“Feliks Skryznecki” Physical journeys

Portrait

Memorial

PaeanA son reflecting on the father he deeply loves and respects. As a mature man he looks back on the father’s strength and reflects on his lack of understanding as a child but has developed as a man. He also recognizes in maturity that his father understood the gap that existed between them because of their different life experiences as migrants and that the son would come to value his heritage in later years.

Structural features of texts

Deconstruction

Supporting evidence

Language features of texts

Deconstruction

Supporting evidence

“Crossing the Red Sea”

Describes the journey from Naples of a migrant ship like the one Skrzynecki sailed on with his parents to Australia although the poem is not this specific.

The poet makes strong metaphorical reference to the journey of the Israelites to the Promised Land, hence the significance of the Red Sea in both journeys.

Also describes war shattered individuals who begin to open up to share their experiences. The journey has a cathartic effect and ends on a not of promise.

Structural features of texts	Deconstruction
5 sections Section 1 – verses 1 and 2 Section 2 – verse 3 Section 3 – verses 4, 5, 6 and 7 Section 4 – verse 8 Section 5 – verses 9,10 and 11	Section 1 – immediate context Section 2 – places the reader in an historical context Section 3 – beginnings of articulation Section 4 – impact of memory and time Section 5 – prospect of a new life
11 verses	Verse 1 – describes migrants/refugees sleeping on the deck Verse 2 – beginnings of shared experiences Verse 3 – voyage represents the beginnings of a new life Verse 4 – voyage places people in a position to express their shared experiences Verse 5 – snatch of experience Verse 6 – snatch of experience Verse 7 – reference to Lazarus Verse 8 – connection between the night and the movement of the ship and time and memory Verse 9 – the next morning Verse 10 – one topic not addressed: death Verse 11 – Equator as a dividing line; big changes yet to come
Movement throughout the poem away from port/Europe to the Equator	Journey away from the past and history to a new beginning. Equator represents a dividing line.

Language features of texts	Analysis
Use of colour – red	Red: life, passion, blood, death and martyrdom White: light, purity, truth, resurrection
Imagery	Section 1 Natural elements: landscape, caves, shorelines, mountains, rivers, storms Section 2 Metaphoric reference to the Israelites traveling to the Promised Land Section 4 The movement of the sea as a stimulus to dialogue
Personification of time	The passing of time The effect of time The effect of the journey on time and memory
Use of monologue	Lends authenticity Reinforces the idea of people beginning to talk Significance of the chosen snatches of dialogue?
Reference to night and day	Section 4 – night and the slow revelations of memories Section 5 – day and the crossing of the Equator to a new life, a promised land?
Biblical references	Section 2 – The Promised Land Section 3 – Lazarus Section 5 – Resurrection

Life is Beautiful: inner journeys

Some suggested related material suggestions:
These deal with similar historical material. Art Spiegleman’s graphic novel, Maus, deals with similar material to your text but is a very different form.
Shaun Tan’s The Arrival treats the changes of migration as a consequence of some difficulties in the home country but this text is more allegorical. Tan is an Australian children’s book author although this is not specifically for children.
Li Cunxin, Mao’s Last Dancer deals with the life story of a Chinese dancer’s decision to pursue his career and thus leave China. He now lives in Melbourne and the book has been reworked as a children’s book, The Peasant Prince.
Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa is also worth thinking about. It’s an autobiography. Don’t do the film.
Che Guevara’s journal, Motorcycle Diaries charts a journey that changed his life and created the political revolutionary. It’s the background to the movie of the same name.
Lt. Col. Jay Kopelman, From Baghdad With Love deals with the horrors of the Iraqi war through the eyes of an American soldier who finds a dog that becomes very important to his and other troops mental and emotional survival. Don’t dismiss it too lightly. It actually deals with that human need for affection to survive and the lengths people will go to to achieve it that is in your text. It’s also true.

Little Miss sunshine: journeys

These are links on the film and may be useful. There is little of any great depth other than reviews; often the case when something is so relativley new:

• This website is good for getting all the names right: the director, the characters and the actors who play them: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0449059/
• Wikipedia has an entry so look for the links at the bottom: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Miss_Sunshine
• The official website is comprehensive but I regard them as essentially advertising: http://www.foxsearchlight.com/littlemisssunshine/
• Rotten Tomatoes is a web institution for its reviewing honesty. You might get some ideas or pointers: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/little_miss_sunshine/
• This link contains a collection of reviews from newspapers and magazines and some a quite prestigious http://www.metacritic.com/film/titles/littlemisssunshine

‘Huck Finn’ and ‘Little Miss Sunshine’: journeys

Huck goes on a journey down the Mississippi River and meets different many people and experiences many challenges and must overcome various obstacles. that will change him. His companion is a negro, Jim, which raises racial issues particularly considering the context of the novel.

• Look for three key characters and evaluate the impact of each on Huck?

• Look for three key episodes and evaluate the impact of each on Huck?

Little Miss Sunshine operates in a similar way but operates on a more darkly humorous level. The central character is Olive whose quest is to participate in the “Little Miss Sunshine” contest in California. The Mississippi is replaced by the road they travel to California. Her companions are her dysfunctional family: her retrenched father, hippie grandfather, stoic mother and obsessive brother. They are joined by her gay uncle who has recently attempted suicide.
Although Olive achieves her goal and participates in the contest, the journey has its biggest impact on the other members of the family, who were, apart from Sheryl, reluctant to go.

• Choose two key characters and evaluate the impact of each of Olive’s quest

• Choose two key episodes and evaluate the impact of each on the characters you chose above

You also need to look at techniques: how the composer creates their meaning. With Little Miss Sunshine, consider:

• the use of the combi van as a vehicle in which to make the journey
• the choice of incidents the family confronts eg breakfast in the cafe; grandfather’s death; Dwayne’s colourblindness
• the way in which actors represent their characters eg Dwayne
• the use of humour
• the role of satire – the pageant
• the significance of the title – literal and metaphoric meanings

Remember, the techniques in a film are very different to a prose text, like a novel.

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: a physical journey

Resources

• Background on the author, Mark Twain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Twain

• An overview from wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Huckleberry_Finn

• HSC Online material

http://hsc.csu.edu.au/english/area_of_study/physical_journeys/2915/huck_finn.html

• An official home page from the University of Virginia

http://etext.virginia.edu/railton/huckfinn/huchompg.html

• A teacher’s guide to the novel. Useful for approaches to the novel.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/cultureshock/teachers/huck/index.html

• A short article examining racism in the novel

http://www.salwen.com/mtrace.html

• A list of books that were questioned 1990 to 2000. Huckleberry Finn was one of them. Have a look at the others.

http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlinks/100mostfrequently.htm

• An article that looks at Huckleberry Finn a hundred years later. Written by another great American writer, Norman mailer.

http://web.archive.org/web/20001115041000/http://www.nytimes.com/books/98/05/10/specials/mailer-finn.html

• This site provides links to online literary criticism of the novel.

http://www.ipl.org.ar/cgi-bin/ref/litcrit/litcrit.out.pl?ti=adv-38

Coleridge and related material

I’ve pasted in the suggestions from the website: www.e-rudite.net that has more than the blog. I’m going to colour in blue the ones I might choose but obviously whatever takes your fancy (to use a Coleridge word). There are other more general suggestions on http://www.e-rudite.net/aosresources.htm. Just follow the link at the top of the page to Related Material.
My aim is to answer students questions in a way that is helpful to them so feel free any time.

With Coleridge you’re looking for the creativity of an artist, so either the thinking about it, the process or the creative expression itself. At the end is a link to two ABC websites that have writers taking about their craft.

Suggestions for related material:

Fiction

Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince

Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones A girl dies violently and looks on the passing years and her family from heaven.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland Do the book not the Disney film. Carroll annotated it so you have text, illustration and annotations which makes it an interesting text to impress markers with.

Michael Cunningham, The Hours

Jack Kerouac, On the Road

Oscar Wilde, The Portrait of Dorian Gray This is a journey in time focusing on a man who makes a pact with the devil to stay young and beautiful whilst a portrait increasing reflects his sinning self. It’s Edwardian but it’s a novella and not that long. A Classic.

Non-fiction

Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

Graphic novel and picture books

Jeannie Baker, The Window This is one of the most beautiful picture books in which the world changes through a single window frame on every page. You ‘read’ the details she selects.

Art Spiegelman, Maus

Raymond Briggs, When the wind Blows

John Marsden and Shaun Tan, The Rabbits This represents the invasion of Australia (rabbits/the Bristish) through the eyes of the original inhabitants and takes us on a journey through time and change. The text and the images are the imaginative side of it.

Shaun Tan, The Lost Thing

Film

Finding Neverland, dir. Marc Forster

A Prairie Home Companion, dir. Robert Altman

The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, dir. Spike Jonze This is about memory and it moves through time in a highly unusual manner. The script is on the web. It is excellent but also challenging.

Online resources

Books and Writing, transcripts of writers interviewed on their craft, http://www.abc.net.au/rn/arts/bwriting/

Writers and Writing, radio programme with podcasts available, http://www.barbarademarcobarrett.com/writersonwriting/index.html

Judy