crucible and The Dressmaker use textual features to convey the author’s perspective.
4. Gender repression is rife in both The Crucible and The Dressmaker. Discuss.
Now it's your turn! Give these essay topics a go. If you're interested in reading a 50 study scorer's completed essays based off these 4 essay topics, along with annotations so you can understand his thinking process, then I would highly recommend checking out LSG's A Killer Comparative Guide: The Crucible & The Dressmaker.
This blog has written contributions from Lindsey Dang.
Planning is an essential part of any successful text response essay. It helps you ensure that you’re answering the prompt, utilising enough quotes and writing the most unique and perceptive analysis possible! The hard part of this is that you only have about FIVE MINUTES to plan each essay in the Year 12 English exam… (more info on the best way to tackle that challenge in this video!)
So, I developed the FIVE TYPES of essay prompts to help students streamline their planning process and maximise every minute of their SACs and exams.
By identifying the type of prompt you’re being challenged with immediately, a number of parameters or guidelines are already set in place. For a specific type of prompt, you have specific criteria to meet – for example, in a metalanguage-based prompt, you immediately know that any evidence you brainstorm in your planning stage should be based around the literary techniques used in your given text.
‘Ambition in the play Macbeth leads to success.’ Discuss. (Macbeth)
When you’re presented with a theme-based prompt, you can automatically shift your brainstorming and planning towards the themes mentioned in the prompt along with any others that you can link to the core theme in some way.
In regard to this Macbeth prompt, for example, you could explore the different ways the theme of ambition is presented in the text. Additionally, the themes of guilt and power are intimately related to ambition in the text, so you can use those other ideas to aid your brainstorming and get you a step ahead of the rest of the state come exam day.
2. Character-Based Prompt
‘Frankenstein’s hubris is what punishes him.’ Discuss. (Frankenstein)
These prompts are pretty easy to spot – if you see a character’s name in the prompt, there you have it; you have a character-based prompt on your hands.
Once you know this, you can assume that each example you brainstorm has to be relevant to the specific character named in the prompt in some way. Also, you can explore how the actions of characters don’t occur in isolation – they’re almost always interrelated. Remember, however, that the actions of characters are always connected to the themes and ideas the author is trying to convey.
This type of prompt also grants you some freedoms that other types don’t give. For example, unlike a Theme-based prompt, a character-based prompt means that it’s perfectly fine to write about characters in the topic sentences of your body paragraphs.
3. How-Based Prompt
‘How does Grenville showcase Rooke’s inner conflict in The Lieutenant?’ (The Lieutenant)
Unlike other prompts, the ‘How’ positions you to focus more on the author’s writing intentions. This can be achieved by discussing metalanguage – language that describes language (read my blog post about it here). These prompts tell you immediately that you need to be thinking about the literary techniques explored in the text and explain how they affect the narrative.
Rather than using specific techniques to frame your specific arguments, it’s best to use them as evidence to support arguments that attack the main themes/ideas mentioned in the prompt.
4. Metalanguage or Film-Technique-Based Prompt
‘Hitchcock’s use of film techniques offers an unnerving viewing experience’. Discuss. (Rear Window)
This type of prompt is very similar to How-based prompts, specifically in the fact that the discussion of literary techniques is essential.
For this type of prompt specifically, however, the actual techniques used can form more of a basis for your arguments, unlike in How-based prompts.
5. Quote-Based Prompt
“Out, damned spot!” How does Shakespeare explore the burden of a guilty conscience in Macbeth? (Macbeth)
Countless students ask me every year, “What do I do when there’s a quote in the prompt?!” My reply to these questions is actually fairly straightforward!
There are two main things that you should do when presented with this type of prompt. Firstly, contextualise the quote in your essay and try to use it in your analysis in some way. Secondly, interpret the themes and issues addressed in the quote and implement these into your discussion. The best place to do both of these is in a body paragraph – it weaves in seamlessly and allows for a good amount of analysis, among other reasons!
When faced with unknown prompts in a SAC or your exam, it's reassuring to have a formulaic breakdown of the prompt so that your brain immediately starts categorising the prompt - which of the 5 types of prompts does this one in front of me fall into? To learn more about brainstorming, planning, essay structures for Text Response, read our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response.
Bombshells and The Penelopiad are studied as part of VCE English's Comparative. For one of most popular posts on Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing), check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.
1. Introductions
Bombshells is a collection of six monologues written by Joanna Murray-Smith, each featuring one female character who is symbolic of a specific stage in life and role. Together, they are a telling account of the struggles of being a woman in a modern world, and the monologue format allows the author to emphasise how they are simultaneously unique and universally relatable.
ThePenelopiad is Margaret Atwood’s retelling of Homer’s Odyssey from Odysseus’ wife Penelope’s point of view. The story is narrated first-person by Penelope who resides in the underworld, but is also peppered with spoken, sung or chanted testimonies from the twelve dead maids of the story who act as a Chorus, a traditional part of ancient Greek theatre. Although the story is old and much-retold, the voice is modern and the author’s messages concerning women and their position in the world and their relationship with men are universal, regardless of the historical period.
For more character analysis, download this study guide here.
4. Sample paragraphs
Prompt: How do Bombshells and The Penelopiad emphasise the subtleties of the male-female relationship dynamic?
Introduction
While the narratives of both Bombshells and The Penelopiad are firmly focused on the female perspective of issues relevant to them, the texts also address the male perspective and role in such issues. Like the women, the men created by the authors have instrumental roles in the way the stories play out, which interestingly are sometimes disproportionate to their actual involvement in the plot.
Body paragraph
One of the main differences between the texts, other than the literary format, is the level of dialogue and active participation afforded to the male characters. In The Penelopiad, the male characters arguably largely direct Penelope’s life, from her father essentially selling her into marriage to Odysseus’ life-disrupting departure, return and ‘lies…tricks and… thieving’, not to mention her ‘quite spoiled’ son Telemachus’ will to usurp and disobey his mother. Penelope’s narration gives them large amounts of dialogue and paints them as three-dimensional people in her life, whereas the male characters in Bombshells have barely any dialogue – most of them have none – and yet manage to cause a similar level of turmoil in the female characters. The marriage of Theresa McTerry to her fiancé Ted, for example, sends her into long, capitalised rants heavily punctuated with exclamation marks and profanities; Murray-Smith does not even give Ted a full description. Even without forming the male characters into rich, detailed personas, she still manages to fully showcase the chaos visited upon Theresa by her ill-considered marriage. She draws greater attention to her inner panic and desperation than we see in Penelope, whose voice retains a sense of shocked detachment even when crying or suffering. As such, the differing approaches of the authors both showcase the fact that men can wreak significant havoc with women’s lives, and that we do not actually need to know much about the particulars of the men or their acts to comprehend the women’s suffering.
Conclusion
The approaches of Atwood and Murray-Smith towards the level of engagement of their male characters differ significantly, yet both show the full impact of their actions on the lives of their female counterparts. Even when the men are given only cursory mentions, their presence as an agent of change within the story is sufficient for them to dramatically alter the courses of the characters they consort with.
It’s very hard to look past the overt feminist overtones of both try – even though these are some of the most interesting parts of the texts and you definitely should discuss them, there is more to them than messages about women. Maybe expand your view to more general ideas about human beings, how we live our lives and the ways we react to situations of duress.
Also consider that these texts are in two different formats; how does the live performance of Bombshells change the way it is perceived? How do the different media of these texts support or emphasise the authors’ messages? What can a monologue do better than a book in terms of transmitting an idea and vice versa?
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What Are You Expected To Cover? (Language Analysis Criteria)
School Assessed Coursework (SAC), Exams, and Allocated Marks
How To Prepare for Your Language Analysis SAC and Exam
How To Write a Language Analysis
What Is Language Analysis?
Language Analysis (also known as Analysing Argument, Argument Analysis, and an array of other names) is comparatively the most different of the three parts of the VCE English study design. The other two parts of English, Text Response and Comparative, focus on analysing texts (like novels and films) where students are then expected to produce an extended piece of writing reflecting on those texts' ideas, themes and messages.
Fun fact: In 2013, the VCAA English exam featured a similar poster to this 'Dig for Victory' propaganda poster above.
Language Analysis, officially known as ‘Analysing Argument’ in the study design, is the 2nd Area of Study (AoS 2) - meaning that majority of students will tackle the Language Analysis SAC in Term 2. Unlike Text Response and Comparative, in Language Analysis you will be asked to read 'cold material' (meaning that you won't have seen the piece before, i.e. not had the chance to study it prior to your SAC and exam). This 'cold material' will be 1-3 articles and/or images (we'll just refer to all articles/images as 'texts' for simplicity) written for the media, whether it be an opinion piece for a newspaper, or an illustration for a political campaign.
You are expected to read the article, analyse the persuasive techniques used by the author, and express this in an essay. Let's get into it!
What Are You Expected To Cover? (Language Analysis Criteria)
What are teachers and examiners expecting to see in your essays? Below are the VCE criteria for Language Analysis essays.
Note: Some schools may express the following points differently, however, they should all boil down to the same points - what is necessary in a Language Analysis essay.
1. Understanding of the argument(s) presented and point(s) of view expressed
The first most important step is to understand the contention and arguments presented in the text because you'll base your entire analysis on your assumption. This can be tricky if you're unfamiliar with the contentious topic, or if the writer expresses their ideas in complex ways. In the worst case scenario, you'll misinterpret what the author is arguing and this will subsequently mean that your analysis will be incorrect. Never fear! There are many tactics to try and ascertain the 'right' contention - we'll go into detail later.
2. Analysis of ways in which language and visual features are used to present an argument and to persuade
This is where 'language techniques' come into play. You're expected identify the language used by the writer of the text and how that's intended to persuade the audience to share their point of view. There are too many language techniques to count, but you're probably already familiar with inclusive language, rhetorical questions and statistics. For most students, this is the trickiest part of Language Analysis. To read more on how to overcome this part of the criteria, get educated with Why Your Language Analysis Doesn’t Score As Well As It Should. My golden SIMPLICITY and SPECIFICITY strategy (discussed further under 'ebook' later in this guide) shows you how to analyse any language technique with confidence and accuracy.
3. Control and effectiveness of language use, as appropriate to the task
When examiners read essays, they are expected to get through about 12-15 essays in an hour! This results in approximately 5 minutes to read, get their head around and grade your essay - not much time at all! It is so vital that you don’t give the examiner an opportunity to take away marks because they have to reread certain parts of your essay due to poor expression and grammar.
School Assessed Coursework (SAC), Exams and Allocated Marks
Reading and Creating is assessed in Unit 1 (Year 11) and Unit 3 (Year 12). The number of allocated marks are:
Unit 1 - dependant on school
Unit 3 English – 40 marks
Unit 3 EAL – 30 marks (plus 10 marks for short-answer responses and note form summaries)
Exactly when Language Analysis is assessed within each unit is dependent on each school; some schools at the start of the Unit, others at the end. The time allocated to your SAC is also school-based. Often schools use one or more periods combined, depending on how long each of your periods last. Teachers can ask you to write anywhere from 800 to 1000 words for your essay (keep in mind that it’s about quality, not quantity!)
In your exam, you get a whopping total of 3 hours to write 3 essays (Text Response, Comparative, and Language Analysis). The general guide is 60 minutes on Language Analysis, however, it is up to you exactly how much time you decide to dedicate to this section of the exam. Your Language Analysis essay will be graded out of 10 by two different examiners. Your two unique marks from these examiners will be combined, with 20 as the highest possible mark.
How To Prepare for Your Language Analysis SAC and Exam
Preparation is a vital component in how you perform in your SACs and exam so it’s always a good idea to find out what is your best way to approach assessments. This is just to get you thinking about the different study methods you can try before a SAC. Here are my top strategies (ones I actually used in VCE) for Language Analysis preparation that can be done any time of year (including holidays - see How To Recharge Your Motivation Over the School Holidays for more tips):
Get your hands on some sample texts
If your teacher hasn't given you any to practice with, try the VCAA English exam page. You've got exams dating back to 2001, so there are no shortages of practice papers!
Know your terminology (persuasive techniques and tones)
Make sure you brush up on the definitions of persuasive techniques. It’s not going to be a tick if you use metaphor instead of simile, or if you use alliteration instead of assonance. These mistakes do happen! Don’t fall into this trap.
Here are 10 easy Language Analysis techniques you should definitely know:
Inclusive language
Rhetorical questions
Credentials and expert opinion
Statistics
Anecdotes
Repetition
Alliteration
Appeals
Exaggeration
Generalisation
Also ensure you're familiar with tones. It may be easy to identify the writer is ‘angry’, but is there a better way of expressing that? Perhaps ‘irritated’ is a better term or ‘vexed’, ‘passionate’, ‘furious’, ‘disgruntled’, ‘outraged', ‘irate’ and the list goes on….Stuck? Have a look at our 195 tones for Language Analysis.
Images (including cartoons, illustrations, and graphs) are something you also need to get your head around. Understanding how an image persuades its audience can be challenging, so test yourself and see if you know to look for these 10 things in cartoons.
Read and watch Lisa's Study Guides' resources
Doing this study all by yourself can be rather daunting, so we've got your back. We specialise in supporting VCE English by creating helpful videos, study guides and ebooks. Here are some just to get your started:
YouTubeVideos
We create general Language Analysis advice videos where I answer your questions in a QnA format:
We also create article-specific videos where I select a past VCAA exam and analyse it in real-time:
Check out our entire YouTube channel (and don't forget to subscribe for regular new videos!).
Study Guides
Our awesome team of English high-achievers have analysed popular Language Analysis articles (most based off past VCAA exams). Here's a compilation of all the ones we've covered so far:
In this ebook, I teach you my unique SIMPLICITY and SPECIFICITY strategy.
Many people overcomplicate Language Analysis, and as a result, they think it's much harder than it should be. I was one of those people.
To be fair, when I was in VCE, I was getting straight As in my Language Analysis (and that was awesome!). However, I wanted to achieve more. I wanted to break the A+ barrier that I just couldn't seem to breach. I tried using more advanced language techniques, tried to make my analyses more complex, but they all failed.
It was only when I figured out the SIMPLICITY and SPECIFICITY strategy that I finally saw my marks hit the A+ range - I was ecstatic! Find out more by accessing a sample of my ebook via the Shop page, or at the bottom of this blog.
Practice Your Analysis
Analysing can get messy when you will have dozens of annotations sprawled across the text. Start testing out strategies that work for you. For example, try using idea-based-colouring. This means that if the article discusses injustice – for all techniques you identify dealing with injustice, highlight it yellow. For freedom, highlight them green. This will have you annotating and grouping ideas in one go, saving time and confusion.
Another approach is to use technique-based-colouring, where you highlight same or similar techniques in the one colour.
Above is an example of idea-based-colouring from my Lawton, The Home Of The Giant Watermelon - VCAA Exam 2016 video. If you haven't watched this video series, don't worry if it doesn't make sense to you for now. The point here is how the colours help me to quickly locate ideas when I'm writing my essay.
Write Plans
Once you've done some analysis and revision , it's time to write plans! Plans will help ensure you stick to your essay topic, and have a clear outline of what your essay will cover. This clarity is crucial to success in a Language Analysis essay.
Doing plans is also an extremely time-efficient way to approach SACs. Rather than slaving away hours upon hours over writing essays, writing plans can will save you the burnout, and get you feeling confident faster.
Write Essays
Yes, sad but it’s a fact. Writers only get better by actually writing. Even if you just tackle a couple of essays then at least you will have started to develop a thinking process that will help you to set out arguments logically, utilise important quotes and time yourself against the clock. It will help you write faster as well – something that is a major problem for many students. With that said, let's get into how to write a Language Analysis next.
How To Write a Language Analysis
Since we've established that Language Analysis is quite different from Text Response and Comparative, it's not surprising that the essay has its own set of best practices and rules.
Essay Structure
Depending on how many texts you're given in your SAC or exam (it can be up to 3 texts), you should have an idea of how you plan to execute your essay accordingly - whether that be through a block structure, bridge structure or integrated structure. To learn more about essay structures, check out Christine's (English study score 49) advice in How To Structure A Language Analysis For Two Or More Texts.
Introduction
In an introduction, you're expected to have the following:
In recent years, the issue regarding the treatment and management of asylum seekers has become a topic of interest for many Australian citizens, with the debate focusing centrally on the ethics of their indefinite detention, and the reliability of this initiative as a working solution. Many articles intending to weigh-in on the debate depict the Australian Government’s favoured solution in various tones, with two pieces, written by news source, The Guardian, by authors Ben Doherty and Helen Davidson, and activist Kon Karapanagiotidis, respectively, asserting that the initiative is the wrong approach to a growing problem. In their piece, 'Australia’s offshore detention regime is a brutal and obscene piece of self destruction', the former of the authors speaks with an accusatory tone to their audience of regular readers of the popular news publication site and debates the practicality of the 'arbitra[y]' detention of these asylum seekers, as well as calls into question the humanity of the act and assesses whether it is an effective use of Australia’s wealth, intending to persuade readers to be similarly critical of the initiative. Likewise, the author of the open letter, 'Stand in solidarity with people seeking asylum this holiday season', writes to supporters of his resource centre in a tone of conviction, asserting that asylum seekers deserve the safety of asylum within Australia, that detaining or barring them from entering the country is inhumane and the root of much suffering, and that overall, it is morally wrong, and thus should be ceased immediately. Both articles contend that Australia’s current solution to the growing issue is incorrect, with Doherty and Davidson specifically believing that there is a better solution that must be sought, and Karapanagiotidis believing that detention as a whole is inhumane and should not be further employed by the government.
Try to keep your introduction to the point. There's no need to prolong an introduction just to make a set number of sentences. It's always better to be concise and succinct, and move into your main body paragraphs where the juicy contents of your essay resides.
Body Paragraph
Most of you will be familiar with TEEL. TEEL can stand for:
Topic sentence
Example
Evidence
Linking sentence
In Language Analysis, it seems that schools teach their students different acronyms, whether it be TEE:
And if your teacher or school teaches you something slightly different to the aforementioned acronyms - that's okay too. At the end of the day, the foundations in what's expected are the same. Below is an integrated structure example:
While both articles make very different arguments on the same topic, in one particular case they give voice to the same issue, namely, the inhumanity of detaining refugees, in which both articles become advocates for the abolition of offshore detention. Authors for The Guardian write that it is 'needlessly cruel', 'harsh', and a 'brutal regime', using emotive language to give weight to their argument and invoke a sense of discomfort within their readers, particularly towards the government’s chosen solution. They call on the opinions of a number of other sources who have 'repeatedly criticised', the operation, such as the United Nations, Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, among other similar experts on the matter. The authors depict Asylum Seekers as individuals who are 'arbitrarily punished offshore', and who 'have been accused of no crime', and are therefore, by the judgement of the authors, being treated immorally. In agreement, Karapanagiotidis writes of the abuse endured by asylum seekers in detention, including their separation from loved ones, their arbitrary incarceration, and stating that he, himself, 'cannot begin to imagine the personal toll detention has had on [them]', implying further damage has been done and inviting his audience to similarly place themselves into the figurative shoes of an asylum seeker. The author writes that the offshore detention of asylum seekers causes 'pain', and 'suffering', as well as the 'depriv[ation] of [their] hope', using emotive language to invoke sympathy and understanding within his readers. Karapanagiotidis hands the blame for such 'suffering inflicted', on the Australian government, a similar tactic which The Guardian employed throughout their piece. Overall, both articles use a range of language devices and expert sources to agree that the act of detention is inhumane, and the root of much suffering.
As you're writing essays, you'll probably find that you're using the word 'persuades' very often. To mix it up, have a ‘Persuade’ Synonym Word Bank with you whenever you're studying so that you can build up your vocabulary bank and avoid the dreaded, 'I just keep repeating the same word over and over again!'
Conclusion
Conclusions should be short and sweet.
The two articles, in their discussion of Australia’s offshore detention initiative, bring light to several key points. Authors for The Guardian use various appeals, emotive phrases and evidence of reported monetary statistics to sway the reader to share their opinion, as well as arguments regarding the lack of reliability the initiative provides in its ability to deter boats, the sheer cost of the program, and the morality of the issue. Similarly, Karapanagiotidis, the author of the open letter, uses a humanising image, appeals to the values of the readers, and employs phrases with pre-existing connotations known to the audience, to assert main contentions: that asylum seekers deserve asylum, that barring them from settling in the country is the root of much suffering, and that their indefinite detention is not only inhumane, but morally wrong.
If you’d like to see a list of sentence starters to help you broaden your vocabulary for your Analysing Argument essay, check out this blog.
That's it for the Ultimate Guide to Writing a Language Analysis. Good luck!
Since September 2015, the current affairs has been raging with numerous controversial topics - perfect for your oral presentation! Here are some of the more interesting issues that would be a good starting point for your oral. Remember to offer an interesting and unique argument, even if it may mean adopting the unconventional or unpopular point of view on the issue!
Oral presentation topics 2016
1. Should we have 24 hour public transport on weekends?
2. Gender selective abortion in Australia
3. Should the driving age in Australia be lowered?
4. Cricket star Chris Gayle’s treatment of journalist Mel McLaughlin
5. Should children be vaccinated?
6. Should the voting age in Australia be lowered to 16 years?
7. Should singer Chris Brown be denied entry to Australia?
8. Cultural appropriation in Australia
9. Should an Australian Prime Ministers be removed from office without a general election?
10. Should Australia be a republic?
11. Should the Australian flag be changed?
12. Is Australia Day racist against Indigenous Australians?
13. Adam Goodes booing: Are AFL football crowds racist?
14. Australian of the Year - Rosie Batty: Victim blaming
15. Should UBER be made legal in Australia?
16. Should baby formula be limited in sales?
17. Should greyhound racing be banned in Australia?
18. Is Australia’s border security policy justified?
19. Should Australian Open arenas have sports betting advertising?
20. See more Oral Presentation Topics 2017, click here.
Literary and Cinematic Techniques in Ransom and The Queen
Essay Topics for Ransom and The Queen
Resources for Ransom and The Queen
1. Introductions
Ransom
Set during the Trojan War, one of the most famous events in Greek mythology, David Malouf’s historical fiction Ransom seeks to explore the overwhelming destruction caused by war, and the immense power of reconciliation. Drawing on The Iliad, the epic poem by Homer, Malouf focuses on the events of one day and night, in which King Priam of Troy travels to the enemy Greek encampment to plead with the warrior Achilles to release the body of Priam’s son, Hector. Maddened by grief at the murder of his friend Patroclus, Achilles desecrates the body of Hector as revenge. Despite Achilles’ refusal to give up Hector’s body, Priam is convinced there must be a way of reclaiming the body – of pitting new ways against the old, and forcing the hand of fate. Malouf’s fable reflects the epic themes of the Trojan War, as fatherhood, love, grief, and pride are expertly recast for our times.
To learn more, head over to our Ransom Study Guide(which covers themes, characters, and more).
The Queen
Set in the weeks leading up to and after the infamous death of Princess Diana in 1997, The Queen captures the private moments of the monarchy's grief and loss, and Queen Elizabeth II's inner conflict as she attempts to keep her private and public affairs separate.
The film opens with Tony Blair's "landslide victory" in the election as the "youngest Prime Minister in almost two hundred years", preempting viewers of the "radical modernisation" that's to come as he takes the reign. Juxtaposed with Blair's introduction is the stoic Queen Elizabeth II, residing in Buckingham Palace serenaded by bagpipes, in a ritual unchanged since Queen Victoria, immediately establishing the entrenched traditional values she represents. Princess Diana’s sudden death at the hands of relentless paparazzi results in turmoil in both the lives of those in the monarchy and adoring British citizens who mourn for the loss of the “people's princess". As days ensue with no public response from the Royal Family, the British people grow in disdain towards the authority, demanding a more empathetic response. Caught between the people and the monarchy is Blair, who sees the Royal Family’s public image suffer as a result of inaction.
Despite heavy resistance from the Queen, he eventually encourages her to surrender old royal protocols and adopt a more modern approach to meet public expectation: to fly the flag at half-mast, hold a public funeral, and publicly grieve for the loss of Princess Diana – all in all, to show the people that the monarchy cares. The Queen’s decision to accept Blair’s advice ultimately reconnects her with the British people and restores the Royal Family’s reputation amongst the public.
Together, Ransom and The Queen showcase the challenges involved in leadership roles: the inner conflict that leaves these individuals torn between their private and public demands. More on this in the next section.
2. Themes in Ransom and The Queen
Parenthood and Leadership
In both texts, deaths act as a catalyst for both Priam and the Queen’s personal change – Priam’s son Hector, and the Queen’s, ex-daughter-in-law, Princess Diana.
In Ransom, we learn of the familial sacrifice Priam has needed to make as a leader. His separation from loved ones is expected as he has been ‘asked to stand…at a kingly distance from the human, which in [his] kingly role…[he] can have no part in'. Up until Hector’s death, Priam has been removed from paternal experiences, a sad truth when he admits that his relationships with his children are merely ‘formal and symbolic,’ and a part of the ‘splendour and the ordeal of kingship'. Unlike his wife Hecuba, whose grief is assailed by intimate moments with her children as she recalls, ‘Troilus was very late in walking…I was in labour for eighteen hours with Hector', Priam is unable to recall these private memories. Despite what would ordinarily be experiences shared by both father and mother, Priam cannot echo his wife’s grief to the same extent as these experiences have not been ‘in his sphere’ and he is even ‘unnerved’ by them. Malouf demonstrates how Priam’s royal obligations have suffocated his role as a father, and consequentially, he has been unable to connect with his family in the way he would desire to.
While Priam’s overt expressiveness in his limitations as a father may sway empathy from Ransom readers, Queen Elizabeth’s stoicism at first makes her appear cold-hearted and unfeeling. Her reaction to Prince Charles’ desire to fly a private jet to see Diana in hospital (‘Isn’t that precisely the sort of extravagance they always attack us for?…this isn’t a matter of state.’) is one from a leader's mindset - she's more concerned of the media’s reaction, rather than offering familial care and concern. However, as the film unfolds, viewers come to understand that her stoicism doesn’t necessarily come about because of her own personal choice, but rather, because her leadership role demands it of her.
TIP: Save the words ‘stoicism’ and ‘stoic’ to use in your essay. These words describe someone who experiences suffering but doesn’t openly express it.
We see the Queen’s quiet intentions to protect her grandchildren – ‘I think the less attention one draws to [Diana’s death], the better…for the boys’ – yet her silence is the inadvertent cause of public scorn. As such, Frears doesn’t make a villain out of the Queen, someone who on the outside may seem unfeeling and apathetic, but encourages viewers to see her from a unique perspective – a woman who struggles to manage her identity in both the private and public light.
It is only when Priam and the Queen detach themselves from their traditional roles that we see a change for the better in both of their personal journeys. Priam’s removal of his ‘jewelled amulet [and] golden armbands’ is symbolic of his shedding of the royal weight, and paving way for his step into a paternal role. Likewise, the Queen’s physical distancing from Buckingham Palace, an iconic symbol for tradition, into the public sphere where she mingles with the British people enables her to finally play the role of a grandmother. Both texts show how parenthood can lead to a more enriched human experience. Malouf finally portrays Priam as a happy man when he has the vision to be remembered in his legacy for his role as a father first, then as a king. Likewise in The Queen, her highness’ public mourning connects her with her people, and brings her joy and delight at last.
Tradition, Change, and the New
Both texts explore the challenging tug and pull between upholding traditions and making way for the new.
As humans, we cherish traditions because they are customs or beliefs that have been passed on from generation to generation. They have sentimental value, and by continuing on these traditions, our actions show that we respect the path our elders have laid for us. Tradition is not necessarily depicted in a negative light in either texts, but rather, shown to have its place. The Queen’s resistance against sailing the flag at half mast is out of deference for her elders. Even Somax’s casual storytelling about his daughter-in-law’s griddlecakes is customary, as each time his son would ‘set up the stones’ and her ‘quick and light…flipping’ of the cakes. However, Frears and Malouf both assert that adaptability in upholding tradition is also needed in order for us to grow and develop as humans.
The new is not depicted as an experience one should fear, but rather, an experience one should approach with curiosity. As Malouf writes, ‘[Priam] saw that what was new could also be pleasurable'. The following positive expressions from the king ‘chuckling’ and ‘smiling’ echo the sentiment that while humans naturally resist change, embracing it is often beneficial to our lives. To be meta, Ransom is the retelling of the Trojan events, but Malouf adds to this tradition with a fresh perspective on the story.
Frears and Malouf both demonstrate that change is often propelled into possibility through the support and urging of others. Priam’s vision for his journey is instilled by the goddess Iris, who comes to him in a dream. His consequential journey is supported by Somax, whose ordinary everyday experiences teach Priam more about fatherhood than he had learnt as a father himself. Meanwhile, Achilles drags Hector’s body day after day, with no intention of change until Priam suddenly appears in his camp. Both texts highlight the influence those surrounding us can have on our personal change.
3. Similarities and Differences
At LSG, we use the CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy to help us easily find points of similarity and difference. This is particularly important when it comes to essay writing, because you want to know that you're coming up with unique comparative points (compared to the rest of the Victorian cohort!). I don't discuss this strategy in detail here, but if you're interested, it's worth checking out my How To Write A Killer Comparative ebook to see how you can really set yourself apart and ace Comparative writing. I use this strategy throughout my discussion of themes above and techniques in the next section. To help you get started, here are some questions to get you thinking about the similarities and differences between the two texts:
Public vs. Private Spheres: how is public vs. private life portrayed in either texts?
Stories and Storytelling: who tells the story in either texts? Is there power in storytelling? Why do humans share stories?
Grief, Death, and Loss: How do humans deal with death? What emotions do we experience?
4. Literary and Cinematic Techniques in Ransom and The Queen
Opening Portrayals of Queen Elizabeth and Priam
When Charles consoles Prince William and Harry after informing them of their mother’s death, Queen Elizabeth peers inwards from outside the room, distant and removed from her family. The enclosed frame of the door only serves to heighten her isolation from her family as she is pained by the ‘unrestrained intimacy and affection’ between the boys and their father, something she is unable to partake in. Her face half-covered by the shadows stresses how her familial experience only occurs from afar as she prioritises her role as her highness. Internal change, at least at this point in the film, has yet to begin.
Meanwhile in Ransom, Priam’s journey of personal change is established immediately as he realises that he needs to move beyond this ‘brief six feet of earth he moves and breathes in'. The finite space he has become accustomed to now almost represents (and this may be an intense interpretation) a jail cell in which he as a father, as a human being, has been incarcerated in. He is ready to pursue a new identity beyond just that as a king. Both Ransom and The Queen showcase the sacrifices made by both leaders, and the rigid, almost-dehumanising expectations that are set upon them when they take reign. Both texts encourage their audience to empathise with the leaders, for the challenges they face in their unique positions.
The Queen Film Techniques
I created an in-depth video on the first 20 or so minutes of The Queen you'd might find helpful. Have a watch and see whether you missed out on any film techniques:
[Video Transcription]
To begin with, we have this quote that is displayed at the very start of the film, and it says,
"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown,"
and it's spoken by Henry IV Part II. So, the Part II gives me an indication that this is a quote from some way in Shakespeare's texts. If I then go on Google and actually have a look and type up this quote, then I know for sure that it is indeed from Henry IV Part II, a text and play that was written by William Shakespeare. So, I'm telling you these things because this is actually how I would go on to learn information about the film. I don't just automatically know for sure that it is from this particular text that Shakespeare wrote up. So, I want to ensure that I'm right by going and having a look at Google.
Quotes at the start of any film, at the start of any book, usually have importance to them and they usually should give you an insight as to what's to come. And, for me, I find when I look at this particular quote, it definitely links to the themes of leadership, of motherhood, parenthood, and of perhaps the sacrifices that the queen has needed to make in order to lead her nation. So, with this particular quote, I would write it down somewhere and keep it in mind as you're watching the remainder of the film, because you'll see those themes come to life and have a better understanding of what this quote is talking about.
So, immediately, this film opens up with a news presenter talking about Tony Blair going to the election polls. It's displayed as footage on a TV screen. This gives us insight into a couple of different things. Firstly, it gives us context. The second thing is that it's displayed on a TV and it's broadcasted by a news channel. And, as you probably know, the media, the paparazzi, and just the entire culture of representing news during this time is something that will be heavily explored throughout this film. Especially because it may or may not have led to the death of Princess Diana.
So, again, contextually, it gives us an idea that around this time, the news media was quite overwhelming and omnipresent, which means that it was sort of just everywhere. It was always around. It's sort of no different from today, but there's a reason why they establish it as an opening shot. And that's just sort of give us as viewers an understanding that the news has a big play in what's going to happen in the remainder of this film.
So, I really liked the quote,
"We're in danger of losing too much that is good about this country, as it is,"
that's spoken by the painter, who's drawing a portrait of the queen. This, again, sort of establishes that idea of change immediately at the beginning of the film, or should I say, resistance to change. So, it's already sort of outlining the path that this film is about to take.
Again, I really like this quote,
"The sheer joy of being partial."
So, from the onset with the queen, I think it's important to understand that we don't villainise her, or at least the director doesn't villainise her. He portrays her as a human being, as somebody who is in this position of the queen, which has a lot of weight upon it. And you can tell that she's all glammed up and she's fulfilling her role as the queen, but she's admitting that she envies us as everyday citizens being able to vote, to be able to have an opinion, and just go to the booths. To me, this establishes her as somebody who I empathise with, or sympathise with even.
I think this part with the music in the background and how the queen breaks the fourth wall. So, the fourth wall is basically when any character inside a film actually looks directly at the camera, at you, as the audience. And, to me, this gives me a sense of joy. It makes me feel like it's quite funny, the way that she's looking at us, especially with the...and again, this sort of reiterates my idea that we're not supposed to look at the queen as some evil or some cold-hearted person who is unfeeling for Diana's death later on, but that she's just like one of us and she can participate in a joke and we come to see this in a little bit.
So, in the next scene, we have a wide shot of Buckingham Palace, and in the background, you can hear bagpipes playing. This is something called diegetic sound. Diegetic sound is when you have sounds that come directly from the world in the film. So, the bagpipes sort of establish this sense of tradition. Everything in the scene represents tradition. Buckingham, Palace, the flag, the bagpipes, and that as an early shot of this film sort of shows us the entrenched tradition that exists. That nothing has changed as of yet, and things as sort of going on as they've always had.
Again, Frears is trying to show us the human side of the queen. And so that's why we've got the shot of her waking up in bed. She's all cuddled up and snuggled up in warm and comfy bedding. And it shows that she's vulnerable, in a way. And this is important for us as viewers, as we come to understand her inner thoughts and feelings later on.
So, immediately when the queen wakes up, she has a pile of newspapers in front of her. That adds, again, to that sense of omnipresent media. It's all around us, at least in that period of time.
This time, we have archival footage. So, archival footage is footage that has been taken from that period of time and placed into this film. It adds to the film's sense of authenticity, the fact that it's based off historical offense.
I really like this shot as the queen and Robin walking down the hallway to meet Tony Blair. This is a great snapshot and a great mise-en-scene. And mise-en-scenes, basically, to me anyway, it's when you pause the screen and it's everything that's inside that shot from props, in the foreground, in the background, what the person is wearing, or what the characters are wearing. So, with this particular art, we can not only see the two characters, but we can also see everything that's in the background.
And again, this really adds that sense of tradition because you've got all these paintings from probably famous people back in the day, or ancestors of the monarchy, and then you've got Robin saying he's promising a constitutional shake up, the first one in 300 years, and the queen saying, "Oh, you mean he's going to try and modernise us?" This is a great juxtaposition between the new coming in versus the old.
When Robin makes the joke about Tony Blair's wife having a curtsy that's described as shallow, it's humorous, it's funny, and the queen laughs as a result. The humor that's speckled throughout this film, I think really helps to lighten up the situation, but also to again, show us that the queen is human and that she can enjoy a joke.
I think this is a great snapshot as well. So, we've got the camera looking down at Tony Blair and his wife. When a camera does look down at an object or character, it gives us, as the audience, a sense that that person or character is inferior or they're not in a position of control. And it ties in with the fact that this is Tony Blair's first day in Buckingham Palace as a prime minister and he's only just onboarding the role.
So, in terms of him versus the queen or the monarchy, which is symbolised by everything around him, the setting that he is encompassed in, it shows that he really isn't the one who's playing the field here. He's not the one who is in charge. I love that we've got one of the queen's men giving them rules on what they need to do.
So, we're slowly walking up the stairs towards the queen who is in position of power. So, the staircase is quite symbolic.
Another important thing to know is that Mrs. Blair is actually accompanying the prime minister this first time round that he goes to Buckingham Palace. It shows that he is nervous, he said it himself, but he's not entirely comfortable with his role yet. So he needs the support of his wife. This is in comparison with later in the film at the very end, actually, where Tony Blair goes to Buckingham Palace himself and conducts a meeting with the queen, very similar to the one that he's doing now.
This shot where we've got Mrs. Blair sitting opposite the guard at quite a distance adds to the sense of awkwardness, and it's paralleled with the sense of openness between the queen and the prime minister as well. So, it shows that we've got the old and the new sort of coming together and sort of not really gelling.
Something to keep an eye on is parallels in the film. It's always a really good idea to compare the start and end of this particular film, because we've got such similar scenarios in meaning at the start of the film and in meaning at the end of the film. What you'll notice in this particular scene is that they don't appear in the same shot. They sit opposite one another and one shot on Tony Blair, one shot on the queen, and it sort of goes back and forth. And that's to heighten that sense of distance between them. That sense of unfamiliarity. This is in comparison with the end of the film when we see the two of them walking down the hallway together, out into the garden as equal.
Here's another great shot. So, to add on the idea of the queen having more power versus prime minister, it's quite clear here as he sits down and asks for her hand.
I love the way that Mrs. Blair walks. She's sort of like half...I don't know how you would explain her stride, but it's obviously not one that is aligned with how the queen walks, which is quite poised and quite together. Rather, Mrs. Blair's walk is sort of frumpy, it's sort of bouncy, and her arms are sort of flailing around a little bit, and so adds to that sense of new, of change, of difference. And so that adds to the story of Tony Blair and his family and what he represents as something new and different and probably unwelcome for the queen.
So, that's it, that's my analysis of the first 10 minutes or so of this film. If you're interested in a more detailed film technique analysis, I've just written a killer comparative based on Ransom & The Queen. In this, I show you film techniques that I pick out throughout watching the film, how to analyze them, and also then go on to show you how they are used in A-plus essays. I'm so confident that this study guide will be able to help you improve your understanding of both texts and get you towards that A+ for your SAC and exams.
If you're curious about what's inside the study guide and want to see if it's right for you, head on over and read a free sample to see it for yourself. I hope it gives you something to launch off. If you have any questions, feel free to leave them in the description box below. I have plenty of resources for you guys down there as well if you needed help for your SAC and exams and I'll catch you guys next time. Bye.
Historical Footage and Context
Based on historical events, The Queen is interspersed with real archive television footage leading to, and following Princess Diana’s death. Frears incorporates these clips to help provide viewers insight on the politics, media culture, and public reaction in 1997.
Princess Diana’s introduction through archival clips at the beginning of the film highlight her as a vulnerable individual at the mercy of oppressive and intrusive tabloid newspapers. The sweeping pan of paparazzi on the night of Diana’s death serves to emphasise the obsessive media, who at the time, were paid in excess of one million pounds for taking photos of her. Moments of her kissing on a boat are revealed to the world without any respect for her privacy. This archival footage helps viewers understand the distressing omnipresence of the media, and the turn of the public against the paparazzi and media following Diana’s death.
Likewise, Malouf uses parts of The Iliad as foundations for his novel. The original tale, written during the 8th century BC, explores in detail Achilles’ refusal to fight for his leader Agamemnon, Patroclus’ role in the war, and also the disputes between the gods as they argue over the fate of mortals. By offering a retrospective of this historical story, Malouf invites readers to better understand the Trojan War and Greek mythology, and the impact the gods had on Trojans and Greeks.
For more discussion on literary and cinematic techniques, have a look at my A Killer Comparative Guide: Ransom & The Queen. In this in-depth study guide, Angelina Xu (ATAR 99.6, 46 English study score) and I also break down 5 essay topics, providing you explanations on how to brainstorm and plan each of these essays, then convert these plans into A+ essays complete with annotations! I've dropped some sample essay topics below for you to try at home yourselves:
5. Essay Topics for Ransom and The Queen
"I told him he shouldn't change a thing." (The Queen) Compare how Ransom and The Queen explore resistance to change.
Compare the ways the two texts explore the efficacy of different leadership types.
Compare the ways the two texts explore the importance of storytelling.
'Wordless but not silent.’ (Ransom) Ransom and The Queen explore how silence can be louder than words.
"Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown.” (The Queen) “...the lighter role of being a man.” (Ransom). Compare how the two texts show the burden experienced by those in leadership positions.
For an overview of the EAL study design plus tips and tricks for reading comprehension, time management and more, check out The Ultimate Guide to EAL.
The listening tasks of the EAL exam are worth 20% of the total exam marks. Since this section was introduced to the exam fairly recently, limited past exam questions are available for students to practice. In my blog post EAL Listening Practice and Resources, I provide you with some awesome listening resources that you should definitely check out! And more importantly, I teach you a step-by-step approach for how to use those listening resources to help you better prepare for EAL listening. If you haven’t already read that blog post, go and check it out before coming back to this one so that you understand the steps we’re following.
Here we’ll be working through another exam-style practice to help us improve on the EAL listening section. We will be adopting the same strategies introduced in EAL Listening Practice and Resources. For more advice on how to boost your skills in the listening section, check out Tips on EAL Listening.
Download this worksheetso that you can work through this listening task on your own too!
1st Time Listening
Step 1: Read and Annotate Background Information (below)
Highlight the name of the speakers.
Underline important information.
Step 2: Read and Annotate the Questions
Develop a system that works well for you personally. For example, I usually underline the keywords that give me information on ‘what’, ‘why’, ‘how’, ‘where’, ‘when’. I highlight the speakers in the example below.
Step 1: Fill in the blanks and try to be aware of words you don’t quite ‘get’.
This is where you have the opportunity to fill in the blanks for the challenging words that you did not pick up in the first round. For example: petition, democratic, campaign, rare.
COMMON MISTAKE: check the spelling for ‘rare’, not ‘rear’
Step 2: Note down how the speakers convey their attitude, feeling, ideas, etc.
Let's take a look at this section of the audio clip:
GIDON: ‘It gives me a really good feeling to know that I've made a change, that change has happened. I think what I would like to say to all the other people, especially kids who want to start change, is that it really does sometimes seem impossible that someone that doesn't have a vote and who doesn't have as much democratic power really as adults do, I think what this has shown is that it really is possible to do these things that we still can affect our country and that small people can make great change.’
Here’s one way I analysed the delivery of the audio:
The cheerful and hopeful tone used to deliver the message that the change brings him ‘a really good feeling’ demonstrates Gidon’s approval of the change in parking fees. Furthermore, Gidon states this in a high pitch and fast pace, unveiling that he is pleased and satisfied about the reduction in hospital parking fees.
Step 3: Interaction between speakers.
This step does not apply to this particular audio clip since the audio/ video is a recount of the event rather than direct conversation between two or more speakers.
Whilst reading through the transcript with the audio on, try and pick up any information that you missed in previous rounds of listening and also words that you might have spelt incorrectly.
Sample Questions and Answers
Have a go at these VCAA-style questions that I wrote up, and then check out my sample answers to see how your own answers compare. You will probably notice that a lot of the information you gather from the ‘W’ words actually provides you with the answers to the majority of the questions here.
Sample Questions
Sample Answers
1. Gidon’s petition is about lowering the fee for parking in hospitals and putting a limit on how much the hospital can charge.
2. Gidon has a rare blood condition which means he visits the hospital quite regularly. Since his diagnosis, Gidon’s family paid more than ten thousand dollars just to visit the hospital.
3. When hospital parking fees are too expensive, patients will buy food and other necessities instead of going to the hospital. Thus, patients may not go to the hospital because parking is too expensive, these poor patients need to choose between paying parking fees and buying food.
4. Regular hospital attendants will receive a 90% discount on what they are currently paying.
5. Families, patients and carers for regular visitors of public hospitals.
COMMON MISTAKE: check the spelling for ‘carer’, not ‘career’ or ‘carrier’
6. Gidon is very happy and proud of the change in hospital fees. Gidon uses a cheerful and hopeful tone (1st mark) to deliver the message that the change brings him ‘a really good feeling’ and he feels ‘unbelievably proud’ that ‘small people can make great change’ (2nd mark). In addition, Gidon states this in a high pitch and fast pace, demonstrating that he is pleased and satisfied with the reduction in hospital parking fees (3rd mark).
--- I hope you found this guide handy! For further tips and tricks on tackling the EAL Listening Exam, check out How To ACE the EAL Listening Exam.
We’ve explored creative writing criteria, literary elements and how to replicate the text over on ourThe Ultimate Guide to VCE Creative Writing blog post. If you need a quick refresher or you’re new to creative writing, I highly recommend checking it out!
There are two types of people in this world… those who love creative writing, and those who don’t. But no matter which one you are, never fear, your saviour is here (in the form of this simple guide to writing creatively – whether it’s for school, for a writing competition or just for fun)!
What Are the Five Steps?
Do a brain dump of your ideas!
Stay true to yourself
Start small - keep it simple
Don't be afraid to add "spice"
Read your writing out loud
STEP 1: Do a brain dump of your ideas!
You’ll often find that your brain is buzzing with possible storylines or scenarios; you’ll feel so overwhelmed trying to pick just one! Or maybe, you’re experiencing “writer’s block”, a mind blank. My tip for this is to set a five-minute timer, get a blank sheet of paper and scribble down everything that comes to your mind! You’ll be surprised at how imaginative your mind can be under pressure! When the timer goes off, take a break and then read through each idea individually before choosing one to develop. This way you’ll be able to clearly see all your thoughts, and maybe even be able to link multiple ideas into a more detailed story!
STEP 2: Stay true to yourself
Creative writing is so different to other text types because it gives you the freedom to choose what you're writing about, and how you're going to do it! So, take advantage of this and write from the heart – don’t try to be someone you’re not. Let your personality shine through your writing. It's usually the stories that have some kind of personal backstory, or are based on a real-life experience that are the most enjoyable to read!
STEP 3: Start small - keep it simple
No one expects you to write a New York Times best seller novel in your first attempt! Even the most talented authors began with a dot point plan or a simple paragraph based on their idea. From my experience, the absolute hardest thing to do is actually get started. Keeping it simple and focusing on getting your ideas down on the page is the easiest way to overcome this hurdle. You can worry about the language and descriptions later, once you have a basic first draft, editing and developing is so much easier!
Want to also know the 11 mistakes high school students tend to make in creative writing? Check out this
STEP 4: Don't be afraid to add "spice"
Now it's time for my favourite part; adding the flavour! This is what will make your writing stand out from the crowd! Take some risks, don’t be afraid to rewrite parts of your piece or use language techniques that are out of your comfort zone!
Here are a few of my favourite features to use when creative writing:
Flashbacks/ Foreshadowing (these are good tools to subtly suggest a character’s backstory and add some mystery – especially if you use third-person language to make it more cryptic)
E.g. As he entered the quadrangle for the first time since the accident, a wave of nostalgia hit Jack… The boy chuckled as the girl ran across the quadrangle to meet him, her cheeks rosy from the frosty air. The pale orange sky was transforming into a deep violet and the new-formed shadows cast dancing silhouettes on the young couple. The boy took the girl’s hand, making a silent promise to himself to protect her smile forever. A promise he would fail to keep…
Personification (giving inanimate objects some life to spice up your descriptions!)
E.g. Her favourite oak tree stood proudly in the middle of the park, arms outstretched, waving to those that passed by.
Oxymoron (contradictory words or groups of words)
E.g. Deafening silence, blinding darkness, cold fire
If you want to enhance your language or use different adjectives to what you normally use, https://www.thesaurus.com/ is your best friend! 😉
If you're stuck on how to develop your descriptions and make them more vivid, I suggest relating back to the five senses. Ask yourself, what can the character see? What can they smell? What does the setting they're in sound like?
E.g. He was paralysed in front of the caskets… the cotton wrapped, caterpillar-like bodies, the oppressive silence of the parlour made him feel sick. And the overpowering stench of disinfectant mixed with already-wilting flowers certainly didn’t help.
STEP 5: Read your writing out loud
It can be awkward at first, but have some fun with it! Put on an accent, pretend you're a narrator, and read your writing. It really helps you to gauge the flow of the piece, and also identify things you might need to change. Or even better, read your writing to a friend or family member - ask them how they feel and what their initial thoughts are after hearing your piece.
Either way, reflection is one of the best ways to improve your writing and get it to the next level.
That’s all there is to it folks! Follow this simple recipe and you’ll be cooking up a creative-writing storm! Good luck! 😊
Want more tips on how you can achieve an A+ in creative writing? Read this blog post.
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