golden age essay

The Golden Age: a Multifaceted Exploration of History and Culture

Categories: World History

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Published: Sep 5, 2023

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The historical genesis of the golden age, golden age across cultures: diverse representations, reflecting values and aspirations, conclusion: an enduring tapestry of human aspirations.

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The Golden Age

Table of contents, introduction, metalanguage and techniques, analysis for the themes, analysis of the characters, analysis of the quotes, essay 1 : discuss the role of art and poetry in the golden age..

Essay 2 : How does The Golden Age explore the idea of change?
Essay 3 : How much control over their lives do the characters in The Golden Age possess?
Essay 4 : The Golden Age suggests that nothing can replace the loss of one’s home. Discuss.
Essay 5 : ’In The Golden Age, the past is never far away from any of the characters.’ Discuss.
Essay 6 : ’In migrating to Australia, the Golds gain more than they lose. Discuss.’
Essay 7: ’The Golden Age uses a range of literary techniques to convey its themes of belonging and identity.’ Discuss.
Essay 8 : How important is love and connection in The Golden Age?
Essay 9 : “In recovery he felt a hunger to know why he was alive.” ‘In The Golden Age, recovery means much more than survival.’ Discuss.

The Golden Age is a prize-winning novel by Joan London, first published in 2014. It is set in 1954, in the Golden Age Children’s Polio Convalescent Home in Perth. The novel follows Frank Gold, a thirteen-year-old Hungarian immigrant who has bee struck down by polio and is now recovering at the Golden Age. The novel charts his physical recovery, and his emotional and intellectual coming-of-age; he falls in love with fellow-patient Elsa Briggs and develops a passion for poetry.

London creates a sensitive portrait of her adolescent characters and depicts their gradual withdrawal from their parents and increasing independence – a process symbolically mirrored in their physical recovery. The story is told from Frank’s perspective, but also from Elsa’s, Frank’s parents Meyer and Ida, and a nurse at the Golden Age, Olive Penny. All of the central characters are embarking on their own journeys. Meyer and Ida lost everything to the Second World War and must attempt to find their place in their new country. Olive Penny is estranged from her daughter and largely shunned by her family; she lives a forbidden life of casual sexual encounters. All of these characters find themselves in the same city, on the far west of Australia – an Australia which in 1954 is itself struggling to find its own identity.

In 1954, Australia is a deeply conservative country which sees itself as fundamentally British. Since Federation, the White Australian Policy (the Immigration Restriction Act 1901) has been in place, making it almost impossible for non-whites to enter the country permanently. Even central and eastern Europeans like the Golds are exotic by the standards of the time. The ‘New Australians’ from post-war Europe are essentially the first wave of immigrants in the 20 th Century to begin diversifying the Australian population. The Golds are very much outsiders.

London’s tale of two young people who fall in love and are forced apart is about the personal journeys of those characters, the maturation of Australia, but also, crucially, about the power of poetry. Frank’s “vocation” is tied to his love for Elsa and becomes “his way in,” his method for understanding himself and his place in the world. Frank’s poetry also embodies the changes soon to sweep Australia and the world. His style is modern, and Sullivan, the ill-fated patient who introduces Frank to poetry, speaks of exciting things happening in America – presumably referring to the outrageous Beat poets, and other mid-century groups. The 1960s will see immense and world-changing Civil Rights movements, anti-war movements, the birth of popular culture, student revolts, and a sexual revolution. The next two decades are characterised by significant challenges to social and political norms and a new emphasis on the individual. Youth culture, be it embodied in stoned hippies, rioting students, rock and roll and eventually punk culture, will be predicated on rebellion. In 1954, Frank Gold is, in his own, quiet way, a precursor to these seismic shifts, rubbing up against teachers in disputes about what poetry is meant to be, and focussing on verse as that which can liberate the self.

London writes in a highly evocative style, and goes to great lengths to capture Perth in the 1950s. The novel also includes flash-backs to the Golds’ experiences in Budapest, and leaps forward in the final chapter to when Frank is an old, acclaimed poet living in New York. Ultimately, it is a novel which affirms the nature of love, and the power of art.

The Golden Age is a highly stylised and poetic novel – which should be unsurprising, given its keen interest in the nature and purpose of poetry. It is written in what is known in literary studies as “free indirect discourse.” This is a form of third-person narration (he, she, they) which slips in and out of the perspectives of its characters. So when we read The Golden Age , even though the narrative voice positions their subject at a distance, saying “he” or “she,” it still presents the thoughts of that character, without necessarily saying “he thought” or “he said.” Essentially, the narration is in the third person, but it is a third person flavoured with the worldview of the person it describes. For example, when the narrative voice describes Meyer’s reflections on loss, it frequently dispenses with phrases like “he thought this,” and instead melds Meyer’s thoughts with the narrative voice: “He, Ida and Frank had left behind all their family and friends, those who had survived. But the dead came with you.” This style has many advantages. One is that it infuses the narrative with rich and evocative poetic description based on character perspectives. For example, the prose is laden with images of light whenever Frank, and to a lesser extent Myer, drive the narrative forward. The narrative description of Elsa as “the light which swirled around” Frank is another excellent example of imagery appearing in the text which is dependent on the narrative perspective being employed. Many of the metaphors and similes in the text are also good examples – such as Myer’s characterisation of Australians as a “lost tribe” or his description of Ida as “a bird who refused to sing.”

The Golden Age , although largely chronological, has a non-linear narrative structure . This means that the events in the novel do no occur in a strictly correct order. Rather, the novel is characterised by its use of flash-backs, effectively weaving characters’ memories and reflections into the storyline of the novel. This helps build the sense of a world lived in part through memory. This structure, combined with the free indirect discourse narration, makes The Golden Age a self-consciously modernist novel. The Modernist movement, which arguably reached its peak in the 1920s but can be traced long before and after then, was characterised by writers such as James Joyce and Virginia Woolf using free-indirect discourse and displaying a keen interest in the nature of memory – a central theme in The Golden Age . The Golden Age is of course partially about these dramatic changes in literature, and Sullivan Backhouse stresses to Frank Gold that modern poetry is radically different to the poetry of Byron. Modernist literature is also highly allusive, characterised by at times oblique references to many other works. We see this in The Golden Age . Allusions are made to various important modernist and mid-century poets, such as Sassoon and what is possibly the Beat generation (referred to by Sullivan as the “exciting” developments in the United States). The defining work of Modernist poetry, The Waste Land , by T.S Eliot, is directly referenced. This extra layer of interpretative meaning brought to the novel by its allusions reflects its central contention, which is that art and a love of beauty is essential to navigating loss, change and suffering.

Poetry and Art

The Golden Age is in some respects a meditation on the role of art, and especially poetry, in life – particularly in regards to love, healing and survival. It is Sullivan Backhouse, an older boy being treated in an iron lung, who introduces Frank to poetry; or rather, who introduces him to the potential of poetry. Frank has already been exposed to his parents’ fondness for Hungarian poetry, but he always found something “theatrical, deliberate” in their reading, and he particularly disliked his mother’s “holy tone.” Sullivan, by contrast, introduces him to modern poetry, which could be written in “simple, everyday language.” Frank alights on poetry as his “vocation” and begins writing lines of free verse down in an old prescription pad. The use of a prescription pad to write poetry symbolises the healing potential of the act; indeed, after his separation from Elsa, Frank becomes convinced that “poetry had to save him.” Poetry becomes a sophisticated way of interpreting and responding to calamity. “Coming to terms with death,” Sullivan remarks, “is a necessary element in any great poem.”

Frank’s relationship with poetry is closely connected to his relationship with Elsa. He thinks of her as a poetic muse; he conceives her as the symbolic “light which swirled around him.” He finds that he struggles to even write poetry if she is not present, and years later, when he is an established poet, Frank still believes that all his poems in some way have been “messages” to Elsa. This poetic relationship with Elsa is potentially disadvantageous to their genuine, human connection, however. One of his first impressions of her, for example, depicts her as a piece of art: “She looked like a drawing done with a fine lead pencil.” Later, he finds that in his imagination she has stopped being a real person and become a sort of “radiant warrior” – in other words, a poetic creation. In this sense, their separation, and the fact that she is allowed to remain a largely poetic construction over the course of his life, is probably the key to her enduring influence on his poetry.

Poetry also plays an important contextual role in The Golden Age . Frank and Sullivan emphasise that modern poetry should be free-form and experimental. Sullivan looks to the great war poets for inspiration – this is no coincidence, as the First World War is often seen as the defining event in the creation of 20 th Century modernist literature. Later in the novel, Frank is shown to be reading The Waste Land by T.S Eliot (1922), which is arguably the defining text of modernism. It is long, fragmented, disorienting, and full of allusions and mysterious references. Poetry in The Golden Age is essentially depicted as a force for change. Sullivan points to “exciting things” happening in the United States, referring to mid-century poets and, potentially, to the notorious and ground-breaking Beat Generation. This is perhaps why Ida can connect to her new country through music, but does not seem to embrace her new lifestyle to the same extent as Frank or Meyer – she has her music, but her music is old, written by long-dead men who lived on the continent she has fled.

The Golden Age depicts the practicalities of survival; whether it be through the food parcels Ida sends through to her husband as he starves in a labour camp, or the safehouse where she deposits Frank in the hope that the Nazis won’t find him, or in the survival of children with polio, a recovery characterised in a practical sense by exercises, iron lungs and splints. However, the novel is more concerned with the emotional traits necessary for survival – and its emotional toll.

In war-torn Budapest, the survival of both Meyer and Frank depend on Ida. It is through her old piano teacher that she finds shelter for Frank whilst she scavenges for food to send her husband. Survival under such conditions requires some astonishingly difficult calculations – for example, she is quite aware that in the event of a bombing raid, Julia’s house would probably not survive, but she would prefer that fate for her son than for the Nazis to find him. She reflects: “That was the choice she’d made. Its awfulness made her dizzy for a moment.” Ida must draw on her “little fighting core of survival.” This siege-mentality, so necessary amidst the devastation of Europe, is translated into resentment and bitterness in Australia. Although Ida and Meyer had drawn on their own, significant inner resources to survive, they are acutely aware of the sheer chance of the matter – that it is only by “frail threads of chance or luck” that Meyer had stayed alive after most of his family and all of Ida’s were killed, that it is only luck which stopped a shell landing on Julia’s house. For Ida, their survival barely looks like a blessing upon arrival in Australia; particularly when her son, who had “survived cellars, ceilings, bombing, near starvation,” is struck down by polio. For much of the novel, this sense of resentment paralyses Ida: “Now she was a bird who refused to sing.”

Like survival in warfare, survival against polio is to a large extent a matter of chance. Sullivan Backhouse, for example, despite being healthy, athletic and strong-willed, is killed by the disease, whilst many seemingly more vulnerable children survive. Also like warfare, however, there are individual traits and qualities which improve chances of survival, or at least of recovery. For the recovering children, one of the most dangerous elements of their condition is the sense of helplessness it creates. The patients must learn to will themselves well: “in the end, their success or failure in overcoming polio was up to them.” The novel explores the individual impetuses behind each child’s recovery. Young Ann Lee, for example, recalls being unable to give water to desperately thirsty brumbies on her drought-stricken property, and resolves never to be so helpless again. The older children often land on slightly more profound resolutions. Frank’s brush with mortality has him searching for a reason for living: “In recovery he felt a hunger to know why he was alive.” His effort to survive and to carve out a purpose is part of the new-found sense of individuality burning within him; he determines to become “his own reason for living.”

Europe and Australia

The Golds have a complex relationship with Europe. Compared with the seemingly barren city they have arrived in, they can at times not help but be nostalgic. They reflect on long holidays on Lake Belaton, their city of “archways, courtyards, boulevards, cafes and concerts, twinkling bridges,” and Frank finds it astonishing that most people his age do not know the word “nostalgia.” Yet at the same time the Golds must accept that this city which they had loved so much had also proven treacherous. Budapest turned into a “hunting ground,” and suddenly the young Jewish family found themselves unable to trust the very people they had been living alongside for decades. They lose their homes, in this sense, twice – in the literal sense that they must leave Hungary, but also in the sense that the city they thought they knew has proven to be an illusion. This painful history informs the Golds’ reaction to insular, conservative 1950s Australia. Meyer watches the Australians prepare to celebrate the royal visit with bemusement; he considers them a “tiny lost tribe” stranded from the “motherland.” But he is also alarmed by the way the Australians cling to old nationalistic attachments to Britain and their status in the Empire: “Didn’t they understand what had happened to the old countries of Europe?” The air of belonging and civility which Australians attach to Britain, was Meyer understands, a fiction. The people of Perth see themselves as the inheritors of a northern European civilisation – a civilisation which Meyer is painfully aware can break down at any minute.

It thus becomes essential for Ida and Meyer to find a way to belong in Australia. For the first decade of their time in Perth Meyer finds it difficult to relate to this “city with no past.” Worse, the Golds are unable to entirely escape the sort of prejudice which nearly led to their extermination in Europe. Nance, Elsa’s grandmother, expresses disgust at her having “that migrant boy hanging around her,” and Rodney Bennet is surprised that Ida expects to be treated as well as her talent warrants, not like some desperate immigrant happy for whatever scraps the locals throw her. Bennet assumes that any migrant, “especially members of her race,” would be happy to play for anything. Australia is found by the Golds, overwhelmingly, to be dull, insular, conservative and backwards, culturally and intellectually.

However, these binaries are broken down by the end of the novel. Both Ida and Meyer eventually find their place in the new country. For Meyer, it is his attraction to Olive Penny which eventually shifts his perspective on Perth, and allows him to see its “mythic” potential. Ida is almost overwhelmed by the gratitude of her Australian audience for a performance which she suspects would have been considered an embarrassment in Perth, and realises that Australia is the place “in which her music must grow.” Australia itself is on the cusp of change; in a few years it will experience the cultural assault of the 1960s – and the enthusiasm for the royal visit depicted in The Golden Age won’t hold a candle to what happens when the Beatles visit in the next decade. However, Frank still feels compelled to move to New York to pursue his poetry. Whilst this is no doubt partly for personal reasons, it is also the case that up until the present day a great many Australian artists, thinkers and musicians have long felt compelled to move to Britain or America in order to thrive. In that sense, perhaps contemporary Australia is not too far removed from the Australia depicted by London.

Love is central to The Golden Age , although it comes in several forms. Most obviously is the fledgling relationship between Elsa and Frank. Frank falls for Elsa immediately; and she is immediately associated with light: “Her face, in profile, was outlined by light.” Elsa takes a little longer to warm to Frank, but not too long. The two adolescents soon begin to depend on one another emotionally: “Being together made them stronger.” Characteristically, Elsa’s observations about their relationship are slightly less gushing than the young poet’s. Frank describes love variously as “a promise made to all human beings” and “the big thing, maybe the best thing, that happened in lives.” Elsa, whilst taken by this boy she describes as being like no other boy she has ever met, is still slightly reserved. In her view that Frank acted like he had just “elected” her into a “two-person club,” there is perhaps a tacit recognition that his need for her is less as a human being, and more as a concept which he employs for his own, artistic requirements. Certainly he always perceives her in connection to light imagery, and, as discussed above, she soon becomes a more symbolic than literal figure: a “radiant warrior.” Nonetheless, their love is understood to be real, and powerful. Sister Olive Penny recognises it, and argues that having spent much of her career caring for children, knows that they “can surprise you by how much they feel and understand.” The importance of love in the lives of characters in The Golden Age is closely connected to memory. For Frank, “polio is like love… Years later, when you think you have recovered, it comes back.”

The persistence of love and memory is even more pertinent for Frank’s parents. They lost the city they loved, the lives they loved and the families they loved to the Second World War. Their experiences in Australia mirror Frank’s late-life reflections on the nature of love. Even after both Ida and Meyer, through their music and appreciation of beauty respectively, learn to love their new country, Meyer still has flashbacks to his life in Budapest, yearning for Australia to forgo “these terrible tea-parties” and embrace a more European lifestyle (as any brief stroll through Melbourne’s inner city will demonstrate, many Australians did well and truly embrace the life Meyer longs for). More poignantly, he is reminded by Elsa’s parents of the rape and murder of his little sister. Despite Meyer’s attraction to Olive Penny, he never acts on it; both players understand the consequences would be disastrous, and Meyer recognises that he is actually exhausted beyond mere “intimacy,” and that the life he has with Ida, whom he loves in his own deep and lasting way, must be his priority. Although the relationship between Ida and Meyer is frequently strained, the final description of them dying within weeks of each other and then being buried together creates an impression of lasting love.

One form of love which is tested in The Golden Age is that between parents and children. Both Elsa and Frank feel increasingly distant from their parents over the course of the novel. Elsa finds her parents looking “smaller,” even “shrunken” from grief, and Frank finds his mother cloying. This is owing to their natural transition into adulthood, alongside the enforced independence which comes from being removed from home and having to recover from polio. However, Frank and Meyer still get on well, and after the concert Frank and Ida exchange glances which demonstrate that “all is forgiven.” Ida recognises the grief her son undergoes upon separation from Elsie and she promptly organises a meeting between the two families. Frank himself will come to understand the depth of love between parent and child through his brief time caring for the young Edie.

All of the major themes in The Golden Age are intimately connected, and one idea in particular which binds them together is the concept of loss. All of the characters in the novel have encountered one form of loss or another. An obvious example are the Golds, who, as discussed above, have lost their former European lives, and most of their extended family. This loss follows the Golds into their new lives, inescapably; “The dead came with you,” Meyer reflects. Ida and Meyer must learn to navigate their future, even with the past dogging their footsteps.

There are other forms of loss in The Golden Age , however. All of the children in the convalescence hospital have lost their physical capability. They also lose their childhood. This is emphasised through the sharp contrasts London draws between Elsa’s highly athletic, physical childhood and her current state, of being barely capable of walking. Elsa and Frank, however, are losing their childhood in another sense: they are moving from childhood to adolescence. The Golden Age can in this sense be read as a coming-of-age novel. Elsa feels the distance growing between herself and her parents, who appear, with every visit, to be weaker and more diminished – as if they are “shrunken” from the grief they have suffered. By contrast, her physical development is an upward trajectory, growing from strength to strength. Similarly, Frank begins to feel a cloying sense of restriction as a result of his parents’ emotional dependence on his own recovery, and he vows with something approaching resentment to be “his own reason for living.” In this sense, the loss of childhood is essentially positive; at times distressing and confusing, but ultimately necessary for Frank’s and Elsa’s development.

A similar process is evident in the character of Olive Penny. She lost her husband, and was forced to move, with her young daughter, into her mother-in-law’s house. Her mother-in-law resented her, however, and on dying left them with no provisions. After seeing her daughter married off, Olive was left with virtually no family, no place. However, like the children she cares for, this loss actually provides her with an opportunity for personal development. Olive takes her lack of family obligations as a blessing and lives an unusually independent and fulfilling life for an Australian woman of the 1950s – she is employed in work she finds meaningful, is self-sufficient and, most scandalously, has an active and fulfilling sex life. In one sense, then, Olive Penny is an example of the end-product of the process that the children and the Golds are undergoing; someone who has lost one way of life but embraced and affirmed another.

Ferenc (Frank) Gold

Although the novel moves between a number of characters’ perspectives, The Golden Age is overwhelmingly a tale about its central characters, Frank. Born in Hungary and miraculously surviving both Nazi occupation and Soviet “liberation” (which was frequently equally murderous) as a young child, Frank adapted quickly to his new country, learning English fast and thriving at school, before polio saw him crippled and hospitalised. He is described by Elsa, the girl whom he falls in love with, as a “funny boy – sharp, watchful, purposeful, not like a boy at all really, or any boy she’d ever known.”

Frank is on the cusp of adulthood, a crisis in identity which is made all the more prominent by its association with physical growth and recovery as he gradually learns to walk again. He is characterised by a fierce sense of independence. He is disturbed by how much his parents depend emotionally on his recovery, and defiantly “refuse[s] to be their only light.” He determined to find his own “reason for living,” and that reason is poetry – an art revealed to him by Sullivan Backhouse. Frank’s sense of self, loneliness, and love of Elsa all become tied up with his ability to interpret the world through poetry. The Golden Age charts his development as a poet, his separation from Elsa, and his eventual emergence as a successful poet living in New York. He carries the memories of his time at the Golden Age, and particularly of the “beauty” which he found there, all his life.

Elsa Briggs

If Frank’s early childhood was defined by fear and trauma, Elsa’s by contrast was defined by “freedom,” of long bike rides, summer holidays and trips to the beach. Elsa, like Frank, is one of the older children at the Golden Age, and is introduced comforting a sick infant. Her thought process at this moment is the first indication that she, like Frank, is outgrowing her family and the sense of security they provide: “Without your mother, you had to think. It was like letting go of a hand, jumping off the high board, walking by yourself to school.” Frank identifies this steely resolution in her – he terms it her “pride” – and her son Jack describes her as notoriously strong-willed when he meets Frank at the end of the novel. There is a tension between Elsa’s parents, and this is reflected in her growing sense of detachment from them; she sees them “shrunken” by their grief for her, even as she recovers. She also bears a resentment for her sister, who failed to recognise Elsa’s polio onset.

Most of the description of Elsa in The Golden Age come from Frank, and is consequently more poetic than literal – he describes her mostly in terms of light, and as a “radiant warrior.” She is, however, definitely tall and blonde. With her active childhood and memories of summer spent at the beach, she, along with Olive Penny, represent a sort of quintessentially Australian vision of girl- and womanhood. Her fierce sense of independence is possibly reflected in what we learn of her later life. She becomes a doctor and marries, and Frank flees to New York. Although she seems to retain fond memories of Frank, she has firmly closed that chapter of her life and moved on, a fact evidenced by the fact that she does not answer his letters.

Meyer suffered deeply during the war, losing all his family but for two brothers, and barely surviving internment in a labour camp. Even after the war has finished, his father and sister are brutally killed by Russian soldiers who believe they had some connection to the Nazi regime. He arrives in Australia with little to no interest in the new country, which seems to him to be the “end of the world.” It his only through his connection with Olive Penny, and then his acquirement of a job as a deliveryman, that he realises he can indeed learn to love Australia.

It is obvious, reading from Meyer’s perspective, where his son Frank gets his penchant for poetry. Meyer, like his son, frequently thinks in poetic phrases. He describes the Australians of the 50s as a “lost tribe” in awe of its British heritage, and frequently thinks in metaphors – personifying cities, or describing characters like Olive in terms of light. The character of Meyer is an intensely reflective one, frequently musing on the nature of memory and the relationship between past and present. His relationship with Ida is a complex one; it is full of tension and exhaustion for much of the novel, but there are signs that it may be reigniting towards the end, as both characters find their feet in their new country.

Ida Gold is a proud and, for much of the novel, distinctly resentful woman. She was a promising pianist on the make in Budapest before the war. As a Jew, she quickly became a target for the Nazi regime. She was tipped off mid-performance in a café and managed to escape; the next few years were essentially spent on the run, as her husband was taken from her and she was compelled to hide her son during the shelling of Budapest. It is because of Ida that Frank and Meyer – for she smuggles food parcels to him whilst he is captive – are able to survive. It costs her every ounce of strength, but her remarkable courage and determination eventually sees them all through. In Australia, she feels she is robbed yet again – she loses her family but manages to get to Australia with her husband and son, settle down, even have her son win a prestigious scholarship, and then have him struck down by polio. She stops playing the piano – or, as Meyer describes it, becomes “a bird who refused to sing.” For all her remarkable ability to save her husband and son from the war, she cannot protect Frank against the ravages of polio.

Ida’s relationship with Frank is strained, yet understanding. He prefers his father’s company to his mother’s, and finds her archness and evident disdain for Australia trying. However, when he is sick with loss after his separation from Elsa it is Ida who instinctively sees what must be done to heal her son, and reunites the children. It is largely through her music that she eventually finds a niche in Australia, the country in which she and Meyer eventually spend all their lives. Whilst Meyer “came to love” Australia, Ida’s attitude is left ambiguous.

Sister Olive Penny

Olive Penny is an unconventional woman for her time and place. Her husband was killed in the war, and her adult daughter has her own life. Olive is thus independent, with few binding connections to other people. She is the nurse in charge of the Golden Age, and in her late thirties/early forties. She finds nursing suits her – she develops an instinctive “professionalism” for it. She is “adored’ by all the children except, interestingly, for Frank. She is unconventional in professional independence but also in her sexual freedom – a freedom “like a man’s.”

Olive Penny finds herself sharing a mutual attraction with Meyer Gold. He sees a “light” inside her, and along with Elsa she embodies the traditional image of Australian health and naturalness, fit and rosy. Although Frank is less in thrall to her than the other children are, she is able to perceive that the feelings between him and Elsa are very real, and she warns Meyer that it would be very damaging to the health of both children to keep them forcibly separated. This is a good indication of her generosity of spirit, in that it is Frank and Elsa’s illicit escapade which, in part, sees her lose her job at the Golden Age.

Sullivan Backhouse

Sullivan is an eighteen-year-old Frank encounters at the IBD. Sullivan is encased in an iron lung, and eventually succumbs to the polio which has already robbed him of his youth. After a successful secondary education, he intended to study English at university and potentially become a poet. His role in the text is to introduce Frank to poetry, and in particular provide a few important maxims for understanding the novel, one of which is that “coming to terms with death is a necessary element in any great poem.” He also serves to temper the sweeter elements of the novel. Rather than relying on clichés about determination being the only factor necessary for survival, Sullivan’s death allows London to concede that life is fundamentally unfair, and that sometimes people die for no good or just reason at all.

• He felt like a pirate landing on an island of little maimed animals. (2) Frank’s evocative description the Golden Age captures his sense of isolation, geographically but particularly in terms of age, compared to his “little maimed” companions. It is a mindset echoed by his father, Meyer, who envisages Australia as a lost tribe on an island.

• …they looked smaller to her, aged by the terror they had suffered, old, shrunken, ill-at-ease. (11) Elsa’s perspective on her parents is a reflection of her growing maturity. The line dichotomises hers and her parents’ experience of polio; for Elsa it is one characterised by growing strength and self-discovery, whist for her parents the ordeal is characterised by horror, stress and the sense that their daughter is undergoing a formative experience away from them.

• Coming to terms with death is a necessary element in any great poem, Sullivan once said. (19) Through poetry Frank must come to terms with the death of Sullivan, and Frank and Elsa must come to terms with their loss of innocence and separation from each other.

• I refuse to be their only light. (27) Frank initially wants to be his own light, and his own “reason for living,” rather than his parents’. However, the text shows that while this feeling is important to growing up, it is ultimately naïve, and that people do need others to live for, as Frank himself learns through his relationship with Elsa, who becomes the “light which swirled around him.”

• Deep in her sad, tight heart, she searched for that little fighting core of survival, of self-love, which she’s always had, and must not now lose. (40-41) The siege mentality built around the “little fighting core of survival” in Ida is essential to surviving war-torn Hungary. In Australia however it takes Ida much of the novel to leave that mentality, which translates into pride, disdain, and a gnawing sense of isolation.

• He felt it as the weak spot, the broken part, the gap that had let the polio in . (51) Frank feels the horror of the war as a lingering “gap” or open wound which allows harm to reach him. This sense of incompleteness is found in several moments in the novel, between Frank and Elsa, for example, and Meyer and Olive Penny. It symbolises the fact that people need other people in order to be whole.

• She’d had to get used to, and now she loved, this freedom of choice. Like a man’s. (67) Olive Penny’s love of a “man’s” freedom positions her as a symbol of a changing Australia in which women will, gradually, achieve greater freedom.

• People kept away from the families of polio victims . (82) Elsa identifies the alienation at the heart of The Golden Age . For Frank and the Golds, the isolating effects of polio are a reflection of their own cultural alienation.

• Budapest was the glamorous love of his life who had betrayed him . Perth was a flat-faced, wide-hipped country girl whom he’d been forced to take as a wife. (86) Meyer, like his son, interprets the world through symbol and metaphor. His understanding of cities as lovers informs his later appreciation of Perth derived from his flirtation with Olive Penny.

• For him this was a city with no past . (89). Meyer identifies the lack of familiar people in Perth as a stark contrast between that city and Budapest, illustrating the importance of human relationships in creaeting a sense of home or belonging.

• There was a call between them, clear as a bird’s . (97) The instant connection felt between Olive and Meyer follows his description of Perth suddenly developing a sense of mystery, depth and complexity, starkly illustrating the relationship between people and place in Meyer’s mind.

• Frank knew Elsa’s pride and determination, but her family knew only pity . (112) Frank’s distaste at Elsa’s family’s inability to see further than her disease reflects his own growing sense of personal identity, brought about in no small part by the ordeal of polio. In The Golden Age , it is a lesson that all characters must learn – that suffering is not the be all and end all but rather an opportunity for growth and rebirth.

• The children who celebrated Christmas at the Golden Age seemed much happier than those who returned at bedtime, exhausted, silent, distant and alone . (116) Frank views his time at the Golden Age not as a separation or isolation from the real world but as an opportunity to nurture and develop his own internal world. While the children exposed to the outside world come back “exhausted” and “alone,” those who choose to find happiness in difficult circumstances are much “happier.”

• She was his homing point, the place he returned to . (119) Frank’s view of Elsa as “the place he returned to” is evidenced at the end of the novel also, when as an old man he still finds himself returning to Elsa and the Golden Age as poetic subjects.

• This funny boy – sharp, watchful, personal, not like a boy really, or any boy she’d ever known. (136) Frank is described by Elsa as unique, and set apart from the other boys she’d known, reflecting his complex history and intellectual brilliance which marks him as a poet.

• There was a light inside her. (141) Like his son, Meyer associates connection and warmth with light. Just as Frank finds his thoughts gathering around the “light” of Elsa, so too does Meyer find a sense of purpose and belonging through his connection to Olive.

• A tiny lost tribe on the coast of a huge island, faithfully waiting for a ship from the motherland. (149) Meyer identifies a certain lack of maturity in Australia, seeing it not as a fully-fledged nation-state but rather as a “tiny lost tribe” on a “huge island.” The country, like the characters of The Golden Age , must find a new identity.

• What had been temporary had become settled. What seemed like the end of the world had become the centre. (152) Meyer finds himself connecting to the city of Perth. What this requires is an entire reorientation of his mind, in which his past in Europe becomes the periphery to his new “centre,” Australia.

• This was her audience. The emigres, the petit bourgeois, the nouveau riche . (168) Perhaps the closes Ida gets to the intense feeling of connection to Australia which Meyer develops is after her performance, when her initial disdain for the people congratulating her for her performance changes into an acceptance that “She must do her very best” for them.

• Poetry was his way into the world . Poetry had to save him . (197) Frank’s intense isolation after his separation from Elsa can only be alleviated by poetry, “his way into the world.” Elsa from this point in his life can only exist to him through memory and poetry.

• Elsa was not a girl exactly . More like a spirit, a sort of radiant warrior . (202) As soon as Frank cannot physically be with Elsa, he sees her more and more as a poetic being, a divine figure of the imagination who will guide his poetry. In this sense their separation was inevitable because Frank never really saw her as an ordinary, flawed human.

• It flashed through his mind that whatever this force was, it would never release him, it would take all of him . He would always be alone. (231) Frank sees that the poetic nature of his relationship with Elsa means that upon separation he will not be able to have the same connection with anyone else without destroying the purity of his artistic vision.

Foundations

The “golden age” of islam, introduction.

Overview of the Golden Age of Islamic Civilization
Areas of Islamic Civilization

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The Umayyad Mosque, Damascus, Syria, Early 8th century

Islam as a religion began with the message which was spread by Islam’s Prophet and God’s Messenger Muhammad ibn Abdallah in the Arabian Peninsula in 610 CE and which was contained in the Qur’an , God’s revelation to Muhammad. After Muhammad’s death in 632, his followers, the Muslims, embarked on successive waves of conquest of the Middle East and beyond; within less than a century, they had political and military control of virtually all the lands between India and Spain. The exercise of this control came from a state that was called the caliphate, its ruler being viewed as the caliph, or “successor,” to the Prophet Muhammad. In the first few decades, the state, based in Arabia, was simple and its ruler elected on the basis of merit. However, following the expansion, it soon turned into a complex, multi-national empire ruled by dynasties based in Syria first (the Umayyads, 661-750 CE) and then in Iraq (the Abbasids, 750-1258 CE). The caliphal system became weakened in the later ninth century, and by the tenth century, real power had moved to several local dynasties although the caliph remained the nominal head of the empire. The Abbasid empire and most of the local dynasties were overrun and practically destroyed by the Mongol invasion of the Middle East in 1258. That invasion ended not only the early phase of Islamic history, but also the “Golden Age” of Islamic civilization, which had been developing slowly from the beginning of this period. The “Golden Age” refers to the period when the varied contributions of Islamic civilization reached their peak in both the indigenous Islamic disciplines (such as Islamic law) and the newly imported disciplines of late antiquity (such as philosophy).

Avalon Foundation Distinguished Service Professor of Islamic Studies, Emerita, Department of Near Eastern Languages & Civilizations, University of Chicago

Guiding Questions

1. What is the connection between Islam and other monotheistic religions? List similarities and differences.

2. Describe and define Islamic culture during the Golden Age of Islam, and is it relevant today?

3. What were the defining characteristics and achievements of the Golden Age of Islam? List four major achievements.

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The Islamic Golden Age Essay

Introduction, the islamic golden age: an overview, islamic contributions to knowledge, the decline of the golden age.

While modern-day Islam is not renowned for its role in the contemporary scientific field, medieval Islam is credited with making enormous contributions to scientific thinking and practice. This great contribution by Islam was made in the legendary “Islamic Golden Age”. This age was characterized by significant scientific endeavors in the Arabian world. Much of the progress made in science by the contemporary world can be attributed to innovations made by Muslims in the Golden Age. This Golden Age of Islamic science occurred from the 8th to the 13th centuries CE. As a whole, the Golden Age is a period typified by glorious scientific advancement in the Arab World. This paper will set out to highlight the role that Islam played in the advancement of science during the Golden Age. The paper will highlight some of the accomplishments made by famous Muslim scientists in order to underscore the contribution of Islam to science.

The Islamic Golden Age began with the ascendancy of the Abbasid Caliphate in the mid-eighth century. This Caliphate moved the capital of the Muslim world from Damascus to Baghdad and set out to build an empire that valued scholarly knowledge. The Golden Age was made possible by a number of important factors. Arguably, the most important factor was the unification of the previously disparate Arab tribes into one strong nation through religion. The great feat was accomplished by Prophet Mohammed who introduced the religion of Islam and prompted the formation of a united Arabic nation. This unification greatly strengthened the Arabic people and they were able to control and/or influenced large parts of the plan within a century after the death of the Prophet. The unification of the geographically extensive Muslim Empire made communication easy as the Arabic language was used in all provinces. Scholars could therefore travel and share ideas with each other.

The guidelines offered by Prophet Mohammed concerning knowledge also contributed to the development of the Golden Age. The Prophet challenged Muslims to search for knowledge and the Quran clearly articulated, “The scholar’s ink is more sacred than the blood of martyrs”. Muslim scholars, therefore, endeavored to increase their knowledge and innovation in the years after the death of the Prophet. Muslims made use of the knowledge of the great ancient civilizations to come up with their own achievements. By studying the past research of Romans, Greeks, Indians, and Persians, Islamic scholars were able to create a glorious future. The result of their work is what made the Golden Age significant.

The golden age was characterized by a gigantic endeavor to acquire and translate the ancient science knowledge from other civilizations and then an endeavor to make splendid original thinking and contributions. A number of specific fields obtained noteworthy advancement during this age of great progress.

Biomedical Sciences

An example was the significant flowering of knowledge in biomedical sciences in the Islamic world during the Golden Age. Muslim scholars went into great troubles to translate and analyze the works of prominent physicians such as Hippocrates, Rufus, and Galen. The scholars proceeded to synthesize the works of these great minds and elaborate on the knowledge gathered. This led to the development of a number of prominent Arab pioneers such as Yuhanna ibn Massuwayh who performed numerous dissections in an attempt to discover how the human body operated. Through his work, he was able to provide original material on the capillary system.

Likewise, Al-Razi is considered the “greatest physician of Islam and Medieval Ages”. Born in the city of Ray, Al-Razi demonstrated a deep thirst for knowledge and entered into the field of medicine in his later years. Al-Razi is the individual who identified smallpox and measles, writing an influential treatise on these two ailments. He wrote numerous works on medicine and treatment and was a pioneer in pediatrics and obstetrics. Al-Razi authored the al-Hawi, which is a “comprehensive book on medical works based on medical knowledge from the Greeks, Syrians, and early Arabs”. This book is widely regarded as the most extensive and comprehensive book ever written by a single medical scholar and it served as an authority in medicine for centuries. Al-Razi was also knowledgeable in other sciences including chemistry. Al-Razi was able to apply his knowledge of chemistry to his medical practice with great success. He was the first physician to make use of alcohol as a disinfectant when treating his patients. He also made use of opium as anesthesia as he performed surgery on his patients.

Another great Muslim pioneer was Az-Zahrawi who engaged in numerous experiments in human surgery. Falagas et al. (2006: 1582) reveal that because of the revolutionary nature of Az-Zahrawi’s work, he is known as the father of surgery. This great pioneer engaged in successful tracheotomy and lithotomy on numerous patients. He is also credited with introducing the use of cotton in medicine to dress wounds. Az-Zahrawi was also among the first physicians to properly identify breast cancer and offer suggestions on how it could be detected. Al-Zahrawi’s work was so impressive that it drove Western scholars to increase their interest in the medical knowledge of the Muslims. Al-Zahrawi’s book on surgery, which was a culmination of what was known in his time, became a standard in Europe. His work was unique since it was the first medical work to contain diagrams of surgical instruments. His work provided novel knowledge on issues such as fractures and paralysis due to spinal injuries. His book was the first to offer treatments for deformities of the mouth and dental arches.

The era also produced the great Muslim pioneer in medicine, Ibn Sina, who remains to be the most highly recognized Muslim scholars in the field of medicine. He had started practicing medicine by the age of eighteen and by the age of twenty-one, he had written an encyclopedia of medicine. The book “The Canon of Medicine” authored by Ibn Sina was radical in its time and even today, it is the most important book on medicine ever written. Some of the contributions made by this book include the differentiation of meningitis from other neurologic diseases, the identification and description of tuberculosis as a contagious disease, and the introduction of urethral drug installation. Ibn Sina also stressed on the importance of hygiene in promoting human health and encouraged a holistic approach to patient care.

The House of Wisdom

The Islamic Golden Era contributed to the development of knowledge with the establishment of the House of Wisdom in 1004CE. The House of Wisdom (Bayt-el-Hikma) was built with the help of a grant offered by the Abbasid Caliphate. This academic institution, which was established in Baghdad, served as a major global intellectual hub. It was a major library where all significant knowledge from all over the world was translated into Arabic and stored for use by both Muslim and non-Muslim scholars. In addition to translating almost all the scientific works of the classical Greeks into Arabic, Muslim scholars also added commentaries and made original contributions.

The House of Wisdom contributed to the advancement of research efforts by scholars and scientists in the Golden Age era. This House of Wisdom was a true science academy that provided a center where high-level mathematicians and scientists could work and consult. Research indicates that many great contributions to world knowledge came from this medieval Science Academy. The union of scientific tradition and an effective centralized government enabled sustained research to take place in the House of Wisdom. Scholars from other parts of the Muslim world were attracted to this academy and they visited it frequently making their own contributions to the library. They added their unique knowledge and research. The collaboration made possible by the Bayt-el-Hikma led to growth in scientific knowledge in the period. For example, African scientists were able to communicate with their colleagues over the vast stretches of Muslim influence, from Spain and Italy on the West across Africa and Asia, to China on the East. By using the Bayt-el-Hikma as the central location and Arabic as the common language of learning, knowledge was exchanged and great advances were fostered.

Also, Islam made a great contribution to the development of historical knowledge. Muslim scholars in the Golden Era were responsible for the preservation of knowledge from extinction. Through their scholarly efforts, they sought out knowledge of nearly all of the other hitherto major civilizations. These works were then translated into Arabic and disseminated as widely as possible. Information that would otherwise have been destroyed or lost forever was therefore preserved due to the Muslim scholars of the Golden Era.

While Islam was demonstrating a pre-eminence in every field of learning, Europe was lurking behind. The prominent encyclopedist of sciences, George Sarton, in a comparison of European with Muslim learning during the Golden Age wrote moving from European to Islamic learning was like “passing from the shade to the open sun and from a sleepy world into one tremendously active one”. This overwhelming superiority of the Islamic culture continued to prevail through the 10th century. The West was able to experience scientific growth by using knowledge from the Islamic culture.

The Muslims were able to make astonishing progress in the field of astronomy. Great advances were made in this field through the works of Ibn Yunus. This mathematician was one of the great astronomers of all time. Ibn Yunus prepared the “Hakimi Tables” which contained observations of eclipses and conjunctions of the planets. Ibn Yunus made use of superior equipment to test and improve the observations of earlier astronomers and their measurements of astronomical constants. He was able to accomplish significant feats such as solving the problems of spherical astronomy by use of orthogonal projections or the celestial sphere.

Nasir al-Din’s also made a significant contribution to astronomy. Due to his outstanding knowledge of the field, he was commissioned to build an observatory in Maraghah in Iran. This observatory was the most modern at its time and it had the most sophisticated scientific instruments and an expansive library. Nasir al-Din spent a considerable amount of time compiling a new set of planetary tables and he wrote a comprehensive book on astronomy. This book, the Zij-i Ilkhani, became a standard in the field of astronomy.

The contribution made by astronomers in the Golden Age contributed significantly to navigation. Muslim sailors were able to travel further into the expansive sea without getting lost. Travelers who ventured into distant lands could use the knowledge on the position of the constellations and the movements of the bright stars to establish the route to follow and to calculate the time.

Mathematics and Physics

The mathematics formulated in the Golden era was often used to solve practical problems. Even so, the Islamic mathematics tradition was not limited to this and some mathematicians established theorems and proofs. The Arabic thinkers surmised that theoretical mathematics was necessary to understand the world and practical mathematics were useful to solve everyday problems. Mathematics in the modern world has benefited much from the contributions of the Islamic culture. Scholars on mathematics point to the Islamic Golden Age as a time when many well-known Islamic mathematicians made monumental contributions to the field of mathematics. The significance of Islamic contributions to mathematics can be deduced from the fact that the prevalent mathematical terms such as ‘algebra’ and ‘algorithm’ have their roots in Arabic.

The Islamic Golden Age made a significant contribution to algebra through the works of a number of prominent Muslim mathematicians. Al-Khwarizmi is credited with having prepared the oldest astronomical table and produced works on arithmetic and algebra. However, his greatest accomplishment is in algebra. His text on the subject consisted of original research and it was the first of its kind. His treatises on algebra were of great importance and they served as the basis on which modern algebra is built. While al- Khwarizmi’s work did not use the algebraic symbols used today to solve equations, it was the original work on algebra and acted as a foundation from which the modern-day algebraic system is derived.

Abu Kamil went on to develop Al-Khowarizmi’s algebra at a higher level. He wrote a book on algebra and this book was the most advanced of its time. Sertima (1992: 368) reveals that Abu Kamil was able to work with complex irrational quantities and his work was used by prominent Western scholars such as Leonardo Fibonacci. Abu Kamil was able to develop a number of useful algebraic formulas that are still in use to date. His formulas were used to solve nonlinear solutions for indeterminate equations.

Great advances were made in measuring techniques during the Golden Age. One of the great Arabic scholars, al-Biruni did numerous studies on measurements of the earth and was able to measure the distance around the world with a light error. Al-Biruni observed the altitude of the North Star and proceeded to measure it from northern and southern vantage points. He then used trigonometry to come up with the figure for the earth’s circumference. While al-Biruni’s measurement of the circumference of the Earth was not entirely accurate, the result had a remarkably small error of 200 miles only.

Muslim scientists made a contribution in various areas of physics. The most renowned Islamic physicist was Ibn-Haytham who made groundbreaking revelations in optics engaging in an in-depth study on the nature of light in the human eye. Based on this study, he was able to demonstrate that humans are able to perceive objects since rays of light are reflected from the objects. This observation refuted the previously held theory of extra mission that suggested that human’s perceived objects since their eyes emitted energy. A further experiment by al-Haytham showed that images register on the retina and are then transmitted to the brain along optic nerves.

Architecture

The Islamic Golden Age led to a development in architecture as a number of innovations were made in the field. The social and religious needs compelled Muslim architects to develop their own creative stylistic features. During the Islamic Golden Age, most masonry structured were in arched, vaulted, or domed form, borrowing from the prominent Roman and Byzantine building traditions. A defining characteristic of Islamic architecture was that it made use of precise geometry. This style led to a distinct form that was unique to the Arabic world. Muslim builders aimed to achieve structures that would provide a conducive atmosphere in the hot and dry Middle East. The development of sophisticated window scoops became a key aspect of Islamic buildings. Muslim builders mastered the art of constructing these sophisticated window systems for climate control.

In addition to the aesthetic value of their creations, Muslim builders were concerned about the stability of their buildings. They, therefore, made use of designs that were less susceptible to earthquakes. They made use of the pointed arch and horseshoe arches in their structures. These features would become prominent in Western Gothic architecture.

The era after the Islamic Golden Age is referred to as the “age of decline”. It was marked by a significant slowdown in the scientific advances that the Islamic world has enjoyed for over a century. This period was characterized by a decline in the magnitude of scientific work and achievement in the Islamic world. This age started in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and by the fifteenth century, Islamic science had become a shadow of its previous self. This period made it possible for the Western world to catch up with Islamic progress and surpass it over the following centuries. Even so, the contributions made during the Islamic Golden Age continued to be used by the West and had spectacular results. The great knowledge and intellect obtained from the Islamic world had a major influence on the scientific practices of Europe in the subsequent centuries.

This paper set out to highlight the contributions made by Islam to the global scientific body, documenting how Muslim scholars made a considerable contribution to science using information from ancient civilizations, and enlarging their own knowledge to further various disciplines during the Islamic Golden Age. A number of Islamic works in mathematics, medicine, and astronomy became standard texts for scholars all over the world. Also, the paper has shown how Islamic scientific and scholarly works were developed in the Golden Age and gradually spread to Europe in the subsequent centuries. The great knowledge and intellect obtained from the Islamic world had a huge influence on Western science for centuries.

Abdalla, M. (2007). “Ibn KhaldĐn on the Fate of Islamic Science after the 11th Century.” Islam & Science , Vol. 5, No. 1. (Pp. 61-70). Web.

Basheer, A., Syed, A., & Siddiqui, A. (2005). Muslim Contributions to World Civilization. Paris: International Institute of Islamic Thought. Web.

Chavoushi, S. (2012). “Surgery for Gynecomastia in the Islamic Golden Age: Al-Tasrif of Al-Zahrawi (936–1013 AD).” International Scholarly Research Network, Vol. 2, No. 2. (Pp. 1-5). Web.

Essa, A., & Othman, A. (2010). Studies in Islamic Civilization: The Muslim Contribution to the Renaissance. Paris: IIT. Web.

Falagas, M., Zarkadoulia, E., & Samonis, G. (2006). “Arab science in the golden age (750-1258 C.E.) and today.” FASEB Journal, Vol. 20. No. 10. (Pp.1581-1586). Web.

Meri, J. (2004). Medieval Islamic civilization . NY: Routledge. Web.

Ofek, H. (2011). “Why the Arabic World Turned Away from Science.” The New Atlantis, Vol. 3. No. 1. (Pp.3-23). Web.

Sertima, I. (1992). The Golden Age of the Moor . Boston: Transaction publishers. Web.

Shafiq, A. & Al-Roubaie, A. (2011). Globalization of Knowledge: Islam and Its Contributions . Manchester: Trafford Publishing. Web.

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The Golden Age: Essays in British Social and Economic History, 1850–1870

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Olive Anderson, The Golden Age: Essays in British Social and Economic History, 1850–1870, The English Historical Review , Volume 117, Issue 473, September 2002, Pages 1001–1002, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/117.473.1001

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The Golden Age: Essays in British Social and Economic History, 1850–1870   IanInksterColinGriffinJeffHillJudithRowbotham  AldershotAshgate  2000284£45 

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The Golden Age Essay Questions

By joan london, essay questions.

These notes were contributed by members of the GradeSaver community. We are thankful for their contributions and encourage you to make your own.

Written by Elizabeth Shaw

How does London present isolation in the novel?

Isolation is a key theme of the novel and is experienced in some degree by all of the characters. Predominantly, London depicts the loneliness of the patients of the Golden Age hospital, who have all been diagnosed with polio. As a result, many of the children must stay in the isolation ward, cut off from family and friends, and forced to endure their suffering alone. This is an experience the children don't forget easily, and an experience which changes them.

Why is the novel titled "The Golden Age?"

The novel is named after a children's hospital called "The Golden Age, which existed from 1949 to 1959 in Australia. The hospital was known for its housing of polio-infected children during a polio outbreak in 1950s and is where London chose to set her novel. The title is also somewhat ironic, as it wasn't a "Golden Age," at the time due to the tragedy of the polio outbreak, and the many children who were afflicted.

How does Frank feel about the isolation ward?

When Frank is diagnosed with polio, he is sent to the isolation ward of the Golden Age hospital. Here, he is unable to see his family and experiences terrible pain without the support of his loved ones. The nurses have to wear masks and gloves, which further increases the feelings of isolation and loneliness. Elsa describes this experience as being "like a terrible dream, you couldn't remember much about it. But you were not the same."

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The Golden Age Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for The Golden Age is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

Golden Age Chapter Question

Frank's experience is a positive one. Both Julia and Hedwiga treat frank well, and most of all, they treat him with dignity and don't treat him like a baby... something he craves.

Who is the intended audience and what is the purpose?

It looks like you have answered your own question. Did you have another question about The Golden Age?

There are different contexts for this term. Golden Age , in Latin literature, the period, from approximately 70 bc to ad 18. It is also referred to the long reign of Elizabeth I, 1558–1603.

Study Guide for The Golden Age

The Golden Age study guide contains a biography of Joan London, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

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2. Historical Context

3. Main Characters

4. Minor Characters

5. Dissecting an A+ Essay using 'The Golden Age'

6. Creative Essay Topic Brainstorm

7. Essay Topics

The Golden Age is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our VCE Text Response Study Guide.

Even though this hasn’t been one of the more popular choices on the VCE text list, Joan London’s The Golden Age is a personal favourite of mine for a number of reasons. This is a novel about the experiences of children recovering from polio inside a convalescent home in Perth. With a sympathetic and warm approach, London tells the tragic yet brave stories of these children, as well as the stories of their parents and carers.

The novel essentially revolves around Frank Gold, a Hungarian Jew and a war refugee, and London blends his mature voice with the innocence of a coming-of-age narrative, all set against the backdrop of World War II.

As you’re reading the book, watch out for her literary or poetic language, and keep track of the story’s overall mood. These will be important considerations for text study, particularly if you are to write a creative response on this text for your SAC. With this in mind, I’ve included writing exercises throughout this blog post for you to practise writing creatively on this text.

If you are writing analytically on this text, either for your SAC or for your exam, you may still complete the exercises—each one should still be insightful for your writing in some way. Also, feel free to check the video below; it breaks down an analytical prompt for this text.

Historical Context

This novel is set in Perth during the early 1940s, which gives rise to a couple of interesting historical elements all intersecting in the book.

Crucially, the events of the novel take place for the most part while World War II is raging in Europe. This is important for understanding the backstory of the Gold family: they are Hungarian Jews who have escaped their war-torn home of Budapest to seek safety in Australia. In particular, we know that at some stage, Meyer had been taken away to a labour camp, and that Frank had had to hide himself in an attic.

Their Hungarian heritage, however, is something that distances them from other Australians, and they never really get a good chance to settle in, always feeling like they just weren’t on the same wavelength as the locals. In many ways, the story of the Golds is underpinned by tragedy—not only are they war refugees, but young Frank then contracts poliomyelitis (known to us just as polio), which forces the family to reassess all the plans they had for him to settle into an ordinary, Australian life.

However, Frank was far from the only victim of polio at the time—the entire nation was rocked by a wave of polio , with major outbreaks during the 1930s-40s. This was quite a nerve-wracking, and causing great fear for our country and its active, outdoors-y culture. The prospects of death, paralysis and permanent disability were understandably terrifying. About 70,000 people were affected, and almost half of them eventually died as a result. Almost every Australian at the time knew or knew of someone who had polio.

Task: You are Ida, composing a letter to Julia Marai after Frank’s diagnosis. Convey succinctly (in 250 words or less) what you think and how you feel. ‍

Key themes & implications.

I like to think that a lot of the themes in this book exist in diametric or opposing pairs. For instance, London gives Frank a voice that is wise beyond his years, yet uses it to tell a tender story of first love. She also plays on the paradox that while some characters have become isolated due to the unfortunate events that have befallen them, these very events end up becoming the thing that unite them.

Essentially, London plays with a lot of these thematic tensions, showing us that life isn’t really ever black and white, but there are whole lot of grey areas in every day life.

Central to the novel are ideas of innocence or childhood . These ideas are really explored in the friendship between Frank and Elsa, who are both on the cusp of adolescence. While they are set up as young lovers in the eyes of readers, we know that they are far too young to truly have romantic feelings for each other. In actual fact, their interactions are permeated by a sense of innocence.

However, these interactions are also punctuated by a sense of maturity , a desire for more. This is evident to the extent where nurses are getting hesitant about leaving them alone with each other (even though their parents still trust them entirely). In actual fact, these parents serve as an important point of contrast. Some manage to recapture the magic of youth even as adults—consider Ida reigniting her love for the piano, or Meyer jumping on opportunities to start anew. In this sense, innocence and maturity are a pair of themes that are interestingly not always found where one might expect.

Another key thematic element of the novel is tragedy or adversity , which are relevant to a far wider gamut of characters. Considering the story’s geographical and historical setting, it seems evident that these ideas will play a major role in the story. A particularly poignant example lies in Sullivan, who contracts polio right on the cusp of adulthood, and readers can’t help but feel a sense of loss for what might have been.

However, on the other end of this spectrum is the strength required to cope with their suffering. While Sullivan had his indefatigable sense of humour, other characters have developed different mechanisms to stay strong in the face of adversity. In some cases, you might say that they’ve transcended or risen above their tragedies, and become stronger for it.

Finally, London also tackles the idea of isolation , which can be seen as a consequence of tragedy—characters become isolated because they lose their ability to relate to others, and others feel unable to relate to them. Symbolically, the Golden Age hospital is surrounded by four roads and therefore cut off from the world, almost as if quarantined. However, the solidarity and unity of patients inside becomes a great source of strength—I’ll leave it to you to think about what London was trying to say with this!

Task: Selecting one of the above themes, write a poem from the POV of an imaginary spectator in the novel, outlining how you perceive/experience these themes in other characters. Use all five senses(how you see it, hear it, smell it, taste it, and touch/feel it)

Major characters.

I haven’t written too extensively about characters for a range of reasons: on one hand, it’s important for you to form your own interpretations about what they’re like and why they do the things they do, but on the other hand, I wanted to leave you with some key points to consider and/or some essential points about their characters to incorporate into your writing. This will allow you to hopefully feel like you’re capturing them accurately when writing your creatives, but without feeling restricted by an extensive set of traits that you have to invoke.

the central character, he is cerebral, intelligent and mature (which we can tell from his narrative voice, or how he ‘sounds’)
he is, however, still very young, wide-eyed, inquisitive in spite of the tragedies which have befallen him (consider how he sees his relationship with Elsa)
also significant is the motif of his poetry; not only does it highlight his maturity, but it also acts as a way for him to voice or articulate his feelings and experiences in the hospital—you could try incorporating some poetry in your writing (either original poems or quoted from the novel)

Elsa Briggs

another central character who becomes quite attached to Frank (they are the two eldest children in the Golden Age)
she is warm, caring and selfless, demonstrating an emotional maturity beyond her years (because of having to bear the metaphorical albatross of polio)
a lot of what we know about Elsa comes from Frank’s perspective (though we do get some insight from her own, and some from her mother’s)—how does this shape the way we see her? Consider London’s use of imagery, portraying her as an angelic figure.

Ida & Meyer

Frank’s parents, Hungarian Jews, and war refugees who come to Australia to cleanse them of their pasts and to have a fresh start; some of this is purely by circumstance, but there are parts of their past that they willingly and actively eschew e.g. Ida’s piano
note that Hungary is a landlocked country in the midst of European hustle and bustle with easy access to other nations/cultures/peoples, but Australia is an island on the other side of the world—consider how this affects their sense of isolation
on the other hand, they do form new connections with people here and in their own individual ways; Ida by reclaiming her pianist talents and Meyer by taking up a new job

Task: You are Elsa, Ida, or Meyer and you’ve just discovered Frank’s poem book. What are your thoughts and feelings towards his writing? Consider the context of your chosen character’s own experiences

Minor characters.

I’m sure you’ve heard it by now, but any piece of text-based writing (creative or analytical) can be strengthened by diversifying the range of characters that you write about. Even though you’ve already differentiated yourself from most VCE students by even doing this text at all (very few people choose it, so props to you!), some inclusion of more minor characters might help to distinguish yourself further. I’ve picked some that I think are interesting to talk about, but feel free to experiment with others as well!

a young man who contracts a severe strand of polio right on the cusp of adulthood, thereby exemplifying the theme of tragedy—however, his sense of humour remains active in spite of his immobility, so perhaps he not only exemplifies this theme but subverts it as well
London poses the complex question of whether or not he’s actually unhappy or defeated as a result of polio; there’s no clear answer, since there’s many ways to interpret his humour (is it a sign of strength or is it a front for inner turmoils expressed through poetry?)
in addition to his humour and poetry, his relationship with his family could also be an interesting point of discussion to address some of these questions
a young girl in the hospital who is quite close to Elsa (almost in a sisterly way)—how have they developed this relationship, and how does this relate to the theme of unity/companionship/human connection?
notably, she wanted to rehabilitate herself after polio took away her ability to feed the brumbies in her desert town—think about how this might represent strength as well

Julia Marai & Hedwiga

Ida’s former piano teacher and her flatmate/partner who live at the top of an apartment block in Budapest; they shelter Frank in their attic under no obligation whatsoever, but purely out of the kindness and selflessness of their hearts
again, there’s this subversion of what it means to be isolated: on one hand, their apartment is so cut off from the rest of the world below, and they lead a largely self-sufficient life together, but on the other hand, the fact that they’re together means that they’re not entirely isolated consider the power of human connection in this context as well

Task: Pick a minor character from this list and a character from the above list of major characters, and write about them meeting each other for the first time. Pick two that do not already interact closely within the novel e.g. Elsa meeting Sullivan

I hope this gives you some ideas or starting points about writing creatively on this text!

Download the PDF version of The Golden Age study guide here .

Dissecting an A+ Essay using 'The Golden Age'

Picture this: you’re sitting down at your desk, fumbling your fingers, inspecting the new stationary that you convinced yourself you needed for year 12, resisting the urge to check your phone. Your text response SAC is in two weeks. You’re freaking out because you want, no, need an A+. You decide to write a practice essay for your English teacher. Practice makes perfect, right? You stay up for hours, pouring your heart and soul into this essay. The result? B+. Where did I go wrong?

That’s where I come in! Writing an A+ essay can be really tough without examples and specific advice. Before reading on, make sure you've read our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response so you are up to scratch.

I will be explaining some basic dos and don’ts of writing an essay on The Golden Age , providing a model essay as an example.

The following prompt will be referenced throughout the post;

‘The Golden Age’ shows that everyone needs love and recognition. Discuss.

Planning: the silent killer of A+ essays

I’m sure your teachers have emphasised the importance of planning. In case they haven’t, allow me to reiterate that great planning is compulsory for a great essay . However, flimsy arguments aren’t going to get you an A+. The examiners are looking for complex arguments , providing a variety of perspectives of the themes at hand. From the above prompt, the key word is, ‘discuss’. This means that you should be discussing the prompt, not blindly agreeing with it . Make sure you don’t write anything that wouldn’t sit right with London. ‍

Don’t plan out basic arguments that are one-dimensional. This may give you a pass in English, but won’t distinguish you as a top-scoring student.

For example:

Paragraph 1: The children at TGA need love and recognition.
Paragraph 2: Ida and Meyer need love and recognition
Paragraph 3: Sister Penny needs love and recognition.

The above paragraphs merely agree with the statement, but don’t delve into the many aspects of the novel that could contribute to a sophisticated essay.

Do create complex arguments, or paragraphs with a twist! If you can justify your argument and it makes sense, include it in your essay. There are many ways that you could answer this question, but my plan looks like this:

Paragraph 1: Frank Gold yearns for mature, adult love, not recognition from onlookers or outsiders
Paragraph 2: Ida Gold does not seek recognition from Australia, but love and validation from herself
Paragraph 3: Albert requires love from a specific kind of relationship – family, and Sullivan may view love from his father as pity which he rebukes

See the difference?

The introduction: how to start your essay off with a BANG!

Personally, I always struggled with starting an introduction. The examiners will be reading and marking thousands of essays, so if possible, starting your introduction with something other than Joan London’s ‘The Golden Age’… is a great way to make you stand out from the crowd. Having a strong start is essential to pave the way for a clear and concise essay. You could start with a quote/scene from the text! This is not essential, but it’s a great way to mix things up. This is my start:

Perhaps nothing exemplifies the power of love and recognition more than the bond between Albert Sutton and his older sister, Lizzie, in Joan London’s ‘The Golden Age’. Many of London’s characters exhibit suffering that requires compassion and support to heal and grow, to distinguish present from past. However, London explores the perspectives of such characters from different aspects of trauma, and emphasise that love and recognition do not always work to heal and mature. Frank Gold, the novel’s resident “sneaky” boy who adjusts to newfound life in the Golden Age Convalescent Home seeks love as an adult, rather than eliciting sympathy as a supposed victim. Here love and recognition are unsuccessful in amending Frank’s troubles when given from the perspective of an outsider, a judgemental onlooker. In a similar sense, Ida Gold seeks recognition not from Australia, who she views as a ‘backwater’, but validation in herself after having been ousted from her Hungarian identity. London, however, makes sure to emphasise the impact that Sullivan has on Frank Gold’s life. Sullivan, a boy only a few years older than Frank, seems content with his future, with his fate, despite his sacrifice of rugby and conventional life. There is a lacking sense of urgency for love and recognition in Sullivan’s life, rather, it appears that Sullivan accepts his fate, regardless of his father’s sympathy or support. Thus, London explores a myriad of ways in which love and recognition may or may not heal wounds inflicted upon individuals.

Remember, there are many other ways you could start your essay.

The body paragraphs: To TEEL or not to TEEL?

I’m sure you’ve heard of TEEL countless times since year 7. Topic sentence, evidence, explanation, link. The truth is that these elements are all very important in a body paragraph. However, following a rigid structure will render your essay bland and repetitive. It is also extremely important to note that you should be using evidence from multiple points in the text , and you should be making sure that your paragraphs are directly answering the question . Write what feels natural to you, and most importantly, don’t abuse a thesaurus . If you can’t read your essay without rummaging for a dictionary every second sentence, you should rewrite it. If vocabulary isn’t your strong point (it definitely isn’t mine!), focus on clean sentence structure and solid arguments. There’s nothing worse than you using a fancy word incorrectly.

Don’t overuse your thesaurus in an attempt to sound sophisticated, and don’t use the same structure for every sentence. For example:

Prematurely in the paperback London makes an allusion to Norm White, the denizen horticulturalist of The Golden Age Convalescent Home…

That was an exaggerated example generated by searching for synonyms. As you can see, it sounds silly, and some of the words don’t even make sense. I mean, “denizen horticulturalist”…really?

Do mix up your paragraph structure! If vocabulary is your weak point, focus on clean language.

Here’s mine:

Early in the novel, London makes reference to Norm White, the resident groundskeeper of The Golden Age Convalescent Home. Norm White hands Frank Gold a cigarette, “as if to say a man has the right to smoke in peace”. Here, there is a complete disregard for rule and convention, an idea that London emphasises throughout the text. This feature provides a counter-cultural experience for Frank, pushing him to realise that he is a strong human being rather than a mere victim. This is a clear contrast to the “babyishness” of the home, and is used as evidence of true humanity in an era where society judged upon the unconventional. Frank yearns for a traditional Australian life after his trauma in Hungary; “his own memory…lodged like an attic in the front part of his brain”. Hedwiga and Julia Marai’s caring of him pushed him towards fear and reluctance to trust, yet also pressured him to seek acceptance in a world that ostracises him for his Jewish heritage and polio diagnosis. This here is why Frank desires a mature, adult connection – love that regards him as an equal human being. Frank seeks Elsa’s love and company as she too loathes being reduced to a victim, an object of pity. Frank thereafter uses humour to joke of his wounds; “we Jews have to be on the lookout”. Elsa sees “a look in his eyes that she recognised”, thus their bond enables both characters to heal. London alludes that Frank requires love and recognition not from the perspective of a sorrowful onlooker, rather he longs to be recognised as a mature adult.

To learn more about using the right vocabulary, read 'Why using big words in VCE essays can make you look dumber'.

The conclusion: closing the deal

I firmly believe in short and sharp conclusions. Your body paragraphs should be thoroughly explaining your paragraphs, so don’t include any new information here. A few sentences is enough. Once again, write what feels natural, and what flows well.

Don’t drag out your conclusion. Short and concise is the key to finishing well.

Do write a sharp finish! Sentence starters such as, “Ultimately…” or “Thus, London…” are great.

Although trauma is often treated with love and compassion, London details different perspectives on this idea. Whilst Frank Gold requires a specific kind of recognition, Ida and Meyer seek validation in themselves and their relationship, whilst Sullivan is at ease with his fate and does not yearn sympathy from his father.

‍ To learn more about A+ essays, you should also have a read of 10 easy English points you're missing out on .

I'll finish off by giving you an exercise: brainstorm and write up a plan for the essay topic shown in the video below. I'd recommend you do this before watching Lisa's brainstorm and plan. That way, you can see which of your ideas overlapped, but also potentially see which ideas you may have missed out on. Good luck!

The Golden Age Essay Topic Brainstorm

[Video Transcript]

The takeaway message for this video will be to utilise minor characters here and there to deepen your argument. London has really developed all her characters to feel three-dimensional and real, so it’s important not to just write about Frank and Elsa when there are so many others worth touching on.

Let's head straight into background information:

Joan London’sThe Golden Age is a novel about children recovering from polio in a convalescent home in Perth. She tells the stories of these various children, their families, and their caretakers, focusing on FrankGold and Elsa Briggs, the young protagonists who are just starting to develop romantic feelings for each other. Though they, and many of the other children, have faced much hardship and misfortune, London tells a story of hope and human connection in times of misery.

On that note, today’s essay topic is:

The Golden Age is primarily a tragic tale of isolation. Discuss.

Let’s break this prompt down and define some keywords. The keywords we’ll be looking at first are isolation and tragic. We’ll be defining them quite briefly, but be sure to think about these in terms of how they relate to the novel. In particular, see if any scenes, passages or characters jump to mind.

Isolation is a state of being alone or away from others and can be associated with a sense of powerlessness or insignificance. Tragic can simply just mean sad, depressing and loaded with sorrow or ‘pathos’, but there are also literary implications to this word: you might’ve done a tragic Shakespeare play and learned this before, but in general, a tragic story centres on a hero who encounters misfortune, and treats their demise in a serious or solemn way. Note that a good essay will discuss both these terms, and will address not only isolation but also the question of whether or not it is treated tragically.

The other important word is ‘primarily’. This word in the prompt suggests that The Golden Age is for the most part about these ideas - for you, that means you should ask yourself how central you think they are, and make a call on whether they are the most central.

Well, it’s definitely true that elements of isolation and separation do exist in The Golden Age, but these themes are not primarily tragic ideas in the novel -London explores the way in which hope can shine through in times of hardship. In fact, the novel overall has a message of kinship and hope, and this would be the primary thematic focus, as well as the main treatment of otherwise tragic ideas. So how might this look in paragraphs?

Paragraph 1: Let’s concede that the novel does evoke sadness through its frequently sombre tone and treatment of isolation

We see this through characters such as Ida and Meyer, who have been cut off from the world in their escape from their war-torn home, and forced to transition from their landlocked Hungary to an island on the other side of the globe. Their struggle to adjust is evoked through symbols - for instance, black cockatoos, which represent a “homely, comforting” omen to locals, sound “melancholy [and] harsh” to Ida. In particular, London’s solemn characterisation of Ida as constantly “frowning”, and as having a “bitter little mouth that usually gripped a cigarette ”works to emphasise her ennui or her dissatisfaction with being cut off from the world. Their homesickness is evoked through this constant longing for home, though sometimes much more literally: Meyer feels that “never again on this earth…would, he feel at home as he once had.”

Similarly, the story of Sullivan Backhouse, confined in an “iron lung” and physically isolated from outside contact, is also primarily tragic. London develops this character and gives him a backstory - he has “just turned eighteen” and had been the “prefect [and] captain of the rowing team.” This gives readers an idea of the life he might have had if not for the tragedy of his condition. Even in spite of his “good-humoured nature”, his poetry belies the pessimism within - his book, morbidly entitled “on my last day on earth”, closes with the line “in the end, we are all orphans.” We can thus see how lonely he must have felt when he tragically passed away.

In this paragraph, we’ve considered three different characters, whereas a lot of people writing on this text might just do a character per paragraph, so this is a good way to really show the examiners that you’ve considered the full extent of what the book offers. Let’s continue this as we move onto…

Paragraph 2: We disagree, however, since the novel includes various other moods and thematic material - in particular, London explores notions of resolve and hope in times of hardship

Now, the first character that comes to mind would have to be Elsa - London uses particularly powerful imagery, such as her “translucent”, “golden wave” of hair or even her “profile, outlined in light”, to portray her as angelic or elysian. For the children, Elsa evidently represents hope - even in her state of isolation, her “graceful and dignified” demeanour and her quiet acceptance that polio “was part of her” is courageous and worthy of admiration.

Moving onto a minor character who was perhaps inspired by Elsa - the young Ann Lee, who was quite close to Elsa, also has a story which is more inspiring than tragic. When polio first crippled her, she found herself unable to give water to the brumbies in her desert town. As a result, she perseveres, “step after painstaking step” so as to be able to return home and “give a drink to thirsty creatures.” Her compassion and determination to work against her isolation become the focus of her tale.

Paragraph 3: In fact, the novel ’s focus is on hope rather than tragedy

A range of other characters demonstrate the power of love and human connection in the face of adversity, and London seems to be focusing on these ideas instead. Plus, it’s not just the children who are brave in the face of tragedy, but ordinary people prove themselves to have the potential for strength and courage. Take Julia Marai and Hedwiga, who hide Frank in their attic during the Nazi invasion of Hungary. Even though their apartment is “on the top” of the block, and isolated in its height, suspended from the world, they become “provider[s]” for Frank. London writes that in difficult times, “kindness and unselfishness were as unexpected, as exhilarating, as genius,” and it’s easy to see how these qualities form a counterpoint to the tragedies that permeate the novel, allowing hope to shine through.

And that’s the end of the essay! Being able to explore minor characters like we did here is a really good way to show examiners that you have a deeper understanding of a text, that you’ve considered it beyond just the main characters on the surface. The Golden Age is a really great one for this because London has done so much with her cast.

Essay topics

1. “Being close made them stronger.” In The Golden Age , adversities are tempered by camaraderie. Do you agree?

2. Despite the grim context, The Golden Age highlights and celebrates the potential of life. Discuss.

3. Memories of past successes and failures have significant lingering effects on characters in The Golden Age . Is this an accurate assessment?

4. “[I would be] a fox, following a Palomino.” How do animals such as these contribute symbolically to The Golden Age ?

5. It is largely loneliness which defines the struggles of the children in The Golden Age . Discuss.

6. In what ways is The Golden Age a novel of displacement?

7. Fear of the unknown is something which permeates The Golden Age . Is this true?

8. What is the role of family in Joan London’s The Golden Age ?

9. Isolation in The Golden Age exists in many oppressive forms. Discuss.

10. Throughout The Golden Age , London draws attention to beauty rather than to suffering. Discuss.

11. In spite of their youth, it is the children of The Golden Age who understand best what it means to be an individual in the world. Do you agree?

12. How do characters from The Golden Age learn, grow and mature as the novel takes its course?

13. Due to the range of different onset stories, each of the children and their families in The Golden Age face a different struggle with their identity. Discuss.

14. “Home. She hadn’t called Hungary that for years.” In spite of all their struggle, the Golds never truly feel any sense of belonging in Australia. To what extent do you agree?

15. Explore the factors which drive Joan London’s characters to persevere.

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Updated 24/12/2020

Ransom is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Plot, Analysis, Important Passages and Quotes

1. Characters

Priam is an elderly king of Troy. As a child, his sister Hesione saved him from slavery, and had his named changed from Podarces to Priam, the name meaning ‘the ransomed one’ or ‘the price paid'. After the death of his son Hector, Priam envisions himself in plain clothing, riding a plain cart to Achilles who is effectively holding Hector ransom. His vision is the catalyst for the novel’s events, for his journey is one of learning and self-development. Though the royal family is doubtful of his plan to save Hector, Priam is resolute and insists that he needs to try his best to confront Achilles as a father, rather than as king. After many decades as king of Troy, Priam is determined to reinvent how he will be remembered; as a king who performed an extraordinary act of heroism in order to save his beloved son.

Achilles is known as the greatest warrior of the Greeks. The death of Patroclus, his closest companion and hinted lover, drives Achilles to insanity. Hector murdered Patroclus and, as a result, Achilles takes revenge by killing Hector. He then drags Hector’s dead body along the walls of Troy for the next 11 days. Achilles loses his sense of humanity as he is possessed by his rage, hatred and grief.

Somax is representative of the ‘common man’ in Ransom . He is chosen to escort Priam to Achilles. His simple and plain presence is contrasted with Priam’s royal status. He often engages in useless chatter and performs daily activities in a way that is foreign to the king. Although Somax is far from royalty, his great deal of affection for his daughter-in-law and granddaughter teaches Priam about love, family and life.

Beauty is Somax’s favourite mule. She accompanies Priam and Somax on their journey to the Greek camp where Achilles resides.

Somax’s other mule who carries the cart to Achilles’ camp.

Hecuba is Priam’s beloved wife and mother of Hector. She is initially uncertain of Priam’s vision to save Hector. However, after hearing Priam’s sentimental reasons, she shows support and urges him to first share his plan with their family and the kingdom’s council before he departs.

Hector is Priam’s son and also the leader of the Trojan army. He is kind, brave and noble without any cruel intentions, unlike his rival Achilles. During a battle between the Trojans and the Greeks, Hector kills Patroclus. This results in Achilles challenging Hector to a battle, resulting in Hector’s death and Achilles’ triumph.

Neoptolemus

Neoptolemus is Achilles’ son. Although he is mentioned throughout Ransom , he makes his first appearance at the end of the novel where he savagely slaughters an old and defenseless Priam in an effort to avenge his father’s death. ‍

By the way, to download a PDF version of this blog for printing or offline use, click here !

‍ 2. Themes

Ransom explores who we are and what it means to have an identity. As the leader of Troy for many decades, Priam has always viewed himself as a king. It appears as though Priam has been unhappy with his identity for quite some time, is physically weak, and feels as though he cannot protect his kingdom as efficiently as he used to. However, the death of Hector is a catalyst for Priam as he realises that he needs to become a ‘father’ rather than the ‘king’ he had become so accustomed to. His search for Hector is also a search for himself, to reinvent who he is and how he wishes others to remember him.

Meanwhile, Somax is designated as the king’s herald, with the name Idaeus. He secretly notes his unhappiness with this name appointment, since he is ‘Somax, not Idaeus'. The name ‘Somax’ is associated with many significant events in his life including his marriage and family, yet the new unfamiliar name strips him of this identity. Somax’s confidence and pride in his identity is starkly contrasted with Priam’s pursuit for an identity transformation.

Malouf demonstrates that it is never too late to change one’s ways. Priam’s determination to change how he is remembered – from just another king leading a regal life to a hero who went to extraordinary lengths to regain his child – demonstrates that change is within our grasp. Even though his beautiful wife Hecuba and the rest of his family have reservations about his desire to confront Achilles, Priam is resolved in taking a ‘chance', rather than achieving nothing by remaining within the walls of his home. Unexpectedly, this one idea propels Priam into a multitude of other changes. His journey with Somax teaches Priam a far greater deal than he had anticipated, for he learns to appreciate the value of the human connection and other daily simplicities in life.

Although Achilles is driven by hatred and anger after Patroclus’ death, as with Priam, he manages to change his ways. He is touched by Priam’s pleas and consequently accepts the ransom and returns Hector’s body. He is able to reach this state of peace by releasing his immoral intentions and even offers to hold a ritual for Hector’s body in the Greek walls that very night. This transformation, from a human who responds to grief with vengeance to someone who releases and forgives, demonstrates the benefits we can gain from amending our ways.

Revenge, Guilt and Peace

Revenge is portrayed as a never-ending vicious cycle until both parties reach a negotiation or peace. After Patroclus’ death, Achilles hunts down Hector in order to avenge his best friend’s early death. Although he is successful in murdering Hector, Achilles does not follow the custom of leaving the body for the grieving family to bury. Instead, Achilles feels the need to mutilate the body day after day without any sense of remorse or regret. His additional need to inflict harm on Hector’s body indicates that revenge will not bring closure. His sense of loss is shown as he reflects feeling empty inside, to the point where he no longer feels like himself, but someone else altogether.

Although Achilles and Priam ultimately find peace within themselves, many years later Achilles’ son Neoptolemus murders Priam, bounded by the same hatred and pain depicted by Achilles. Neoptolemus’ subsequent guilt and regret is carried with him throughout the rest of his life, demonstrating that again, revenge is not the answer to any problem.

Chance and Fate

The role of the gods is heavily woven into the events that unfold in Ransom. Priam only begins his transition and journey after envisioning the goddess Iris, who suggests that he take a ‘chance’ and try to save Hector from Achilles’ camp. During his journey, a jovial young man who joins the travellers is revealed as Hermes, a god who has come to safely guide the elderly men to Achilles. The power of the gods in controlling human fate is illustrated during the scene where Hermes saves the travellers from being swept away by a stream.

Nevertheless, it can also be argued that it is the characters’ decisions that lead them to their fate. Although the gods may have instilled in Priam the idea that he should rescue Hector, it is the king’s determination which is a main driving force for the journey. Even when confronted with doubt and hesitancy from his family, it is Priam who pushes onwards to fulfil his vision. Whether his actions were already predestined or of his own agency is up to you to decide.

Nature Versus Man

Man’s presence on earth is shown to have little significance in comparison to the power of nature. While the events in Ransom teach the characters many valuable lessons, ultimately these meaningful moments in the humans’ lives disappear as one reaches their fate – death. Time moves on beyond our lives as we are forgotten over decades and centuries while nature prevails. Priam’s desire to be remembered by others highlights how little significance a life possesses unless one behaves extraordinarily. Malouf demonstrates that in the end, life just is – we are granted by nature to have a brief existence, yet in the end, nature and time will move forward without us.

Commoners Versus Royalty

Although royalty is portrayed to be blessed with power and authority, it is ironically the commoners in Ransom who appear to have the ‘richest’ (and more fulfilling) lives. For the first time, Priam is exposed to the different interests and values of the common man and is intrigued by the simplicities of life. It is Somax, a mere old man from the marketplace, who teaches Priam more about life than he had imagined possible.

Jove’s Eagle

Jove’s eagle is a representation of a bird renowned for its keen sight. The presence of Jove’s eagle during Priam and Somax’s departure hints that the gods will safely guide their journey as the bird behaves as a lookout. Furthermore, the symbol of the eagle’s powerful vision is contrasted with Priam’s ‘blindness’ at the beginning of the journey since he is yet to experience the outside world. It is during the journey that he learns about himself and others, and thus, improves his ‘sight.’ Coincidently, Jove’s eagle is no longer mentioned when Priam is endowed with his new insight.

The royal cart is ‘a fine new one, the marks of the adze still visible on its timbers. The twelve-spoked wheels are elaborately carved and painted, a wickerwork canopy covers the tray'. On all occasions, the king had used this elegant cart to alert others that royalty was present. The use of this cart demonstrates how Priam has been encapsulated in his own royal sphere since everything is meticulously chosen and designed specifically for the king. Nevertheless, his demand for a ‘common work cart’ depicts his determination for a simple approach to Achilles, as a father to another father. This simplicity highlights Priam’s desire to become just another man and father, anonymous in the plain cart with the hopes of retrieving Hector.

Priam as a Child

At the beginning of the journey, Priam is characterised with childish traits. When Somax urges Priam to dabble his feet in the stream, words such as ‘obedient toddler', ‘three uncertain steps', and ‘happy smile’ reflect the actions of a young child trying new experiences. This childish nature is contrasted with Priam’s old and frail age, which demonstrates that although he has lived a life in royalty, his lack of exposure to ‘real life’ has left him crippled of the simplest experiences such as the cooling effect of feet in water and eating delicious homemade cookies.

The cakes Somax brings along during the journey highlight Priam’s lack of knowledge of even the simplest things. For Somax, the little griddlecakes are a regular and delectable snack, yet Priam 'ha[s] never seen them before'. Priam’s unfamiliarity with the cakes represents his isolation from the ‘real world’ since he has been deprived from things that even commoners view as ordinary.

Futhermore, Somax’s lengthy chatter about his daughter-in-law cooking the cakes with the ‘batter bubbling and setting and turning a golden brown’ prompts Priam to think about the activities in his kingdom that occur behind closed doors. He had previously never noticed that there was so much preparation and work that went into the food that appeared at his table, let alone the ingredients and thickness of a batter. These matters had been of little concern to Priam, yet he realises that even the ‘common and low…activities and facts of life, had an appeal'.

Hector’s Body

Although Achilles drags Hector’s body across the walls of Troy for eleven days, each morning he would return to find Hector’s body healed of any wounds, and absent of any physical damage to his body. This is a cruel reminder of the god’s ability to ‘toy around’ with the Ancient Greeks’ lives. Hector’s body also symbolises how revenge is not the answer to any conflict, since dealing with a tragic loss through revenge does not gain anything but more pain and suffering.

Although Priam initially believes he understands the distress of losing a son, Somax’s experience of losing his son is driven with emotions that Priam had never previously experienced. When sharing the story of his son’s death, Somax sniffles, an ‘odd habit’ according to Priam. The use of ‘odd habit’ to describe Somax’s sadness demonstrates how Priam has never truly felt the loss of his son, but only the loss of a royal relationship between king and prince.

Later on, Somax once again ‘snuffles’ and ‘rubs his nose’ at the thought of the ending to their journey. Similarly, Priam makes ‘small sounds', presumably crying as well. The transformation of Priam from someone who failed to empathise with Somax’s tears at the beginning of the journey to a man filled with emotions demonstrates that Priam undergoes both a physical and metaphysical journey where he undergoes self-development and appreciation of the world around him.

4. Plot, Analysis, Important Passages and Quotes

Achilles, the greatest warrior of the Greeks, stands next to the sea while reminiscing about the past. After his mother’s death he had ‘entered the rough world of men’ (p. 6) where wars and battles prevail. Every morning, he feels the need to ‘tramp to shore’ (p. 10) since he is haunted by the death of his ‘soulmate and companion’ Patroclus, and his raging hatred towards Hector, killer of Patroclus and thus, the ‘implacable enemy'.

When Achilles was a child, his cousin Patroclus came to live with the young Achilles since the former had killed the son of a high official of the royal court due to a ‘quarrel over a game of knucklebones’ (p. 11). In need of asylum, Patroclus came to live with Achilles’ family. As the years passed, the pair grew closer to the extent where Achilles believes that ‘he had mated with Patroclus’ (p. 15).

When the tide of the battle was against the Greeks, Patroclus disguises himself in Achilles’ armour in order to instill fear in the Trojans and cause them to return to the safety of their walls, thus providing temporary relief for the Greeks. In his last act for his closest friend, Patroclus is killed in battle*. The death of Patroclus left Achilles with an overwhelming sense of loss and also burning animosity. Achilles whispers that he will join Patroclus soon, but firstly, he has to avenge Patroclus’ killer, Hector.

Hector, the son of Trojan king Priam and leader of the Trojan army, wore Achilles' armour as a sign of triumph and disrespect for the Greeks. In a dramatic battle between Hector and himself, Achilles was successful in killing his enemy. Achilles’ Myrmidons then stripped Hector of his armour and ‘without pity…plunged their swords into Hector’s unprotected flesh’ (p. 24). For Achilles however, this was not enough. Still fuelled by his pain, Achilles ties Hector’s body to a chariot and drags it ‘up and down under the walls of Troy’ (p. 26) as the dead warrior’s royal family devastatingly watches on. Achilles feels like a ‘dead man…feeling nothing’ (p. 26), unable to seal the void left by his beloved friend.

The next day, Achilles is furious to find Hector’s body ‘smoothly sealed and the torn flesh made whole again'. His men cannot bear to look at him as he drives the chariot with Hector’s body along the walls of the Trojans once again. Afterwards he quickly falls asleep, into ‘oblivion’ (p. 35) as he struggles with the shame and guilt of his actions. He is ‘waiting for a break…something new and unimaginable’ in his life.

The Human Side

Along with the conflict between Greece and Troy, Ransom also delves into the consequences of those affected by the war. As the greatest warrior of all Greeks, Achilles has lived his life as a fighter. Nevertheless, his pathway in life has led him to believe that ‘such a life is death to the warrior spirit’ (p. 7). While warriors are known for sacrificing their lives in the battlefield, Achilles does not literally refer to warriors confronting death each time they fight for their team. In fact, ‘death to the warrior spirit’ means to metaphorically lose what it means to ‘live’ when one experiences bloodshed in each war. Growing up surrounded by ‘the rough world of men’ (p. 6), Achilles develops traits of aggression, cruelty and vengefulness in order to become an implacable man of war. As a consequence, Achilles only knows how to deal with Patroclus’ death with a fighter’s mindset. Instead of grieving openly, ‘he never permit[s] himself to betray to others what he [feels]’ (p. 5), thus detaching himself from the natural human process of grieving. In order to deal with his friend’s tragic ending, Achilles' ‘soul chang[es] colour’ as drags Hector’s body for eleven days without any sense of regret or remorse, and thus, is referred to as ‘death to his human spirit’ since he was no longer ‘a living man’ (p. 27). He faces Patroclus’ death with the same warrior traits of aggression, cruelty and vengefulness, depriving himself of any ability to humanely mourn his close friend’s death.

Furthermore, Achilles grieves for his mother in the opening passages of Ransom . During this time of loss, his mother symbolises Achilles’ need to be nurtured. The imagery of the sea surface as a ‘belly’ and ‘a membrane stretched to a fine transparency’ (p. 3) represents his mother’s pregnancy where he ‘had hung curled in a dream of pre-existence’ for ‘nine changes of the moon’ – or in other words, nine months of pregnancy. Achilles is characterised as a foetus, for his position is ‘chin down, shoulders hunched’ as though he is inside a womb. Although Achilles is a fighter, he hides the fact that he wishes to be ‘rocked and comforted’ by his mother, thus demonstrating that even beneath the surface of a cold-hearted warrior, the current of human emotions can cripple a man’s confident veneer.

If you'd like to read more of my analysis, feel free to access a sample of our ebook A Killer Text Guide: Ransom . In this ebook, I cover Plot, Analysis, Important Passages and Quotes so you can prepare for your SAC and exam. I've also included 5 Sample A+ English essays on Ransom , complete with annotations so you know exactly what you need to do in your next essay to achieve an A+.

All the best for your studies in Ransom!

Download a PDF version of this blog for printing or offline use

‍ Station Eleven is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Breaking Down a Station Eleven Essay Prompt

We've explored themes, characters, symbols and provided a summary of the text over on our Station Eleven by Emily St John Mandel blog post. If you need a quick refresher or you’re new to studying this text, I highly recommend checking it out!

Here, we’ll be breaking down a Station Eleven essay topic using LSG’s THINK and EXECUTE strategy , a technique to help you write better VCE essays. If you’re unfamiliar with this strategy, you can learn about it in our How To Write A Killer Text Response study guide.

Within the THINK strategy, we have 3 steps, or ABC. These ABC components are:

Step 1: A nalyse

Step 2: B rainstorm

Step 3: C reate a Plan

Without further ado, let’s get into it!

The Prompt: ' The distortion of memories can be harmful.' Do you agree?

Step 1: Analyse

The first thing to note about this prompt is that it's a theme-based prompt, focussing specifically on the theme of memory, which plays a significant role throughout the novel! But more specifically, it's asking directly about the impacts distorted (i.e. misrepresentative/twisted/warped) memories have on individuals, and whether this is harmful or not. So ultimately, you have to look at which memories are distorted throughout the novel, and evaluate whether this process is ultimately helpful to the characters or not.

Not sure what we mean by ‘theme-based prompt’? Then, you’ll want to learn more about the 5 types of essay prompts here .

‍ Step 2: Brainstorm

Many characters' memories are altered significantly from what actually occurred - this is especially relevant for the characters living after the pandemic, as memories naturally distort over a 20-year period
The two main characters we see whose memories are altered the most are Tyler and Kirsten - both of whom were children during the collapse of civilisation
For Tyler, his recollections of the past are all dominated by violence and this has a significant impact on his worldview. One could very easily argue that it is this distorted view of reality that ultimately leads to the formation of his cult and the subsequent harm he inflicts
Thus, in the case of Tyler, it is quite clear that the distortion of memories has been quite harmful
However, on the other hand, Kirsten has had to commit unspeakable acts, (as implied by her being unable to remember her past/childhood), but this is seen as a coping mechanism, allowing her to move forward in life
Thus, for Kirsten, the manipulation of her memories through her forgetting is ultimately rather positive!
Memory distortion doesn't just relate to these two characters - it also affects Clark quite severely
He is shown to be quite unhappy in the pre-apocalyptic world, which is a stark contrast to his fulfilment by the end of the novel. What causes this?
This can be attributed to his distortion of memories which allows him to view the old world in a far more positive manner, with significant nostalgia
Thus, like Kirsten, Clark's distortion of memories is also presented as largely beneficial
So ultimately, while there are downsides to manipulating one's memories (Tyler), Mandel shows that distorting memories is largely a positive coping mechanism for many characters!

Step 3: Create a Plan

From my brainstorming, I'll be approaching the essay with the following contention:

Distorting memories can be harmful but more often is beneficial.

Now it's time to work out our paragraph ideas.

P1: Tyler's distortion of memories is largely detrimental and therefore harmful because they are tainted with violence and thus exacerbate his suffering.

P2: However, Kirsten uses this as a coping mechanism, enabling her to move forward from the trauma associated with the collapse of society and therefore the distortion of memories is necessary in her case.

P3: Further, Clark's rose-tinted view of the past world allows him to come to terms with the collapse of society and again is beneficial.

While Emily St. John Mandel's post-apocalyptic novel Station Eleven illustrates the harm which can be associated with the distortion of memories, it ultimately expounds on the benefits which can be garnered by those who alter their perceptions of reality given how this can serve as an invaluable coping mechanism to process trauma. The non-linear structure of her novel, achieved through the interweaving of pre- and post-lapsarian scenes (1) , allows her to sculpt parallels between her characters who are able to accurately recall both the positives and the negatives of the 'modern world'. She thus advocates that whilst the distortion of memories can perpetuate and enable violence, it can alternatively result in tangible benefits when utilised in a positive manner, thus exposing Mandel's credence in how this can actually serve to benefit individuals and entire communities as a whole.

Annotations (1) It is really useful to show an understanding of how the novel has been constructed and why - so through Station Eleven not following a traditional model of time, this allows Mandel to really contrast between her characters - namely Kirsten and Tyler.

Mandel expounds (2) how the distortion of memories can ultimately exacerbate the suffering experienced by vast sectors of the community, arguing that it is this which actively perpetuates harm due to the inability of humans to adequately process trauma, particularly trauma which stems from one's childhood given the loss of innocence which accompanies this. Indeed, Tyler, who was characterised as a young boy during the 'neutron bomb' of the Georgia Flu and the subsequent destruction of civilisation 'had the misfortune of remembering everything', ultimately resulting in dire consequences for the majority of characters who interact with him. Mandel condemns Tyler's innate desire to justify the pandemic, arguing his inability to forget, process and fully comprehend ‘the blood drenched years of the collapse’ drives the creation of his cult which eventually perpetuates great suffering. This ultimately results in significant consequences, thus allowing her to denounce how the distortion of memories (with Tyler's recollections largely being defined by extreme violence and gore) can be extremely harmful. Indeed, 'ruling with a combination of charisma, violence and cherry-picked verses from the Book of Revelations', Tyler damages the overwhelming majority of people he comes into contact with, from having numerous 'child brides' to rendering the town of St. Deborah by the Water 'unsafe' to his cult containing only a few 'true believers', (3) serving as the embodiment of humanity's insatiable lust for power. Through his reciting of only phrases from the Book of Revelations, labelled the most exclusionary and brutal book of the New Testament (4) , Mandel condemns the selectivity of Tyler's beliefs, advocating that his internalisation of only the most harmful and violent phrases exemplifies the lack of benefits associated with violently distorting memories given the inability of humans to process such immense trauma and suffering. Whilst Mandel explains Tyler's actions as stemming from the violence underpinning his childhood, particularly given that he was raised by a 'lunatic' whom others deemed 'unsaveable', she dispels the notion that this excuses them, arguing the degree of hardships inflicted by Tyler himself are unjustifiable, thus further exposing her credence in the necessity of being able to forget harmful memories in order to overcome them. Ultimately, through her portrayal of Tyler's inability to forget his childhood as 'a boy adrift on the road', Mandel reveals the potential for harm to be imposed due to the distortion of memories so that they are marked by violence, arguing that this can indeed be overwhelmingly dangerous.

Annotations (2) It is great to use action words such as 'expounds' instead of the basic 'shows’ as this demonstrates a more in-depth understanding of the author’s views and values (ensuring you meet VCAA Criteria 2: Views and Values ).

(3) When making claims such as that Tyler harms 'the majority of people he comes into contact with', it is great to show multiple examples, so that your claims are properly backed up with appropriate evidence!

(4) This is a really great point to draw out that other students may not consider - Tyler never references any other components of the New Testament and only focuses on the most violent sections of one particular book.

However, Mandel also displays a belief in the positives which can be gleaned by those who inherently distort their memories as a mechanism to process traumatic times in their lives, arguing this can provoke significant, tangible benefits. Conveyed through the non-linear structure of her novel, Mandel sculpts parallels between Tyler and Kristen given their similar ages and respective connections to protagonist Arthur through him serving as their father and father figure respectively, with the significant difference being that only the latter was able to forget 'the year [she] spent on the road…the worst of it' (5) . As such, only Kirsten is able to adequately move on from this extremely traumatic period in her life, exemplifying Mandel's credence in how the distortion of memories can truly serve as an invaluable coping mechanism allowing individuals to overcome significant harm, with Kirsten experiencing a large degree of post-lapsarian fulfilment given her 'friendships' with her fellow members of the Travelling Symphony, her 'only home'. Despite Kirsten's past being underpinned by significant violence, with her having three 'knife tattoos' to commemorate those she has had to kill in order to survive, her continued ability to adapt her memories into less traumatic ones is applauded, with her murders having been portrayed as occurring 'slowly…sound drained from the earth' as a way for her to process 'these men [which she] will carry with [her] for the rest of [her] life', thereby exposing Mandel's credence in the necessity of being able to overcome trauma through distorting memories. As such, she ironically went on to perform Romeo and Juliet following one such event which, given Mandel's depiction of the unparalleled significance of artistic forms of expressionism facilitating human wellbeing as Kirsten 'never feels more alive' than when she performs, exposes Mandel's illumination of how altering false realities (6) can ultimately provoke tangible benefits given Kirsten's ability to simply move on despite the traumatising nature of the truth. Ultimately, through the juxtaposition between Tyler and Kirstens' distortion (7) of memories, Mandel expounds how distorting memories can wield both consequences and benefits, with the latter occurring when employed subconsciously by individuals to process harmful memories.

Annotations (5) It is quite sophisticated to go back to the construction of the novel throughout the essay (as opposed to just briefly mentioning it in the introduction!). This shows you truly understand why the author structured the novel the way she did, which in this case is to highlight the similarities and differences between Kristen and Tyler.

(6) Try to avoid repeating 'distortion of memories' every single time - it is great to use synonyms such as 'false realities', but make sure you're using the right words (see annotation 2 for more information).

(7) Note how this links back to paragraph 1 (given that these two points are so similar and go off of one another) which makes the essay flow better. We are showing that our argument is well-structured and follows logical patterns.

Furthermore, Mandel similarly explores the benefits of utilising the distortion of memories as a coping mechanism and how, especially when this is done through the lens of nostalgia, it can facilitate unprecedented satisfaction. Indeed, Clark is depicted to be the literal embodiment of post-lapsarian fulfilment (8) given his ability to, albeit through rose-tinted glasses, appreciate the 'taken-for-granted miracles' of the 'former world' through his position as the 'Curator' at the 'Museum of Civilisation'. Subsequently, he serves to expose Mandel's belief in the benefits of altering one's recollections in an overwhelmingly positive manner. As such, Clark 'spend[s] more time in the past…letting his memories overtake him' as he maintains integral cultural artefacts which 'had no practical use but that people wanted to preserve'. This ultimately eventuates into a significant degree of fulfilment for not only Clark himself, but also the other residents of the Severn City Airport, the children of whom 'like all educated children everywhere….memorise abstractions' of the pre-lapsarian society, with the entire Airport community revelling in the everyday 'beauty' of objects not typically appreciated by the general populace. In doing so Mandel highlights her belief regarding the significance underpinning the benefits which can be gained from those whose memories are distorted to cope with losses in a positive manner, arguing this can enable a substantial increase in wellbeing. This is exacerbated through the juxtaposition in Clark's pre- and post-lapsarian fulfilment, for in the former he is denigrated as merely an unhappy 'minimally present...high functioning sleepwalker' (9) . Overall, through her portrayal of Clark's satisfaction despite his elderly status and the loss of everyone dear to him, Mandel exposes her belief in the value of distorting one's memories in an overwhelmingly positive manner, advocating this can facilitate the forming of one's intrinsic purpose and thus fulfilment.

Annotations (8) You want to show how characters correlate to specific themes, and if one embodies a particular idea, then you should clearly state that! It shows examiners you really know your stuff. See this blog for more about the themes and characters in Station Eleven .

(9) Again, you want to clearly highlight how Clark is distorting his memories, including by providing evidence to back up your claim.

Ultimately, Emily St. John Mandel’s Station Eleven exemplifies the limitations of the human psyche when affected by trauma, arguing that the distortion of memories can have either a positive or negative impact upon the individual. Whilst she cautions her audience against the dangers of adhering to selective recollections, she simultaneously presents the benefits which can be garnered from this, alongside the ability to liberate oneself from such harmful memories.

For more Station Eleven writing samples, check out this blog post , which compares three different paragraphs and analyses how they improve upon one another.

If you found this essay breakdown helpful, then you might want to check out our Station Eleven Study Guide where we cover 5 A+ sample essays with EVERY essay annotated and broken down on HOW and WHY these essays achieved A+ so you reach your English goals!

Updated 14/12/2020

Introduction

Definition of Metalanguage
Examples of Metalanguage in VCE English

1. Introduction

Although it appears on criteria sheets, many students never really understand the term metalanguage . Strangely, it is something that is rarely addressed in classrooms. While the word may be foreign to you, rest assured that metalanguage is not an entirely new concept you have to learn. How come? Because you have been unknowingly using metalanguage since the very beginning of high school.

It's a word that is more and more frequently thrown around as you get more advanced in high school. And, it's something that becomes tremendously important in your final year of high school, because the more you include metalanguage discussion in your essays, the more intricate your discussion becomes and the more unique it also becomes.

So, let's find out exactly what metalanguage is.

2. Definition of Metalanguage

Metalanguage is language that describes language .

So, instead of maybe using the word, "He was sad ", we might say something like, "He felt sorrowful " . The choice in words changes the meaning that is interpreted by the reader, just slightly, but there is still a difference. So, when it comes to studying texts or reading articles, and trying to analyze what the author is trying to do, we look at metalanguage as a way to help give us insight into the ideas that they're trying to portray.

The simplest way to explain this is to focus on part 3 of the English exam – Language Analysis. In Language Analysis , we look at the author’s writing and label particular phrases with persuasive techniques such as: symbolism, imagery or personification. Through our description of the way an author writes (via the words ‘symbolism’, ‘imagery’ or ‘personification’), we have effectively used language that describes language.

Now, if we look at the bigger picture, our analysis of an author’s language can be applied to Text Response, and even Reading and Comparing. To learn more about why metalanguage is important in Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response . Otherwise, for those interested in Comparative, head over to our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative .

3. Examples of Metalanguage in VCE English

Grammar and punctuation
Characterisation
Foreshadowing

For example

Achilles is characterised as a foetus, for his position is ‘chin down, shoulders hunched’ as though he is inside a womb. ( Ransom , David Malouf)
In the first scene of All About Eve* , Mankiewicz foreshadows Eve's sinful and regretful actions, as a sorrowful expression is emphasized as she accepts her award

As you can see, the word 'foreshadows' pushes us in a new direction. Rather than just saying what has already happened or telling your teacher or examiner something that they already know, it forces you to actually analyze what's in front of you and to offer your own unique interpretation of why this metalanguage or why this technique has been used.

*If you happen to be studying this text, check out our All About Eve Character Profiles .

Mise-en-scene
Camera angles

When Terry leaves Friendly’s bar, the thick fog symbolises his clouded moral judgement as he decides whether he should remain ‘D and D’, or become a ‘rat’. ( On the Waterfront , Elia Kazan)

Stage direction
The miniature set Zac creates is designed with a white backdrop, symbolising his desire to wipe away reality since he ‘can’t stand real things'. ( Cosi , Louis Nowra)

In Medea , the motif of animals emphasizes the inhuman and bestial nature of Medea, highlighting how she defies natural norms.

This student has actually given us an analysis of why animal motifs are used. And that is to highlight how Medea defies natural norms, because of her inhuman and bestial nature.

4. Conclusion

As indicated earlier, you should be familiar with many, if not all the terms mentioned above. Take note that some metalanguage terms are specific to a writing form , such as camera angle for films. If you need help learning new terms, we have you covered - be sure to check out our metalanguage word banks for books and our metalanguage wordbank for films .

As you discuss themes or characters, you should try and weave metalanguage throughout your body paragraphs . The purpose of this criteria is to demonstrate your ability to understand how the author uses language to communicate his or her meaning. The key is to remember that the author’s words or phrases are always chosen with a particular intention – it is your job to investigate why the author has written a text in a particular way.

[Modified Video Transcription]

Hey guys, welcome back to Lisa's Study Guides. Today, I'm really excited to talk to you about metalanguage. Have you guys ever heard of metalanguage before? It's a word that is more and more frequently thrown around as you get more advanced in high school. And, it's something that becomes tremendously important in your final year of high school, because the more you include metalanguage discussion in your essays, the more intricate your discussion becomes and the more unique it also becomes. So, let's find out exactly what is metalanguage. Simply put, metalanguage just means language that analyses language. When authors write anything, we make certain decisions when it comes to writing. So, instead of maybe using the word, "He was sad", we might say something like, "He felt sorrowful". The choice in words changes the meaning that is interpreted by the reader, just slightly, but there is still a difference. So, when it comes to studying texts or reading articles and trying to analyse what the author is trying to do, we look at metalanguage as a way to help give us insight into the ideas that they're trying to portray.

Metalanguage comes in really handy, especially if you're somebody who struggles with retelling the story - I have a video on how to avoid retelling the story , which you can watch. Metalanguage essentially takes you to the next level. It prevents you from just saying what happened, and forces you into actually looking at how the ideas and themes are developed by the author through the words that they choose to use. So, let's have a look at a couple of examples to give you a better idea. I'm going to show you two examples. One uses metalanguage and one doesn't, and you'll see how a massive difference in how the student understands the text is really clear.

Number one, foreshadowing.

In the first scene of All About Eve , Mankiewicz emphasizes Eve's sorrowful expression as she accepts her award.

In the first scene of All About Eve , Mankiewicz foreshadows Eve's sinful and regretful actions, as a sorrowful expression is emphasized as she accepts her award. As you can see, as soon as we put in the word foreshadows, it pushes us in a new direction. Rather than just saying what has already happened or telling your teacher or examiner something that they already know, it forces you to actually analyse what's in front of you and to offer your own unique interpretation of why this metalanguage or why this technique has been used. So, in this case, it's foreshadowing. ‍ Let's have a look at another one, motif.

In Medea , Euripides commonly refers to animals when describing Medea's actions and temperament.

See how, in the first example, it was really just telling you what we might already know through just reading the book, but when it comes to the second example, this student has actually given us an analysis of why animal motifs are used. And that is to highlight how Medea defies natural norms, because of her inhuman and bestial nature. So, those are some examples of metalanguage. There are so many more different types of metalanguage out there...

Updated 30/12/2020

What Are Quotes?
Why Use Quotes?
What You Want To Quote
How Much You Want To Quote
How That Quote Will Fit into Your Essay
There Are Also Other Ways of Using Quotation Marks
Questions You Must Ask Yourself When Weaving Quotes into Sentences
How To Find Good Quotes

1. What Are Quotes?

Quotations, better known by their abbreviation ‘quotes’, are a form of evidence used in VCE essays. Using quotations in essays helps to demonstrate your knowledge of the text, and provides solid evidence for your arguments. The discussion on quotations in this study guide can be applied to all three areas of study in the VCAA English course which have been explained in detail in our Ultimate Guide s to VCE Text Response , Comparative and Language Analysis .

A quotation is the repetition of a group of words taken from a text by someone other than the original author. The punctuation mark used to indicate a repetition of another author’s work is presented through quotation marks. These quotation marks are illustrated by inverted commas, either single inverted commas (‘ ’) or double inverted commas (“ ”). There is no general rule in Australia regarding which type of inverted comma you must use for quotations. Single inverted commas are preferred in Australia as they follow the British standard. The American standard involves styling quotations with the double inverted comma. You can choose either style, just be consistent in your essays.

2. Why Use Quotes?

The usage of quotations in essays demonstrates:

Your knowledge of the text
Credibility of your argument
An interesting and thoughtful essay
The strength of your writing skills.

However, quotations must be used correctly, otherwise you risk (and these frequent mistakes will be discussed in detail later):

Irrelevant quotations
Overcrowding or overloading of quotations
Broken sentences

How You Integrate a Quote into an Essay Depends on Three Factors:

What you want to quote
How much you want to quote
How that quote will fit into your essay.

3. What You Want To Quote

As you discuss ideas in a paragraph, quotes should be added to develop these ideas further. A quote should add insight into your argument; therefore, it is imperative that the quote you choose relates intrinsically to your discussion. This is dependent on which aspect of the text you are discussing, for example:

Description of theme or character
Description of event or setting
Description of a symbol or other literary technique

Never quote just for the sake of quoting. Quotations can be irrelevant if a student merely adds in quotes as ‘sentence fillers’. Throwing in quotations just to make your essay appear more sophisticated will only be more damaging if the quotation does not adequately reinforce or expand on your contention. Conversely, an essay with no quotations will not achieve many marks either.

4. How Much You Want To Quote

A quotation should never tell the story for you. Quotations are a ‘support’ system, much like a back up for your ideas and arguments. Thus, you must be selective in how much you want to quote. Generally speaking, the absolute minimum is three quotes per paragraph but you should not overload your paragraphs either. Overcrowding your essay with too many quotations will lead to failure to develop your ideas, as well as your work appearing too convoluted for your assessor. Remember that the essay is your piece of work and should consist mainly of your own ideas and thoughts.

Single Word Quotations

The word ‘evaporates’, used to characterise money and happiness intends to instill the idea that happiness as a result of money is only temporary. (VCAA ‘Can Money Buy Happiness’ Language Analysis)

Single worded quotations can often leave the largest impression on the assessor. This is because you are able to demonstrate that you can focus on one word and develop an entire idea around it.

Phrase Quotations

Sunil Badami ‘still found it hard to tie my Indian appearance to my Australian feeling', showing that for Sunil, his culture was not Indian, but Australian due to his upbringing. ( Sticks and Stones and Such-like, Sunil Badami in Growing Up Asian in Australia )

A phrase quotation is the most common quotation length you will use in essays.

Long Quotations

The multitudes of deaths surrounding Anna began to take its toll on her, burdening her with guilt as ‘sometimes, if I walked the main street of the village in the evening, I felt the press of their ghosts. I realised then that I had begun to step small and carry myself all hunched, keeping my arms at my sides and my elbows tucked, as if to leave room for them.’ ( Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks )

Long quotations comprise of more than one sentence – avoid using them as evidence. Your assessor will not mark you highly if the bulk of your paragraphs consists of long quotations. You should aim to keep your quotations to less than 2 lines on an A4 writing page. If you have a long quotation you wish to use, be selective. Choose only the important phrases or key words, and remove the remaining sentence by replacing it with an ellipsis (…).

Here is the same example again, with the student using ellipsis:

The multitudes of deaths surrounding Anna began to take its toll on her, burdening her with guilt as she felt ‘the press of their ghosts…[and] begun to step small and carry myself all hunched…as if to leave room for them.’ ( Year of Wonders, Geraldine Brooks)

In this case, we have deleted: ‘sometimes, if I walked the main street of the village in the evening’ and ‘I realised then that I had’ by using an ellipsis – a part of the quotation that is not missed because it does not represent the essence of the student’s argument. You would have noticed that a square bracket ([ ]) was used. This will be discussed in detail under Blending Quotes.

5. How That Quote Will Fit into Your Essay

You must never take the original author’s words and use them in your essay without inserting them in quotation marks. Failure to do so leads to ‘plagiarism’ or cheating. Plagiarism occurs when you take someone else’s work and pass it off as your own. You must make sure that you use quotation marks whenever you use evidence from your text.

The following is plagiarism:

Even a single flicker of the eyes could be mistaken for the essential crime that contained all other crimes in itself – thought crime. (1984, George Orwell)

Using quotation marks however, avoids plagiarism:

Even ‘a single flicker of the eyes’ could be mistaken for ‘the essential crime that contained all other crimes in itself – thought crime.’ (1984, George Orwell)

There are serious consequences for plagiarism. VCAA will penalise students for plagiarism. VCAA uses statistical analysis to compare a student’s work with their General Achievement Test (GAT), and if the cross-referencing indicates that the student is achieving unexpectedly high results with their schoolwork, the student’s school will be notified and consequential actions will be taken.

Plagiarism should not be confused with:

‍ Paraphrasing : to reword or rephrase the author’s words
‍ Summarising: to give a brief statement about the author’s main points
‍ Quoting : to directly copy the author’s words with an indication (via quotation marks) that it is not your original work

Blending Quotations

You should always aim to interweave quotations into your sentences in order to achieve good flow and enhanced readability of your essay. Below is a good example of blending in quotations:

John Proctor deals with his own inner conflict as he is burdened with guilt and shame of his past adulterous actions. Yet during the climatic ending of the play, Proctor honours his principles as he rejects signing a false confession. This situation where Proctor is confronted to ‘sign [himself] to lies’ is a stark epiphany, for he finally acknowledges that he does have ‘some shred of goodness.’ ( The Crucible, Arthur Miller)

There are three main methods in how you can blend quotations into an essay:

1. Adding Words

Broken sentences are a common mistake made when students aim to integrate quotations into their sentences. Below are examples of broken sentences due to poor integration of a quotation:

‘Solitary as an oyster’. Scrooge is illustrated as a person who is isolated in his own sphere. ( A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens)

Never write a sentence consisting of only a quotation. This does not add insight into your argument, nor does it achieve good flow or readability.

Scrooge, ‘solitary as an oyster’, is illustrated as a person who is isolated in his own sphere. (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens)

This example is better, however the sentence is still difficult to read. In order to blend quotations into your sentences, try adding in words that will help merge the quotation and your own words together:

Described as being as ‘solitary as an oyster’, Scrooge is illustrated as a person who is isolated in his own sphere. (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens)

Scrooge is depicted as a person who is ‘solitary as an oyster’, illustrating that he is isolated in his own sphere. (A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens)

Tip: If you remove the quotation marks, the sentence should still make sense.

2. Square Brackets ([ ])

These are used when you need to modify the original writer’s words so that the quotation will blend into your essay. This is usually done to:

Change Tense

Authors sometimes write in past (looked) , present (look) or future tense (will look) . Depending on how you approach your essay, you may choose to write with one of the three tenses. Since your tense may not always match the author’s, you will need to alter particular words.

Original sentence: ‘…puts his arm around Lewis’ shoulder’ ( Cosi, Louis Nowra)

Upon seeing Lewis upset, Roy attempts to cheer him up by ‘put[ting] his arm around Lewis’ shoulder’. ( Cosi, Louis Nowra)

Change Narrative Perspective

The author may write in a first (I, we) , second (you) or third person (he, she, they) narrative. Since you will usually write from an outsider’s point of view, you will refer to characters in third person. Thus, it is necessary to replace first and second person pronouns with third person pronouns. Alternatively, you can replace first and second person pronouns with the character’s name.

The original sentence: ‘Only now can I recognise the scene for what it was: a confessional, a privilege that I, through selfishness and sensual addiction, failed to accept…’ (Maestro, Peter Goldsworthy)

When Keller was finally ready to share his brutal past with Paul, the latter disregarded the maestro, as he was too immersed in his own adolescent interests. However, upon reflection, Paul realises that ‘only now can [he] recognise the scene for what it was: a confessional, a privilege that [he], through selfishness and sensual addiction, failed to accept’. (Maestro, Peter Goldsworthy)

Insert Missing Words

Sometimes, it may be necessary to insert your own words in square brackets so that the quotation will be coherent when incorporated into your sentences.

The original sentence: ‘His heels glow.’ ( Ransom, David Malouf)

Achilles, like Priam, feels a sense of refreshment as highlighted by ‘his heels [which] glow.’ ( Ransom, David Malouf)

It is important to maintain proper grammar while weaving in quotations. The question is: does the punctuation go inside or outside the final quotation mark?

The rule is: If the quoted words end with a full stop (or comma), then the full stop goes inside the quotation marks. If the quoted words do not end with a full stop, then the full stop goes outside the quotation marks.

Original sentence: 'Sagitty’s old place plus another hundred acres that went from the head waters of Darkey Creek all the way down to the river.’ ( The Secret River, Kate Grenville)

Punctuation inside:

During the past decade, Thornhill became the wealthiest man in the area, owning ‘Sagitty’s old place plus another hundred acres that went from the head waters of Darkey Creek all the way down to the river.’ ( The Secret River, Kate Grenville)

Punctuation outside:

During the past decade, Thornhill became the wealthiest man in the area, owning ‘Sagitty’s old place plus another hundred acres’. ( The Secret River, Kate Grenville)

6. There Are Also Other Ways of Using Quotation Marks

Title of text.

When including the title of the text in an essay, use single quotation marks.

Directed by Elia Kazan, ‘On The Waterfront’ unveils the widespread corruption among longshoremen working at New Jersey docks. ( On The Waterfront, Elia Kazan)

Alternatively, you can underline the title of the text instead of using single quotation marks. Many teachers and examiners prefer this option.

Quotation Within a Quotation

When you quote the author who is quoting someone else, then you will need to switch between single and double quotation marks. You firstly need to enclose the author’s words in single quotation marks, and then enclose the words they quote in double quotation marks. If you're following the American standard, you'll need to do this the opposite way - that is, using double quotation marks for the author's words and and then single quotation marks for the quote. We recommend sticking to the preferred Australian style though, which is single and then double.

Original sentence: ‘…something bitter and stringy, too difficult to swallow. “It’s just that – I – um, I hate it…It’s too – it’s too Indian!”’ ( Sticks and Stones and Such-like, Sunil Badami in Growing Up Asian in Australia)

Sunil’s unusual name leads him to believe that it is ‘…something bitter and stringy, too difficult to swallow. “It’s just that – I – um, I hate it…It’s too – it’s too Indian!”’ ( Sticks and Stones and Such-like, Sunil Badami in Growing Up Asian in Australia)

As you can see, the student has quoted the author’s words in single quotation marks. The dialogue used by the author is surrounded by double quotation marks. This demonstrates that the dialogue used in the text still belongs to the author.

Using Quotations to Express Irony

When you wish to express irony, you use quotation marks to illustrate that the implied meaning of the actual word or phrase is different to the normal meaning.

As a young girl, Elaine is a victim of Mrs Smeath and her so called ‘friends’. Her father’s interest in insects and her mother’s lack of housework presents Elaine as an easy bullying target for other girls her age who are fit to fulfill Toronto’s social norms. ( Cat’s Eye, Margaret Atwood)

In this case, ‘friends’ is written in inverted commas to indicate that Elaine’s peers are not truly her friends but are in fact, bullies.

7. Questions You Must Ask Yourself When Weaving Quotes into Sentences

1. Does the quote blend into my sentence?

2. Does my sentence still make sense?

3. Is it too convoluted for my readers to understand?

4. Did I use the correct grammar?

8. How To Find Good Quotes

Tip One: Do not go onto Google and type in 'Good quotes for X text', because this is not going to work. These type of quotes are generally the most famous and the most popular quotes because, yes they are good quotes, but does that necessarily mean that it's going to be a good quote in your essay? Probably not. But why? Well, it's because these quotes are the most likely to be overused by students - absolutely every single person who has studied this text before you, and probably every single person who will study this text after you. You want to be unique and original. So, how are you going to find those 'good quotes'? Recognise which quotes are constantly being used and blacklist them. Quotes are constantly used in study guides are generally the ones that will be overused by students. Once you eliminate these quotes, you can then go on to find potentially more subtle quotes that are just as good as the more popular or famous ones. Tip Two: Re-read the book. There is nothing wrong with you going ahead and finding your own quotes. You don't need to find quotes that already exist online or in study guides. Go and find whatever gels with you and whatever you feel like has a lot of meaning to it. I had a friend back in high school who was studying a book by Charles Dickens. I haven't read the book myself, but there was a character who couldn't pronounce the letter S, or he had a lisp of some sort. What my friend did was he found this one word where, throughout the entire book, the guy with the lisp only ever said the S one time and that was a massive thing. So, he used that. This is something that is really unique and original. So, go ahead and try to find your own quotes. Tip Three: Realise that good quotes do not necessarily have to come from the main character. Yes, the main character does often have good quotes associated with whatever they're saying, but just know that you do have minor characters who can say something really relevant and have a really good point too. Their quote is going to be just as strong in your essay as a main character's quote, which will probably be overused and overdone by so many other students. Tip Four: Develop a new interpretation of a famous or popular quote. Most of the time, the really popular quotes are analysed in very much the same way. But if you can offer a new insight into why it's being said or offer a different interpretation, then this is automatically going to create a really good quote that's going to offer a refreshing point of view. For example, if we look at The Great Gatsby , one of the most famous quotes that is constantly being used is, 'He found what a grotesque thing a rose is and how raw the sunlight was upon the scarcely created grass.' What most people will do is they will analyse the part about the 'grotesque thing a rose', because that's the most significant part of the quote that stands out. But what you could do instead, is focus on a section of that quote, for example the 'raw'. Why is the word raw being used? How does the word raw contribute extra meaning to this particular quote? This way you're honing in on a particular section of the quote and really trying to offer something new. This automatically allows you to investigate the quote in a new light. Tip Five: Just remember that the best quotes do not have to be one sentence long. Some of the best quotes tend to be really short phrases or even just one particular word. Teachers actually love it when you can get rid of the excess words that are unnecessary in the sentence, and just hone in on a particular phrase or a particular word to offer an analysis. And also, that way, when you spend so much time analysing and offering insight into such a short phrase or one sentence, it shows how knowledgeable you are about the text and that you don't need to rely on lots and lots of evidence in order to prove your point. Those are my five quick tips on how to find good quotes from your texts!

Need more help with quotes? Learn about 5 Ways You're Using Quotes Wrong .

Resources for texts mentioned/referenced in this blog post:

Comparing: Stasiland and 1984 Study Guide

A Killer Text Guide: Cosi (ebook)

Cosi By Louis Nowra Study Guide

Cosi Study Guide

Growing Up Asian in Australia Study Guide

A Killer Text Guide: On the Waterfront (ebook)

A Killer Text Guide: Ransom (ebook)

Ransom Study Guide

The Crucible by Arthur Miller Study Guide

A Killer Text Guide: The Crucible (ebook)

‍ The Crucible and Year of Wonders Prompts

Comparing: The Crucible and Year of Wonders Study Guide

The Great Gatsby Study Guide

‍ A Killer Text Guide: The Secret River (ebook)

The Secret River by Kate Grenville Study Guide

Regardless of whether you’re writing a Text Response , Comparative , or even an Argument Analysis essay, it is easy to see the introduction as something inconsequential, that won’t change your overall mark. And as a result, far too many students view the intro as a mere convention of writing that simply needs to ‘tick off’ certain criteria before they get into the ‘meat’ of the essay. But, from my experiences in VCE English, I’ve found taking some time to write a concise, yet original, considered, and insightful intro (with a bit of flair when appropriate) can be hugely beneficial.

Why Your Teacher Says You Can’t Earn Any Marks in an Introduction

‍ Everyone has heard it before:

You can’t win/lose marks in an introduction or conclusion

I’ll be the first to admit that in some ways, this is true. The purpose of a Text Response essay is to show an understanding of a text through analysis. So, it is natural that your essay is marked based on the quality of your analysis of the text. And, because very little of this analysis occurs in the introduction, it’s easy to think that an intro can’t influence or change your final mark. While this may be true in theory, the reality is that your introduction serves as a foundation for your analysis...and just like a house, without a solid foundation coming first the rest of your essay is more liable to be weak and fragile. In my mind, the introduction provides a basis for everything that you’re going to analyse in your body-paragraphs which can build upon the assertions you have made regarding the topic in your intro. In other words, the introduction sets the direction for your essay, which overall acts as a backbone allowing for a cogent argument to be presented in your piece.

How an Introduction Can Help You

‍ Now that we have established how an introduction helps contribute to the overall cohesiveness of an essay, let’s have a look at how an intro can help you while you’re writing. Especially when writing under timed conditions, it can be difficult to produce a detailed plan which lays out the structure of an essay. Here's where your intro can be of great help. When considered carefully, your introduction can set the parameters within which your essay will be contained. In other words, your intro can define the scope of your essay, outlining which themes and characters you are going to explore, and most importantly what arguments you are going to posit throughout your script. This means that if you get lost, or go blank trying to figure out what you should write next you can refer back to your intro to find a sense of direction and regain a foothold in your essay and. In this way, the intro not only acts as a foundation for your body-paragraphs but also provides a blueprint for them which can guide you from point to point.

At the same time, although an introduction cannot explicitly earn you marks, I would argue that a quality introduction can help position your assessor to immediately categorise your essay as belonging in a higher mark bracket. At the end of the year, exam assessors have hundreds of scripts to mark. And the truth is, they will not dedicate more than a couple of minutes to read your essay. As such, if you can impress your assessor with a powerful opening, they are more likely to see your piece as one that should earn a high mark. The reality is that assessors can often tell a lot about an essay based on the quality of its introduction. Therefore, if you can write a 9-10/10 introduction, your assessor will already be leaning towards awarding you a mark in that range without even having read your body-paragraphs yet.

So, How Can You Write an Original Introduction That Doesn’t Sound Like Everyone Else's?

If there’s one thing English teachers and assessors hate, it’s reading essays that have been memorised and recited (though, if you absolutely insist, then here's a middle-ground option where you could use' templates' ). What is crucial, then, is that from the very first line of your introduction you are responding directly and unswervingly to the topic. I would suggest trying to avoid starting with a cliche contextual statement in favour of a bold response to the topic.

For example, in response to the topic ‘Shakespeare’s Vienna is a world devoid of balance.’ I would try to avoid starting my introduction with a vague and easily memorisable statement such as...

‘ Shakespeare’s Jacobean tragicomedy Measure for Measure explores the concept of balance in his extremest characters.’

Instead, a bold opening statement is preferable...

‘Whether it is in Vienna’s abject lasciviousness, Angelo’s ascetic self-governance, or even Isabella’s hyper-rectitude, Shakespeare’s conception of Vienna in Measure for Measure is one laced with problematic extremism.’

Consider opening with a quote which captures your take on the topic. In the Comparative task, most definitely try to avoid staring with the word ‘Both’, and instead consider shedding light on a theme or concept common to both texts.

For example, in response to the topic ‘ Both Invictus and Ransom suggest empathy is key to creating unity.’...

Whether it is between African and Afrikaner or Trojan and Achaean, the capacity for human understanding is upheld as paramount to overcome societal fissures. After you have put forward a broad response to the topic in your opening sentence, your introduction can then proceed to ‘zoom in’ and offer more specific arguments. These specific ideas should essentially signpost the distinct arguments you are going to present in each of your body paragraphs.

And, as suggested in the 2019 VCAA Exam Report :

‘ One characteristic of high-scoring essays was recognition of the ways in which the ideas the student intended to discuss were connected.’

This means that the ideas you flag for discussion in your intro, should be logically connected to both the prompt and each other, and you should aim to outline these connections.

The specific ideas which you offer set the parameters for the rest of your essay, so it is a good idea to ensure that these insights take into consideration the implications of the key-terms of the topic, and attempt to take the topic further. This allows you to consider the text in a sophisticated and conceptual way while maintaining rock-solid links to the topic.

After you have ‘zoomed into’ the specific arguments you will be mounting in your essay, the final step is to ‘zoom back out’ and offer an incisive, and powerful overall contention which responds explicitly to the terms of the topic. We talk about this 'zoom in' and 'zoom out' technique in How To Write A Killer Text Response .

Ultimately, the introduction provides you with a great opportunity to show off to your assessors that you can write incisively, fluently, and with confidence.

How To Write an A+ Language Analysis Introduction

Introductions for EAL Language Analysis, To Write or Not To Write?

VCE Literature Close Analysis: Introduction

5 Tips For A Mic-Drop Worthy Essay Conclusion

The Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative

The Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response

The Ultimate Guide to VCE Language Analysis ‍

The Ultimate Guide to VCE Literature

The Ultimate Guide to VCE EAL

We've curated essay prompts based off our All the Light We Cannot See Study Guide which explores themes, characters, and quotes.

LSG-curated All the Light We Cannot See Essay Topics

Contrary to what the title might suggest, All the Light We Cannot See explores light more so than darkness. Is this true?
How does Doerr’s narrative structure highlight the similarities and differences between Marie Laure and Werner in All the Light We Cannot See?
All the Light We Cannot See demonstrates that war brings out the best and worst in humanity. Discuss.
Explore the forms of courage demonstrated in All the Light We Cannot See.
What is the role of family in All the Light We Cannot See?
Werner’s character is defined by his cowardly and harmful conformity to the Nazi regime. To what extent do you agree?
All the Light We Cannot See is a warning against unethical and selfish scientific pursuits. Discuss.
Who deserves our sympathy in All the Light We Cannot See and why?
Throughout All the Light We Cannot See, various forms of guilt are shown to be emotionally crushing. Is this true?
“Don’t you want to be alive before you die?” Explore the value and meaning of human life as evinced in All the Light We Cannot See.
No character from All the Light We Cannot See is totally monstrous, just as no character is totally pure. Do you agree?
In All the Light We Cannot See , Doerr suggests that nobody truly has agency over themselves. Discuss.
More so than any other object, it is the radio which drives the plot of All the Light We Cannot See . Is this an accurate statement?
All the Light We Cannot See posits that strength must come from within. Discuss.
“Open your eyes and see what you can see with them before they close forever.” To what extent do characters exhibit this sentiment in All the Light We Cannot See ?

If you'd like to see a fully planned, written and annotated essay, see our All the Light We Cannot See Essay Topic Breakdown .

All the Light We Cannot See is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Alfred Hitchcock’s classic thriller Rear Window was released nearly 65 years ago. Back then, Hitchcock was a controversial filmmaker just starting to make waves and build his influence in Hollywood; now, he is one of the most widely celebrated directors of the 20th century. At the time of its 1954 release, Rear Window emerged into a world freshly shaken by World War II. The fear of communism riddled American society and Cold War tensions were escalating between the two global superpowers, the USSR and USA. Traditional gender stereotypes and marital roles were beginning to be challenged, yet the ‘old way’ continued to prevail. The culture of the 1950s could hardly be more different to what it is today. Within the Western world, the birth of the 21st century has marked the decline of cemented expectations and since been replaced by social equality regardless of gender, sexual preference and age. So why , six decades after its original release and in a world where much of its content appears superficially outdated , do we still analyse the film Rear Window ?

Rear Window is a film primarily concerned with the events which L.B. (Jeff) Jefferies, a photographer incapacitated by an accident which broke his leg, observes from the window of his apartment. He spends his days watching the happenings of the Greenwich Village courtyard, which enables Jeff to peer into the apartments and lives of local residents. The curiosities which exist in such an intimate setting fulfil Jeff’s instinctual need to watch. The act of observing events from a secure distance is as tempting as reality television and magazines. To this day, these mediums provide entertainment tailored to popular culture. At its roots, Jeff’s role as a voyeur within Rear Window is designed to satisfy his intense boredom in a state of injury. As the film is seen through Jeff’s voyeuristic eyes, the audience become voyeurs within their own right. Until relations between Thorwald and his wife simmer into territory fraught with danger, Jeff’s actions are the harmless activities of a man searching for entertainment.

So, if Rear Window teaches us that voyeurism is a dangerous yet natural desire , does the film comment on the individuals who consent to being watched? Within Greenwich Village, Jeff’s chance to act as an observer is propelled by the indifference of those he observes. Almost without exception, his neighbours inadvertently permit Jeff’s eyes wandering into their apartments by leaving their blinds up. The private elements of others’ lives, including their domestic duties, marital relations and indecencies, are paraded before Jeff. Greenwich Village is his picture show and its residents willingly raise the stage’s curtains . This presentation of Hitchcock’s 1954 statement remains relevant today. Jeff’s neighbours’ consent to his intrusion into their lives bears striking similarities to current indifference. The prevalence of social media enables information to be gathered as soon as its users click the ‘Accept Terms & Conditions’ button. Rear Window is a commentary on social values and provokes its audience to examine habits of their own, especially in a world where sensitive information is at our fingertips. Just as Hitchcock’s 1954 characters invite perversive eyes to inspect their lives, society today is guilty of the same apathy .

The characters of Hitchcock’s thriller are a pivotal element of the film’s construction. They add layers of depth to the text and fulfil roles central to the plot’s development. One of Hitchcock’s fundamental directorial decisions was leaving multiple characters unnamed – within Greenwich Village alone, we meet Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Torso and Miss Hearing Aid. The stereotypical nature of these labels, based on superficial traits that Jeff observes from his window, exemplifies the sexism prevalent in the 1950s. Jeff’s knowledge of these women is limited to such an extent that he does not know their names, yet considers himself qualified enough to develop labels for each of them. The historical background of stereotypes is imbedded within Rear Window and shares vast similarities with the stereotypes we recognise today.

Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller Rear Window portrays a little world that represents the larger one . Its themes, primarily voyeurism, and character profiles illustrate Hitchcock’s societal messages and provide a running commentary on issues which govern America during the 1950s. In the six decades since the film’s release, the Western world has undergone significant developments both socially and culturally. L.B (Jeff) Jefferies’ perception of women and married life is inconsistent with the relations between men and women that we observe today. Regardless, the timeless views that Hitchcock’s conveys through Rear Window continue to speak volumes about our society. Jeff’s voyeurism, which comprises much of the film’s major plotline, is a channel for Hitchcock to comment about the instinctual desire for individuals to observe others. Additionally, Hitchcock delves into the flip side of this matter, presenting the theory that those he watches are just as guilty of allowing his intrusion into their private lives. Apathetic mindsets in today’s digital world are responsible for the same indifference that Hitchcock explores within his film. Let’s not forget the sexist stereotypes that Jeff develops to label certain women within Greenwich Village. Miss Lonelyhearts, Miss Torso and Miss Hearing Aid are all victims of Jeff’s narrow mindset towards women, emphasised by these superficial and demeaning names. Stereotypes remain as apparent within society today as they were within the world of Rear Window and can be identified within the media’s diverse presentation of social issues. It is easy to assume that Hitchcock’s 1954 thriller, Rear Window , lacks the relevancy we expect from films. Contrary to this perception, its ingrained messages are fundamentally true to this day.

Introduction and Key Themes of Reckoning and The Namesake

Families. Love them or hate them, everybody has a family in some shape or form.

Lahiri’s novel The Namesake and Szubanski’s memoir Reckoning both explore just how complex family dynamics can be. In particular, both texts take an intergenerational approach, which means that they look at how children might struggle to understand their parents’ psyches, and vice versa. They also look at how these struggles can play out into adulthood and throughout the course of one’s life in complicated and poignant ways.

And of course, it gets trickier from there: Lahiri and Szubanski tell the stories of families, yes, but they also tell stories of migration, trauma, and heritage. In both texts, these ideas colour the experiences of the central families and are thus just as crucial for our analysis. Let’s go over the key characters of each text first, before having a closer look at how they compare on each of these themes. In particular, we’ll be going through snapshots of scenes from both texts and comparing what they have to say about these themes.

Characters in Reckoning and The Namesake

The namesake.

Lahiri’s novel revolves around the fictional Ganguli family: Ashima and Ashoke have two children, Sonia and Gogol, the latter of whom is the protagonist. The novel spans over three decades, starting from Gogol’s birth shortly after Ashima and Ashoke’s move to America. By the time it finishes, both Gogol and his younger sister have grown up, and Ashoke has passed away. Thus, this story traces the development of this fictional family over time, illustrating how their relationships with one another change over time.

Szubanski’s memoir, on the other hand, is largely about her own family, including her Scottish mother Margaret and her Polish father Zbigniew. In particular, Reckoning is a family history of her dad’s side, who were living in Poland when the Nazis invaded in 1939. There is some exposition of his family, including his parents Jadwiga and Mieczyslaw, his sister Danuta, and her family as well.

Zbigniew would eventually fight as an assassin the Polish resistance, and Reckoning reflects on how that impacted and shaped his relationship with Magda. The memoir is described to be “as much a biography of her father as it is about her.”

In the process, we learn about his migration, moving to Scotland after the war (where he met Margaret), then to England, then to Australia, with Magda their youngest child aged 5. The memoir covers her life from there onwards, including a journey back to Europe to reconnect with the rest of her family.

Themes in Reckoning and The Namesake

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, check out my How To Write A Killer Comparative ebook. I use this strategy throughout my discussion of themes below and techniques in the next section.

Family in Reckoning and The Namesake

Evidently, this theme largely underpins the stories of both texts. In particular, The Namesake and Reckoning both show that relationships between family members—whether that be parents, children or siblings—can be really complicated.

Let’s start with The Namesake . Motifs of parenthood and marriage are evident front and centre right from the novel’s get go, as a pregnant Ashima reflects on her life as it stands in 1968. When Gogol is born, his parents’ love for him is also evident: “Ashoke has never seen a more perfect thing.” At the same time, while Ashima is starting to see “pieces of her family in [Gogol’s] face,” her own grandmother is passing away—it’s thus important to remember that parenthood runs both ways (this’ll be important for both texts).

In any case, Ashima struggles with the first few years of parenthood - despite settling into a schedule, she finds herself “despondent” when Gogol begins nursery school. However, she grows accustomed to it in time, making “forays out of the apartment” and settling into some semblance of a routine to keep herself somewhat occupied.

Parenthood isn’t really shown to get any easier though—at his 14th birthday, we see a somewhat awkward exchange between Ashoke and Gogol, now “nearly as tall” as his father. What Ashoke thinks is a nice gift actually sets off a decades-long identity crisis for Gogol regarding his name: “from the little that he knows about Russian writers, it dismays him that his parents chose the weirdest namesake.”

This scene demonstrates how there can be miscommunications between parents and children that make it difficult for them to understand each other. Without explaining his name to his son, Gogol and Ashoke are unable to truly connect; Gogol is annoyed if anything, answering his father “a bit impatiently”. Parents and children may want to understand each other better, but this is evidently not always possible. The consequences of this can often span over years, with Gogol changing his name to Nikhil and training himself to “ignore his parents, to tune out their concerns and pleas” once he goes to college.

Still, familial love perseveres over time, though it sometimes shifts and changes along the way. With Gogol and Sonia both grown up, Ashima reflects on the separate lives they now lead, noting that she “must be willing to accept” her “children’s independence”, and her son’s partner Maxine despite her misgivings. Culture also plays a role here, which we will explore more in the next section. However, what is evoked in this passage (near the start of chapter 7) is that parents have their child’s best interests in mind. Indeed, similar themes flow through both texts.

That said, familial love can be harder to see in Reckoning —in particular, Magda’s father is characterised throughout the memoir as emotionally distant to the point of cruelty. When she first learns of the Holocaust, she finds Zbigniew’s “lack of feeling…monstrous.” She doesn’t understand how he can be so detached from the war having lived “right in the centre of it.” She also doesn’t understand why he yearns more than anything to escape that period of his life.

The texts are similar in that both of them illustrate how parents and children often struggle with barriers in communication despite their love for each other. In particular, children may not always understand their parents’ experiences from before they were born, or how those experiences affect them in the present.

It’s not all bad though—love perseveres, and sometimes parents can surprise you. When Magda finally comes out to her parents, their response is generally quite receptive, and her father is perhaps uncharacteristically touching in this scene: “Whatever his misgivings were he didn’t dwell on them and he never let the come between us. As I was about to leave they both put their arms around me. ‘We love you,’ they said.”

Trauma in Reckoning and The Namesake

Additionally, both texts deal with parent-child relationships that are affected by experiences of trauma that parents attempt to suppress.

In The Namesake , it’s largely Ashoke’s brush with death that jars his world view, to the point where he names Gogol after the author whose book saved his life after his accident. However, because he doesn’t process his trauma or tell Gogol the story, it leads to a gap in understanding that compromises some elements of their relationship.

These themes are more strongly present in Reckoning , where Zbigniew’s experiences in the war shape many of his opinions and attitudes, as well as his approach to parenting. Tennis, for example, becomes a vehicle for him to teach Magda about winning and losing, “never once let[ting Magda] win.” They have a similarly clinical experience with hunting, where Zbigniew “los[es] patience” with Magda for mourning the death of a rabbit.

Correctly, though retrospectively, Magda hypothesises that this came from a need to “prove himself” after the war ended, and to “discharge the pent-up killer energy inside him.” Even though she would only understand this in time, it didn’t change how her father’s trauma shaped her childhood in ways that she couldn’t have understood at the time.

Reckoning also shows that trauma can be intergenerational, or as Magda puts it “passed on genetically.” She discovers that her maternal grandfather Luke lived through the Irish famine, and watched ten of his siblings die of poverty, causing her to wonder about the “gift of [her] Irish inheritance” that was left on her psyche.

What’s worth remembering here is that it isn’t just the fathers who bury traumatic events from their past (surprising, I know). When Magda’s mother slaps her for the first time, it is because Magda repeats one of her own deepest regrets, soiling a dress made to visit their respective fathers in hospital: “I understand now, of course, that it was herself she was slapping.”

So, while it is true in both texts that traumatic memories impact how parents relate to their children, Reckoning is a deeper and broader exploration of intergenerational trauma. In particular, Magda not only looks at her relationship with her parents, but also her parents’ relationship with theirs.

Migration & Heritage in Reckoning and The Namesake

This is the final piece of the puzzle in terms of major themes and how they fit together. With how characters relate to culture and heritage, we also see both texts evince some rich, intergenerational differences.

In The Namesake , there’s a marked cultural schism between Gogol and his parents. Gogol is desperate to escape his ethnicity, and his status as a second-generation migrant means he is well-assimilated into American culture—he wears his shoes in the house, addresses his parents in English, and dresses like an American. He is also comfortable dating American people, feeling “effortlessly incorporated” into Maxine’s family and daily life. On the other hand, Ashima is demonstrated to struggle more with the move, describing it as a “lifelong pregnancy”, a burden that people treat with “pity and respect.” There are ties to other themes here as well—for example Ashima’s homesickness is sharpened by the fact that she is separated from her family, in particular her parents. It also means that she becomes a part of the life from which Gogol is so desperate to escape.

In Reckoning however, this generational gap is reversed. It is Zbignew who yearns to escape his home culture, while Magda desperately wishes to understand her father: “while I was racing backwards towards my Polishness, my father was rushing in the other direction, assimilating at a rate of knots.” Though this is reversed, there are still ties into other themes: intergenerational misunderstandings for instance are perpetuated by their differing stances on migration. Trauma is also relevant, as Zbigniew is trying to escape it, while Magda is simply working towards understanding her father.

Put this way, we can understand how familial relationships can be complicated by migration, trauma, and the different attitudes it can engender.

Reckoning and The Namesake are two texts that explore many similar themes—family, migration, trauma, heritage, identity—over the span of decades. I would probably argue that family is the central theme that grounds many of the others; it shapes the identity of children—migrant children—and brings out traumatic memories in spite of your best efforts to suppress them.

Hopefully, this gives you a good overview of the themes across these two texts, how they fit together, and how they are similar or different. Don’t forget that themes can overlap and intersect, as is often the case here.

Reckoning and The Namesake Essay Prompt Breakdown

The topic draws on two quotes:

“But in the meantime I had been given a great gift—my parents’ unconditional love.” ( Reckoning )

“‘Don’t worry,’ his father says. ‘To me and your mother you will never be anyone but Gogol.’” ( The Namesake )

And the prompt itself is:

Compare what the two texts suggest about parent-child relationships.

Topics for comparative essays are usually pretty broad, but let’s pull out some key words and questions that the topic and the quotes seem to raise.

The one that stands out the most to me is this idea of ‘unconditional love’. For parents, this usually means they’ll love and support their child no matter what mistakes or choices they make . In the context of Reckoning , this was brought up in terms of Magda’s sexuality , which is neither a mistake nor a choice, but consider how it permeates through the memoir, and how it’s always been there in some of her parents’ thoughts, words and actions. And how might it compare with The Namesake ?

The other quote is a little more interesting, in particular the ‘to me and your mother’ bit, which I think complicates the idea of unconditional love . Is love still unconditional if parents define who you are and who you will “never be”? I think what’s implied here is that you want to include some discussion of parental expectations, which is another can of worms. It might include things like how parents want you to behave, what career choices they might want you to make, whether or not they approve of your friends or romantic partners .

Now, let’s dive into a possible plan to tackle a topic like this...

Paragraph One

So firstly, let's establish that parent-child relationships are often laden with expectations .

It may not be the obvious example, but Ashima’s family had undoubtedly expected her to marry Ashoke , a PhD student in Boston at the time, as conveyed through “her mother’s salesmanship” . We see this mirrored in the life of Moushumi as well, whose parents orchestrated a “series of unsuccessful schemes” to see her married in her adolescence. Gogol experiences expectations that aren’t all so intentional—while his parents don’t mean him any harm by naming him Gogol, he feels trapped by the name, “ always hated it” in fact. Still, his parents are markedly “ disappointedly ” when he chooses Columbia over MIT, and are “ distressed ” by his low income while he’s at college.

Szubanski’s parents have somewhat similar expectations in this regard: “t he ranks of the second generation are full of doctors and lawyers and professionals.” She felt that “ all of the family’s educational hopes rested on [her].”

These examples mightn’t be the most obvious, but they’re effective for making this point, and don’t need too much explanation to tie it into the prompt .

Paragraph Two

Let’s keep this in mind for our second paragraph: trauma can be passed on intergenerationally through how parents treat their children, and this can bring its own set of expectations as well.

Gogol feels trapped by his name, but it is a result of his father’s traumatic experiences . What Ashoke might not realise is that this has caused Gogol even more distress of his own. This is probably stronger in Reckoning , where Peter’s emotional capacity is compromised as a result of war . When Magda looks through the book filled with pictures of decomposing bodies and feels uneasy, her father’s comment, “ don’t be silly, it’s just a picture,” m akes her feel ashamed of herself for her “stupidity and weakness” . So, parental expectations can be distorted by their traumatic experiences, which only serves to pass that trauma on.

Paragraph Three

To conclude, let’s flip this around to look at how children respond to their parents: in both texts, there’s a sense that being able to confront these expectations and memories from the past helps children to synthesise their own identity and move forward in their own lives.

In The Namesake , Gogol only reads The Overcoat after his father dies, in fact saving it from a box that was about to be donated, “ destined to disappear from his life altogether.” The novel ends here, which could represent that he is able to move into a new phase of his life only after having grappled with this one. Szubanski’s pilgrimage back to Poland and Ireland come from similar desires to better understand her parents. She “wondered if Europe might provide the sense of home [she] craved” particularly given her father’s desire to never look back at his traumatic past there.

I think the bottom line is that parent-child relationships are already complex, and can be further complicated by a number of factors. Still, it’s up to children to grapple with the burden of expectations, and to forge our own path forward from there.

Just when you thought you had finally become accustomed to the complicated art of essay writing, VCE decides to throw you a curveball in the form of a reading and comparing essay that addresses not just one, but two texts. Being introduced to a comparative essay for the first time, it is not surprising that many students encounter difficulties in structuring their writing. For one of most popular posts on Comparative (also known as Reading and Comparing), check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Comparative.

(An accurate representation of the common VCE English student attempting to write a comparative essay)

Luckily, there are quite a few tips and tricks out there that will help you on the journey to a well-structured essay!

What is reading and comparing?

This area of study relates to comparing and contrasting two texts in order to unearth the common themes, ideas, motifs and issues explored. By drawing upon similarities and differences, we are enabled to gain a more profound comprehension of both texts. However, aside from merely comparing what is presented on the surface of a text, (symbols, characters, motifs, themes etc) it is also imperative that you delve a little deeper. Some questions you might want to ask yourself as you are planning a comparative essay are:

- What message are the authors trying to convey?

- What is the significance of symbols, themes, characterisation and motifs in relation to the texts as a whole?

- What was the setting/context in which the authors wrote their texts?

- Why did the authors choose to write about a specific setting/context? Were they directly involved in the social/political issues explored in the texts themselves?

- What are the main similarities and differences and how can I link them together?

Congratulations! Once you have thoughtfully considered these questions, you are one step closer to piecing together your essay!

Because there's such an emphasis on drawing insightful text connections in this area of study, in the LSG Comparative study guide we show you how to use the CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy to identify unique points of comparison. In the study guide, which has been written by 45+ study scorers, we also explain how to strengthen your comparative discussion through Advanced Essay Paragraph Structures which truly showcase the power of the CONVERGENT and DIVERGENT strategy. I don't discuss the strategy in detail here, but you can check it out in How To Write Killer Comparative. ‍

How to structure your essay

Since the purpose of this task is to evaluate the similarities and differences between two texts, (unless you’ve royally misinterpreted the nature of reading and comparing! ) your body paragraphs will need to address both text A and text B. As with all exceptional VCE essays, I would stress that you DO NOT disregard the significance of beginning your essay with an introduction that neatly and briefly outlines your arguments in relation to the essay topic. You SHOULD also have a conclusion to close your essay, which functions as a summary to the ideas you have conveyed in your body paragraphs.

Although there are a few ways in which to structure a comparative essay, with students generally opting for whichever approach works best for them, I will focus upon two different methods, which I find to be the easiest and most concise.

You can choose to address one text per paragraph and alternate between them, for example:

BP1: Text A (theme/idea 1)

BP2: Text B (theme/idea 1)

BP3: Text A (theme/idea 2)

BP4: Text B (theme/idea 2)

As you can see from the structure above, you would need to refer in your first two paragraphs to a common theme or idea prevalent in both texts, comparing how the texts explore such ideas and drawing upon any similarities or differences, before repeating this pattern in the next two paragraphs. In this structure, it is easiest to solely focus upon text A in body paragraph one and then in body paragraph two to put most of the attention on text B, whilst also comparing it to the elements of text A examined in paragraph 1.

- Easy for the assessor to recognise which text is being discussed since this is a very straightforward structure

- Whilst writing the essay, you won’t be confused about which text you are focusing on in each paragraph

- Limited capacity to go in depth when comparing and contrasting the texts, which may lead the assessor to believe you haven’t really grasped the core concepts of either text

This approach is a bit more complicated than the first and will definitely take practice, patience and perseverance to master.

BP1: Text A and Text B (theme/idea 1)

BP2: Text A and Text B (theme/idea 2)

BP3: Text A and Text B (theme/idea 3)

In the body paragraphs of this structure, the writer will constantly alternate between the texts and a good essay of this form will make it clear which text is being referred to, even if the discussion constantly changes from text A to text B. Within each paragraph, the writer will consistently use comparative language to contrast both texts. Typically, each paragraph will place emphasis on a different theme or idea.

- This is a more sophisticated structure than the former; if it is done well, it will highlight to the assessor that you are able to utilise complex structures in a concise way that goes into minute detail when comparing the texts

- Capacity to implement more comparative language

- As you are writing an essay of this form, you might momentarily become sidetracked and confused as you will be constantly changing between referring to text A and text B, thus, it is easier for your ideas to become convoluted, rendering it difficult for the assessor to follow your line of thought.

For more information on essay structures, watch this video:

Useful vocabulary

A key component of structure is not just the layout, but also your choice of vocabulary. Assessors will be looking for key words that prove you are not merely discussing the texts separately in relation to the prompt, but that you are actually able to compare the texts. Some useful terms and expressions include:

Whereas/while/whilst

These texts are dissimilar in that…

These texts are not dissimilar in that…

Alternately…

On the contrary…

Contrarily…

Text A contrasts text B as…

On the other hand…

In a similar fashion to text A, text B…

Both texts…

Both authors…

However, this text takes a different approach…

(This text) parallels/mirrors (the other text) in the sense that…

These texts are alike in the respect that…

Both texts are related as they…

Finally, you have completed that tedious reading and comparing response and I strongly believe that that deserves a sweet treat and a pat on the back.

Although it may have been super challenging, I can assure you that as with everything, the more you practice, the easier it becomes! Consistency is key!

In your Language Analysis (or Analysing Argument) SAC, you will be required to analyse how language is used to persuade in three or more texts. While this may seem a bit daunting at first, it really isn’t much harder than a single text analysis once you know how to approach it. Of course, there are multiple ways to tackle this task, but here is just one possible method!

Introduction:

Begin with a sentence that briefly describes the incident that sparked the debate or the nature/context of the debate. Remember to use the background information already provided for you on the task book!

Next, introduce the texts one at a time, including the main aspects for each (eg. title, writer, source, form, tone, contention and target audience). You want to show the examiner that you are comparing the articles, rather than analysing them separately. To do this, use appropriate linking words as you move onto your outline of each new text.

Consider significant features for comparison, for example:

Is the tone/style the same?
Is there a different target audience?
How do their key persuasive strategies differ?

You may choose to finish your introduction with a brief comment on any key difference or similarity.

Sample introduction: The recent return to vinyls and decline in CD sales has sparked discussion about the merits of the two forms of recorded sound. In his feature article, For the Record, published in the monthly magazine Audioworld in June 2015, Robert Tan contends that vinyls, as the more traditional form, are preferable to CDs. He utilises a disparaging tone within his article to criticise CDs as less functional than vinyls. In response to Tan’s article, reader Julie Parker uses a condescending and mocking tone to lampoon Tan for his point of view, in a letter published in the same magazine one month later.

Body paragraphs:

Block structure

Spend the first half of your essay focused on Article 1, then move into Article 2 for the second half of your essay (and, for those doing three articles, the later part of your essay based on Article 3). This structure is the most simple of all, and unfortunately does not offer you ample opportunity to delve into an insightful analysis. Hence, we would not recommend this structure for you. If possible, adopt the Bridge or Integrated structures discussed below.

Bridge structure

Analyse the first text, including any visuals that may accompany it. Students often spend too long on the first text and leave too little time to analyse the remaining texts in sufficient depth, so try to keep your analysis specific and concise! Remember to focus on the effects on the reader, rather than having a broad discussion of persuasive techniques.

Linking is essential in body paragraphs! Begin your analysis of each new text with a linking sentence to enable a smooth transition and to provide a specific point of contrast. Continue to link the texts throughout your analysis, for example, you could compare:

The techniques of each writer and how these aim to position the reader in different ways.

Often your second and/or third texts will be a direct response to the first, so you could pick up on how the author rebuts or agrees with the arguments of the first text.

Integrated structure

In this type of structure, you will analyse both articles in each body paragraph.

For a detailed guide on Language Analysis including how to prepare for your SAC and exam, check out our Ultimate Guide to VCE Language Analysis .

If you'd like to see an in-depth explanation of these different essay structures with sample A+ annotated essays as examples, check out our How To Write A Killer Language Analysis ebook! This study guide includes heaps of other valuable content too, including the SIMPLICITY and SPECIFICITY strategy, which has helped hundreds of students achieve A+ in their assessments.

Conclusion:

In Lisa's videos above, she suggests a short and sweet summary in your conclusion by incorporating some quotes from the author's own conclusion.

Alternatively, you could opt for a different approach. In your conclusion, aim to focus on how each text differs from the others in terms of the main techniques used by the author, and more importantly, the effect of these techniques on the reader or audience. You should summarise the main similarities and differences of each text without indicating any personal bias (ie. you should not state whether one text might be more or less persuasive than another). For example, a point of comparison could be the audience appeal - will any particular audience group be particularly engaged or offended? Why?

Finally, finish with a sentence suggesting a possible outlook for the issue.

Next Steps:

Watch our 'Language Analysis' playlist where Lisa analyses the VCAA 2016 exam over the span of 7 videos. From the first read all the way through to writing up the full essay, Lisa shows you step by step how you can improve your Language Analysis marks.

*This blog post was originally created by Christine Liu, with additions made by Lisa Tran to suit the new modifications in the English study design.

Before you start diving into Jamie's incredible In Cold Blood study guide, I'd highly recommend that you check out LSG's free Ultimate Guide to VCE Text Response .

Introduction and Narration ‍

• Although its structure and cinematic plot development resemble that of crime fiction, Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood is a ‘nonfiction novel’ detailing the 1959 murders of four members of the Clutter family in Holcomb, Kansas. Put simply, the book was conceived of journalism and born of a novelist.

• The novel is a product of years of extensive research by Capote and his friend and fellow author Harper Lee, who followed the trails of the Kansas criminals across numerous US states. In Cold Blood revolutionised the American ideals of journalism and literature, blurring the lines between these labels.

• A notable technique Capote employed in order to access classified information was becoming personally acquainted with the criminals of the case. For example, Capote became extremely close to Perry Smith, one of the main murderers in the case, which gave him exclusive information on the personal motives of the killers.

• In Cold Blood reflects this relationship with the murderer through Capote’s narration of the book as an objective bystander. On page 23, we see the almost endearing way that Capote describes Perry; “his voice was both gentle and prim– a voice that, though soft, manufactured each word exactly, ejected it like a smoke ring issuing from a parson’s mouth.” As such, Capote’s friendship with Perry allows him to present the killer to the audience with a certain humanity and empathy, showcasing a broader picture of criminals than just a merciless murderer.

True facts of the Case

• On the 15th of November, 1959, all four members of the small farming Clutter family were brutally murdered, including Herbert Clutter, his wife Bonnie Clutter and their two teenage children, Nancy and Kenyon.

• The family was discovered bound and shot in the head. Herb’s throat had also been slashed. After ransacking the entire house, the criminals had left without finding any cash, carrying with them no more than fifty dollars, a pair of binoculars and a transistor radio.

• Perry Edward Smith and Richard Eugene ‘Dick’ Hickock were convicted of the crime. The two men had become acquainted during serving time at the Kansas State Penitentiary, and soon confessed to the crime, claiming that that they had heard from another prisoner that Herb Clutter was extremely wealthy, and kept his money in an easy-to-reach safe in his house.

• After the confession, the two murderers were flown from Nevada to Garden City, where they stood trial for their crimes. On 29 March, 1960, they received a guilty verdict, and were sentenced to the death penalty. For the following five years, Smith and Hickock lived on death row in Leavenworth, Kansas and were executed by hanging on the 14th of April, 1965.

Character Analysis

Perry edward smith.

One of the two murderers of the Clutter case, Smith is portrayed as a sensitive and artistic man haunted by his turbulent and lonely childhood. Described by Capote as a man of ‘actorish’ good looks, he disfigured both of his legs due to a motorcycle accident, which gave him chronic pain and an addiction to aspirin. His criminal actions are often directly linked to his childhood, described as ‘no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another’. Smith’s father was extremely abusive towards his wife, Flo Buckskin, and his four children, and so Buckskin later divorced him, taking the children with her. However, on her own she became an alcoholic and died by choking on her own vomit when Smith was only thirteen years old. He was then transferred to a Catholic orphanage, where he suffered from psychological, sexual and physical abuse from the nuns, one of whom attempted to drown him. Smith’s father and two of his siblings committed suicide during his time on death row. Smith eventually befriended Capote through their extensive interviews, and is believed to have shared personal information with him, believing him to be a true friend.

Richard Eugene ‘Dick’ Hickock

The second murderer of the Clutter case. Having grown up in Kansas, Hickock was a popular football player before turning to a life of crime after realising that he could not afford to go to college. During the course of the Clutter murder investigations, Hickock persistently blamed all of the murders on his partner in crime, Smith, claiming that ‘Perry Smith killed the Clutters…. It was Perry. I couldn’t stop him. He killed them all.’ Capote later states that during the murder, Smith was the one who stopped Hickock from raping the 16-year-old Nancy Clutter, as Hickock harboured pedophilic tendencies.

Herbert Clutter

A well-liked and kind-hearted wheat farmer in Holcomb, Kansas. Proprietor of the large River Valley Farm, Herb is described as a hardworking and valued citizen before his murder, who lead a relatively quiet life other than a troubled marriage with his wife due to her chronic depression.

Bonnie Clutter

Described as an ‘anxious woman’, it is revealed that Bonnie has a history of numerous mental illnesses, one of which is postpartum depression. Capote states that she and Herb had not slept in the same bed for many years.

Nancy Clutter

Described as the ‘darling of the town’ - the class president and future prom queen Nancy was the 16 year old daughter of the Clutters.

Kenyon Clutter

Athletic but introverted, Kenyon was the 15 year old son of Herbert and Bonnie Clutter.

Alvin Dewey

A personal friend of the Clutters, Dewey was the primary investigator in the Clutter murder case and worked for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation.

Themes and Motifs

The american dream.

The novel is Capote’s reflection upon the American Dream, as he portrays both the lives of those who epitomise it and those who are tragically out of its reach. Herb Clutter’s position as an upstanding American citizen with a prosperous farm elicits the reader’s interpretation of his character as the rags-to-riches ideal. In stark contrast with this, the rootless and criminal Dick Hancock and Perry Smith are presented as individuals for whom the Dream is perpetually unattainable. Their attempt to finally become ‘rich’ materialises through their attempt to rob the Clutters’ home, the failure of which ironically results in their brutal murders of the people who successfully represented the American Dream.

In accordance with the American Dream, In Cold Blood also explores the concept of what is considered ‘normal’ in America, and what can be revealed as the darker underbelly of its white picket fence ideal. Dick asserts throughout the novel that he is ‘normal’, but from an external, objective perspective, he is clearly far from such; he has distorted physical features and has committed a terrible, vicious murder. Capote also explores the idea of normal mental health, as Bonnie Clutter seems to have the perfect marriage and life with Herb, and yet suffers from extreme bouts of ‘nervousness’ and chronic depression which result in her hospitalisation.

What is evil is primarily explored through the character of Perry, who has conflicting ideals about what can be considered truly ‘evil’. The more feminine and gentler of the two murderers, Perry possesses conflicting morals, as despite being a ruthless murderer, he does feel remorse and is affected by what he has done. He even thinks to himself that Herb Clutter is a ‘very nice gentleman’ even in the midst of slitting his throat. Capote in the novel reveals that there are numerous facets to the meaning of true ‘evil’, and the blurred borders that exist between each of these.

Masculinity

Symbolising the idea of dominance and power, Dick and Perry, who have a complementary and polarised gender relationship, feed off each other in order to boost their own masculinity. Described as ‘aggressively heterosexual’, Dick is evidently the more stereotypically masculine counterpart, having had numerous relations with women. Perry, on the other hand, is more feminine and submissive, as Dick often calls him names such as ‘sugar’ and ‘honey’. Both men in the novel utilise the other in order to make themselves feel more masculine in their highly restrictive and conservative society — while Dick emphasises Perry’s feminine qualities, Perry admires Dick and craves his words of affirmation that he, too, is masculine.

Essay Writing for In Cold Blood

Below are some possible prompts for In Cold Blood , and possible ideas to begin writing an essay.

Theme-based Essay Prompt

"I think it is a hell of a thing that a life has to be taken in this manner. I say this especially because there's a great deal I could have offered society. I certainly think capital punishment is legally and morally wrong.”

Is In Cold Blood merely a novelistic argument against the death penalty? Discuss.

To learn more about LSG’s Five Types of essay prompts, I’d highly recommend checking out this blog post . It’s a super unique strategy developed by the founder of LSG, Lisa Tran. The Five Types method, outlined in the top-rated How To Write A Killer Text Response eBook , takes the stress of students and gives them easy to follow rules and tips so that they know how to approach every essay topic, every time.

• The best way to approach any essay prompt is to recognise the limiting and/or important words of the essay question. In this thematic prompt these words are: ‘legally and morally’, and ‘merely’.

• Secondly, for prompts which incorporate a quote, it is helpful to understand the context of the quote. In this case, the quote was said by Perry as his last words before his execution by hanging. Consider the importance of this; these words are especially more meaningful as they symbolise the last direct influence he leaves upon society. They are remorseful words of a murderer reproaching the justice system, which begs the question - does Capote position the reader to agree with the murderer’s view?

• Planning this essay can be structured along three arguments...

1. Capote argues against capital punishment through eliciting pathos for the murderers and portraying them as more than mere monsters.

• Evidence for this argument could be based mostly on the descriptive elements of Capote’s writing, or his emotional attachment to the murderers, particularly Perry.

• Capote paints Perry particularly sympathetically, highlighting his sensitivity as well as his broken and abusive childhood. Quotations from the novel make it clear that his character is romanticised to an extent, such as “It was a changeling's face, and mirror-guided experiments had taught him how to ring the changes, how to look now ominous, now impish, now soulful; a tilt of the head, a twist of the lips, and the corrupt gypsy became the gentle romantic.”

2. In Cold Blood supports the anti-death penalty argument through its structure and organisation.

• The epigraph of the novel is a verse of the poem, ‘Ballade des pendus’ by Francois Villon, that he composed whilst on death row in 1463. Villon’s criminal circumstances were strikingly similar with Dick and Perry’s, as he murdered a priest and stole from his strongbox before being arrested and sentenced to death. Despite this, Villon was ultimately charged with a 10 year banishment from Paris, whereas the Clutter family murderers are hanged - a strikingly different outcome. Thus, Capote employs this poetic epigraph to strengthen his argument against the unjust executions of Perry and Dick.

• In addition to this, the structure of the novel is also used to argue against capital punishment. Although Part One focuses on the lives of both the Clutter family members and Dick and Perry preceding the murder, Part Two skips over the actual murders themselves and recounts the aftermath of its events. This allows Capote to further develop Dick and Perry into real, complex people rather than merely cold blooded murderers; people who do not deserve such a cruel fate.

3. However, Capote does ostensibly condemn the cruelty of the murders and presents the opposing argument that capital punishment is not, in fact, ‘legally and morally wrong’.

• The brutality of the Clutter murders are emphasised through the novel, as Larry Hendricks, who discovers the bodies along with the police, provides the gruesome details of the bodies - ‘each tied up and shot in the head, one with a slit throat’.

• As Perry later admits to the murder in his extended confession, Dewey highlights the fact that the Clutters ‘had suffered’ due to the ‘prolonged terror' inflicted by the murderers, and orders them, as such, to be ‘hanged back to back’.

• The argument for capital punishment in In Cold Blood is also supported by religious beliefs. As a small and predominantly Christian town, Kansas and its residents can be perceived interpreting the words of the Bible literally; at the end Dick and Perry’s trial, the prosecuting attorney Logan Green reads an excerpt from Genesis in the Holy Bible: ‘Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed.’ Rejecting the notion that Christianity preaches forgiveness, Green strives to punish the killers for failing to abide by the laws and prophecies of the Old Testament.

Character essay prompt

Perry Smith, despite Capote’s authorial sympathy towards him, is really a cold and merciless monster. Discuss.

When approaching character-based prompts, you must depart slightly from examining the holistic messages of the author, as you would in a theme-based prompt, but rather analyse how the specific character develops this authorial message. The above essay question could be brainstormed in the following way:

1. Capote’s description of Perry shows that he is far from a ‘monster’, but a human being of great sensitivity and emotion.

• During his confession of the Clutter murders, Perry’s comment, ‘There's got to be something wrong with somebody who'd do a thing like that,’ shows that he, to some extent, understands the gravity of his actions and regrets them.

• Perry is also described by his sister as ‘gentle’, and someone who ‘used to cry because he thought the sunset was so beautiful’. Likewise, even in moments of cruelty, he often shows mercy and a wide moral compass, even stopping Dick from raping Nancy Clutter during their murder spree.

2. Perry is also depicted as someone ‘weakened’ by the tragic events of his past and his own insecurities, rather than an inherently ‘cold and merciless’ person.

• Capote often links Perry’s violent tendencies with his childhood, described as ‘no bed of roses but pitiful, an ugly and lonely progress toward one mirage and then another’, as he was raised ‘with no rule or discipline, or anyone to show [him] right from wrong’.

• In addition to this, Perry can be perceived to be the more insecure and submissive of the two killers, as while Dick often calls him stereotypically feminine names such as ‘sugar’ and honey’, Perry admires his ‘aggressive’ masculinity and craves his words of affirmation in order to feel as masculine and strong as his counterpart.

3. Despite this, Capote does not entirely erase the murderous aspects of Perry’s character.

• Due to the prompt and seemingly nonchalant way in which he kills the clutters, Dick becomes convinced that Perry is that rarity of a person,"a natural killer.”

• Thus, Capote, despite his empathetic portrayal of Perry, never allows the reader to forget the extent of his criminality, and how easily he was able to fire those ‘four shotgun blasts that, all told, ended six human lives.’

We’ve explored historical context, themes, essay planning and essay topics over on our Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy blog post. If you need a quick refresher or you’re new to studying this text, I highly recommend checking it out!

‘Liz sits there helpless’

• From the beginning of the short story we can see that Liz isn’t, or doesn’t feel in control of her situation. The step by step process where she needs to ‘put the key in the ignition and turn it. Fire up the car and drive away’ showcases how the smallest details of starting the car, something that should be so simple instead requires immense mental effort on her behalf.

‘And he’s in there, alone, where she’s left him’.

• Her guilt bubbles to the surface here because it’s as though she’s the villain here, and she’s to blame for leaving him alone.

‘Abandoned him to a roomful of rampaging strangers’

• What’s really interesting here is her description of the other children. Instead of seeing this as an opportunity for Daniel to befriend others and have a great time, she describes them as ‘rampaging strangers’, giving us a sense that Daniel is subject to an unfamiliar environment that is wild, frenzied, rioting.

“Guerilla warfare”, “Jungle gym”, "seasoned commanders”

• These "fighter” phrases reveal Liz’s anxious mindset, as she imagines a world where her son is almost in the wilderness, every man for himself, as though it’s the survival of the fittest - and which Liz so fearfully express, “not that there’s going to be anybody with enough time to notice that Daniel needs help”, is not an environment where Daniel belongs.

“She digs in her bag for her lipstick, her fingers searching for the small cylinder, and pulls out a crayon, then a battery, then a tampon, then a gluestick.”

• Her everyday objects are splashed with Daniel’s belongings - the crayon, the gluestick, and demonstrate how intertwined her life is now with her child. This foreshadows her return to her pre-baby life - that things will not be the same.

“The smell of the place, that’s what throws her, the scent of it all, adult perfumes, air breathed out by computers and printers and photocopiers.”

• Even her sense of smell betrays her being away from Daniel. There’s a sense of alienation, of nausea that shows readers like us that Liz doesn’t feel like she belongs. This is in contrast to later in the story when she is reunited with Daniel and is comforted by ‘inhaling[ing] the scent of him again’.

“Same computer, same shiny worn spot on the space bar…"

• The repetition of ’same’ actually heightens how much has actually changed for Liz. Her entire world is now Daniel, whereas everything in the office is as it used to be. Therefore, there’s this sense that the people’s lives in the office remain unchanged, highlighting again Liz’s alienation.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, they’re right, of course they are.”

• This sarcastic internal monologue reflects Liz’s current state of mind, where she’s experiencing a disconnect from her coworkers, and ’the land of the living’.

"Delete, she presses. Punching the key like a bird pecking. Delete, delete, delete.”

• We can feel Liz’s exasperation at this stage. The simile ‘like a bird pecking’ automates Liz’s actions in the workplace, as though she is doing it by switching to a ‘mechanical form’ of herself. The repetition of ‘delete, delete, delete’ gives us the sense that she’s frustratingly attempting to ‘delete’ her self-acknowledged, perhaps over-the-top anxiety surrounding Daniel, or trying to delete herself out of her situation. Whichever is unclear and left up to interpretation. Perhaps both ring true.

‘Returning to work after maternity leave’

• Liz’s narrative interspersed with new mum’s pamphlet. The juxtaposition of the pamphlet’s words ‘being a stay-at-home mum can begin to seem mundane and repetitive’ is contrasted with Liz’s love of motherhood - she is at odds with what society tells her she should be feeling.

‘[Daniel]’d have his thumb in his mouth right now. Not smiling, that’s for sure.’

• There’s a self-projection of anxiety here with Liz assuming that the childcarers are unable to look after Daniel properly, and that he’s suffering.

‘God, these endless extended moments where you’re left in limbo, the time dangling like a suspended toy on a piece of elastic.’

• This simile highlights how her mindset is completely consumed with Daniel, as she likens her daily experiences with objects and things related to Daniel and childhood. She struggles to switch between her identity as a mother, and her previous identity as a colleague in the workplace.

‘Caroline, Julie and Stella had laughed dutifully enough, but their faces had shown a kind of pained disappointment, something faintly aggrieved.’

• Perhaps this is Cate Kennedy's commentary on society and motherhood. The expectations others have on you as a new mother, and how you should be feeling.

‘He doesn’t run over when he sees her’.

• The opening of this chapter is blunt and brutal. Liz has longed to see Daniel all day, her anxiety getting the best of her, and yet at the moment of their reunion, it’s not as she expects. In this sense, we can to feel that Liz is very much alone in her anxiety and despair and, not the other way around with Daniel.

’She’s fighting a terrible nausea, feeling the sweat in the small of her back.’

• Unlike other stories in this collection, her pain isn’t because the absence of love, but because of its strength. Her love for Daniel is so intense that it’s physiological, making her unwell to have been away from him.

• The symbol of cake represents her pre-baby life, a time when she was concerned with the ‘account of Henderson’s’ and ‘delete fourth Excel column’. Her priorities have now shifted, and the celebrated ‘cake’ tradition in the workplace, one that is at the centre of several conversations, is no longer to significance to Liz. Her husband, Andrew’s attempt to celebrate Liz’s first day back at work with cake is highly ironic. The societal expectation that Liz is happy to be back at work even extends to her husband, and heightens how Liz is very much alone in her experience.

If you found this close analysis helpful, then you might want to check out our Like a House on Fire Study Guide where we analyse EVERY story in the text and pinpoint key quotes and symbols!

Watch our YouTube Video on Like A House On Fire Essay Topic and Body Paragraphs Breakdown

Like a House on Fire by Cate Kennedy

Like a House on Fire Essay Topic Breakdown

How To Get An A+ On Your Like A House On Fire Essay

Close Analysis Of 'Cake' From Like A House On Fire

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The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970 Paperback – April 6, 2021

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Print length 544 pages
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Publisher ‏ : ‎ Anchor (April 6, 2021)
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World History: Golden Age
Therefore, this essay asserts that during the golden age, people lived better lives than the preceding ages in terms of harmony, peace, stability, and prosperity. The golden age originated from Europe, specifically in Greece during the 5 th and the 3 rd centuries BC. Hesiod, a Greek philosopher, coined the term golden age and described the ...
Golden Age
The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the Works and Days of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the Golden Race of humanity (Greek: χρύσεον γένος chrýseon génos) lived. After the end of the first age was the Silver, then the Bronze, after this the ...
The Golden Age of Athens
A "golden age" is a time of peace, prosperity, and happiness, and often occurs when cultural activities such as art or writing reach a peak. The Greek city-state of Athens reached its Golden Age between 480-404 BCE. This era is also referred to as the Age of Pericles, for the Athenian statesman who led the city from 461-429 BCE.
The Golden Age: a Multifaceted Exploration of History and Culture
The golden age thematic essay traverses a rich tapestry of history and culture, revealing the profound influence of this concept on the collective human psyche. Across civilizations and epochs, the golden age serves as a vessel for the expression of ideals, the representation of values, and the pursuit of harmonious existence. ...
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Golden Age is one of several prominent periodicals serving the metaphysical and post-New Age spiritual community in Australia. A full-color periodical that covers a wide range of current topics across the spectrum of personal psychic and spiritual development and holistic health, it has begun to find an international audience. ...
Elizabethan Age
Elizabethan Age, in British history, the time period (1558-1603) during which Queen Elizabeth I ruled England. Popularly referred to as a "golden age," it was a span of time characterized by relative peace and prosperity and by a flowering of artistic, literary, and intellectual culture to such a.
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Baghdad was centrally located between Europe and Asia and was an important area for trade and exchanges of ideas. Scholars living in Baghdad translated Greek texts and made scientific discoveries—which is why this era, from the seventh to thirteenth centuries CE, is named the Golden Age of Islam. A love of knowledge was evident in Baghdad ...
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The Golden Age Of Greece Essay. 'I entreat you, by your life, by your knees, by your parents, do not let the dogs feed on me by the ships of the Achaians… give my body to be taken home again, so that the Trojans and the wives of the Trojans may give me in death my rite of burning' (22.338-343). This heart wrenching plea represents nearly ...
Golden Age Essay
Golden Age Essay. Decent Essays. 820 Words; 4 Pages; Open Document. Throughout history, many culture have experienced a Golden Age when great advances were made in variety of different fields. A golden age is a period of time during which there a very high level of achievement is reached in particular field of activity, especially in art or ...
PDF The Golden Age of European growth: A review essay
It then slowed markedly for the period of the Second Thirty Years' War, speeded up for what Crafts The Golden Age of European growth : A review essay 137. Table I. European growth, 1890-1992 (average annual growth) . Period Real GDP Population Real GDP Real GDP per capita per person-hour. 1890-1992 2.5 0.6 1.9 2.6a.
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Essay 8 : How important is love and connection in The Golden Age? Essay 9 : "In recovery he felt a hunger to know why he was alive." 'In The Golden Age, recovery means much more than survival.' Discuss. INTRODUCTION. The Golden Age is a prize-winning novel by Joan London, first published in 2014. It is set in 1954, in the Golden Age ...
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The Golden Age . DOI link for The Golden Age. The Golden Age. Essays in British Social and Economic History, 1850-1870 ... a stereotype that is challenged and modified in the essays of The Golden Age. By concentrating on central aspects of social and industrial change authors expose the underpinnings of supremacy, its unsung underside, its ...
The "Golden Age" of Islam, Wadad Kadi
The Abbasid empire and most of the local dynasties were overrun and practically destroyed by the Mongol invasion of the Middle East in 1258. That invasion ended not only the early phase of Islamic history, but also the "Golden Age" of Islamic civilization, which had been developing slowly from the beginning of this period. The "Golden Age ...
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'The Golden Age' shows that everyone needs love and recognition. Discuss. ‍ Planning: the silent killer of A+ essays ‍ I'm sure your teachers have emphasised the importance of planning. In case they haven't, allow me to reiterate that great planning is compulsory for a great essay. However, flimsy arguments aren't going to get you ...
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The Golden Age of detective fiction refers to both specific sub-genre and (the cozy) and the historical period (the interwar years) (James, 2009). It is loosely defined as a soft-boiled detective fiction released between the two wars (World War 1 and World War 2). The Golden age of detective fiction was arguably caused by the interwar period ...
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Biomedical Sciences. An example was the significant flowering of knowledge in biomedical sciences in the Islamic world during the Golden Age. Muslim scholars went into great troubles to translate and analyze the works of prominent physicians such as Hippocrates, Rufus, and Galen. The scholars proceeded to synthesize the works of these great ...
Golden Age: Essays in British Social and Economic History, 1850-1870
The Golden Age: Essays in British Social and Economic History, 1850-1870 - 24 Hours access EUR €51.00 GBP £44.00 USD $55.00 Rental. This article is also available for rental through DeepDyve. Advertisement. Citations. Views. 41. Altmetric. More metrics information. Metrics. Total Views 41. 25 Pageviews. 16 PDF Downloads. Since 2/1/2017 ...
Elizabeth I And The Golden Age History Essay
Elizabeth I (A.D. 1558-1603) inspired a time of great prosperity and art that was "stirred by a revival of interest in English history, Elizabethan poetsâ€¦ texts to the writing of contemporary plays" (Fiero). After the ruling of her predecessors, Henry VII and Henry VIII it opened up to a magnificent literary bloom, which has allowed ...
The Golden Age Essay Questions
2. Why is the novel titled "The Golden Age?" The novel is named after a children's hospital called "The Golden Age, which existed from 1949 to 1959 in Australia. The hospital was known for its housing of polio-infected children during a polio outbreak in 1950s and is where London chose to set her novel.
The Golden Age of the American Essay
About The Golden Age of the American Essay. A one-of-a-kind anthology of American essays on a wide range of subjects by a dazzling array of mid-century writers at the top of their form—from Normal Mailer to James Baldwin to Joan Didion—selected by acclaimed essayist Phillip Lopate The three decades that followed World War II were an exceptionally fertile period for American essays.
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5. Dissecting an A+ Essay using 'The Golden Age' 6. Creative Essay Topic Brainstorm. 7. Essay Topics. The Golden Age is usually studied in the Australian curriculum under Area of Study 1 - Text Response. For a detailed guide on Text Response, check out our VCE Text Response Study Guide. Summary
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Write a 4-6 paragraph essay that explains why you think the society is in its "golden age." Include descriptions and details about each piece of evidence you found. Be sure to clearly explain how each piece of evidence helps prove that the society you selected is in its golden age. Edit your work. Proofread for accuracy, spelling, and grammar.
The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970
The Golden Age of the American Essay: 1945-1970. Paperback - April 6, 2021. by Phillip Lopate (Author) 4.0 22 ratings. See all formats and editions. Book Description. Editorial Reviews. A one-of-a-kind anthology of American essays on a wide range of subjects by a dazzling array of mid-century writers at the top of their form—from Normal ...