Incomplete Essay (intro, 1 body) of Thylacine
Discuss the ways in which various language features and/or techniques can help to create an understanding of a text you have studied.
By adhering to the literary conventions of their time, authors gives readers a broader perspective on the ideas behind their works. Bruce Pascoe’s Thylacine helps readers create a more emotional and sympathetic understanding of the text through its portrayal of indigenous identity in the form of the Thylacine, and the representation of a good-natured Western colonialist through the character of Douglas. Through language features, my understanding of Thylacine is constructed to be remorseful in how the values of colonial hegemony conveyed by the setting of the short story ultimately hurts both indigenous Australians and its colonisers, as the intangible freedoms of both groups are suppressed by the prevalent colonialist mentality of the time.
The short story allows readers to create their own interpretations on how the text portrays the relationship between the Aboriginal people of Australia and their Western colonisers. As Douglas monologues late at night, both him and the reader are introduced to the mystical Thylacine, who is describes as a “tiger god” and a creature that “spirit[s] itself through time so quickly”. After the tense interaction, Douglas proclaims how he and the Thylacine “were fused by the light of a silver moon”. The strong visual imagery constructs a mythical and deifying perspective of the Thylacine. Through Douglas’ perspective, I understand the Thylacine to be beautiful and almost magical in its existence. Through the use of religious language such as “god”, I further perceive the Thylacine to be powerful and god-like. Hence, my understanding of the text is created to see the Thylacine with a sense of awe and to revel in its beauty. As the Thylacine is a native animal to Australia and revered in indigenous culture, I thus interpret the Thylacine as symbolic of Indigenous identity, thus I create a new understanding of the text as highlighting the fantastical nature of Aboriginal Australian culture. Hence, through language features I am able to create the understanding of the Thylacine as mystifying and representing the innately magical reality of Indigenous folklore and identity.
Incomplete (intro, 1 body) Close reading of The Pepper Tree
Dal Stivens’ The Pepper Tree (1949) presents the reader with a monologue from an unnamed persona telling their father’s life story and his adoration of a pepper tree from his childhood. My interpretation of the short story is that Stivens reflects on what makes a meaningful life by conjuring a character that he believes to be content in life. Stivens portrays the father of the narrator as deeply sentimental to the symbols of his past, yet Stivens characterises the father figure as excited and full of youth, despite the hardships of his younger days. I thus interpret that the short story seeks for readers to understand that a happy life can be obtained even when disadvantaged by one’s circumstances.
The short story introduces the father at the very beginning, as the persona recounts her father’s description of the pepper tree of his childhood home. From the persona’s perspective, we learn that the father described the pepper tree to them very intimately, such that “you saw it very clearly”, and that the pepper tree had “its giant branches draped with their long shawls of olive-green leaves”, with “berries on the tree that turned from green to pink with waxlike covers that you could unpick and get the stinky smell of them”. The reader is presented with an overload of visual, tactile and olfactory imagery, which constructs a naturalistic and sublime vision of the pepper tree. Stivens coneys the deeply emotional attachment the father has with the pepper tree, and as a result I interpret the father as reflecting on the beautiful aspects of his life. I understand the father to be content with having experienced a life intertwined with the natural beauty of the world, and hence I interpret Stivens as indicating how one can make joyous memories out of the simple elements of nature. The persona also indicates how it was “the poet in him that wanted to own a Rolls Royce”, as it was “the most perfect piece of machinery”. By labelling the father as a poet, Stivens conveys the father’s connection with the beauty of poetry, and hence I can interpret his affection for the Rolls Royce as representing his affinity for the aesthetically pleasing objects of life. Contrary to how contemporary readers may interpret a desire for “one of those flash cars”, i.e. as a status symbol or for the thrills it can give, the persona’s father instead has an appreciation for the careful and affectionate manner in which the car is created. I interpret the portrayal of the father’s sentimental and appreciate side as representing his satisfaction with life as he does not pursue money or materialistic wealth, and instead desires the beauty and finely crafted objects of life. Hence, I interpret the short story as portraying how the man finds himself as content with life and asks readers to reject a greedy, materialistic outlook on life.
