2012
Interesting views on society are conveyed by the distinctively visual.
Explore how this is achieved in your prescribed text and one other text of your own choosing.
Sample Response: Poetry
Prescribed text:Selected Poems, Douglas Stewart
Related Text:The Dream of the Thylacine, Margaret Wild and Ron Brooks, 2011 (picture book)
Directly addressing the question and developing a thesis that includes the two texts / The distinctively visual provides an avenue of social comment with composers manipulating words and images to convey interesting views on society. Douglas Stewart’s poetry and Ron Brook’s drawings in the picture book The Dream of the Thylacine by Margaret Wild have the power to connect the responder to social issues through the visual. With carefully chosen language, and the juxtaposition of the commonplace against the spectacular, the composers create a sense of the force of nature and show that the most ordinary things in life are extraordinary and deserve our respect.Begins with overview of poems in prescribed text focusing on setting and the responder / Douglas Stewart’s poetry is quintessentially Australian in its choice of subject matter and location. Stewart focuses on nature and mans’ relationship to the natural. He goes from urban to coastal to rural settings with the same sensitivity. The lady who feeds cats, the fisherman, the wombat and the moth are given the same acknowledgement, all seen as part of a natural world. We can immediately see the world around the characters and animals in the poems.
Close reading of the Lady who feeds cats, looking at how the visual conveys a message
The evidence from different parts of the poem is explained and linked to the question / The lady comes “from the slums” but walks “uphill past the Moreton Bays and the smoky gums”, nature forming her pathway. Her poverty is revealed through the descriptions of her clothes: “broken shoes”, “long dress green and black like a pine in the rain, “bonnet much bedraggled’ and her “shuffling” movements declare her age. The outer visual garments and appearance are at odds with the inner person with a “song in her brain” and “trembling with love and power”. The paradox of “love and power” is due to her relationship with the cats in the neighbourhood. The dependence of the natural world on humans is evident as the cats “rub at her legs” for food and treat her like a “princess out of a tower”. The poem also demonstrates that the relationship is reciprocal indicated in the balanced verse “If she has fed their bodies, they have fed/ More than the body in her”. It is through the cats that the lady achieves satisfaction. The lady’s poverty is obvious and yet she is able to feel as if she is a fairytale figure. Stewart is conveying a message about society and the importance of giving, through the lady but he is also demonstrating that it is animals and nature that give us contentment.
Link to the related text made in the topics sentence
Both visual and verbal techniques are discussed
Conscious of the audience
Ends with a return to the thesis about social message / Human relationships with animals are not always positive as we can see in The Dream of the Thylacine. Humans do not appear in the picture book but their actions are obvious in the black and white historical photographic image of the thylacine in a cage. Wooden rails frame the image on the right hand side of the double page spread where the words appear as if in the thylacine’s mind: “Trapped am I in a twisty wire, cold concrete. The thylacine’s despair is further conveyed by the capitalised verbs in big font that follow, as if floating on the page: “PROWL, RAGE, HOWL”. Image and words work together to capture the degradation and despair of the once powerful animal. The next double page is a sharp contrast with full colour in a stylised representation of the thylacine running freely in the Australian bush, part of nature. The tragedy of the loss of the thylacine is captured even more poignantly in the image that appears on the cover in shades of nostalgic sepia with the arched back of the thylacine tracing an arc for the responder’s eye to follow to the open mouth, howling its desperate appeal. While this may be a picture book, the violence of some of the images suggests an older audience may be more appropriate as the social message is confronting. Wild and Brooks use the visual to promote their message about nature by depicting the animal in such humanistic terms. They are declaring the view that man has intervened too much in the lives of animals with devastating results.
Second poem from prescribed text is linked to the related text
Techniques are embedded in the discussion with their examples / The beauty of Stewart’s words in the poem “The Moths” is just as effective as Wild’s words and Brooks’ images in the thylacine book. He starts with the anaphora “such a …” drawing our attention to the wonder of nature. He addresses the responder directly with the colloquial expression “You’d think” but follows this with the exquisite phrasing of the metaphor appealing to the sense of touch: “a wind of the dusk” which leaves us to imagine the delicacy of the air in the lowering light and yet that same wind sweeps bare the blossoming tea-trees. There is a sense of violence in the beauty of nature “where the dark streams cut the granite”. Sight, touch and sound come together in the “whirring hush of wings” also acting as an oxymoron, making us aware of the contrast in nature – of power inherent in the gentleness. This poem keeps building up the images using lists of participles,“Bursting and foaming, spinning and gushing” to reveal the energy of the age-old moths. The poem delicately ends as it starts with a reference to “snow”, an image of white innocence but also age. Moths are regarded as such commonplace insects but Stewart has dispelled this idea convincing the responder that they have a beauty and that they are an important part of nature.
Final comment to link both texts to the set question / Both Stewart and the picture book creators (Wild and Brooks) have harnessed the power of the visual to influence the responder to a point of view about society. They remind us that nature has beauty and that it is a part of our world that needs to be respected. Through positive interactions with nature we become more human.
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