Although, soon highschool ends and it’s time to start a career, maybe even start a family.
The occupation you decide may alter your character in a small or large way, and even starting a family may have an affect also. Going from an adult, to a parent is a huge leap and in the long run may change your view on life.
One you being that child, deciding what path to chose and building your character each day at a time. Now watching your offspring grow up and do the exact same thing. It’s all a part of life and a part of finding out who we are.
Family, friends, music, clothes, it’s all a part of character development, it makes us who we are today, and who we will be in the future.
Changing Perspective
As a HSC student, I would like to argue my point for considering the following two texts as texts for which I believe should be included in the future website being designed to assist HSC students deal with the concept of changing perspective as the area of study in English.
The 2 texts which I believe should be included in the future website are:
1. Text 2 From the 2003 PSB- The National Picture & The Conciliation
2. The poem “A Few Years Ago”
TEXT 1
The National Picture and The Conciliation have been taken from the 2003 HSC PSB. The artists of The National Picture & Conciliation are Geoff Parr and Benjamin Duterrau respectively.
In these texts changing perspective is dealt with historically, culturally and technologically.
It also deals with the change from genocide to reconciliation.
Within these two texts changing perspective is dealt with in many ways, from the vast changes in the Multiculturalism of Australia, to the diminishing population of aboriginals. An example of this is in The Conciliation painting, where the handshake symbolises the welcoming of the Europeans by the Aborigines, while in the National Picture, the handshake symbolises the acceptance of the Aboriginal People by the Europeans.
Techniques used to portray Changing Perspective within the two texts are:
o The Superimposement of Truganini’s face. Truganini’s face has been fused with detail from the artist Byzantine’s painting of Jesus Christ.
Jesus was crucified, and so was Truganini in a way. She was the last Tasmanian Aborigine, who died from genocide. Truganini faced the fear of being killed because of who she was.
o The incorporation of the 20th century icons such as the esky, the surveyors levels and the stereo in the National Picture Painting portray the change in the Australian way of life.
o Changing Perspective is exposed by the noticeable increase of the European inhabitants from the Conciliation painting to the National Picture and the decrease of the Aboriginal population. This suggests the British over taking the Aborigines rite to their land.
o The background drop in the National Picture is a man made one, compared to the natural background incorporated into the Conciliation painting. This suggests that in recent years, Australia has become more of a man made environment. This may include the demolishing of trees to produce buildings.
sky high
Sky High represents many comparisons of changes, from paragraph one to two and again from paragraph five to six.
The main focus of the text is the way time changes certain things. The first two paragraphs evoke the excitement and freedom of childhood, where the backyard is represented as a whole world to explore. However in the last paragraph, the writer is preoccupied within the burdens of adult responsibility.
This story is told through the eyes of Hannah Robert as she remembers her childhood experiences, using the symbol of the "washing line" to explain to the reader about the changes in her life. She remembers the washing line "first", with its "silver skeletal arms". This image is the main reflection of her memory. In paragraph one the garden is described rather negatively: "hard, bird-bitten fruit", "a struggling sapling" and "patchy lawn". This contrasts with the description of the clothesline as "standing proud" and "the best climbing tree on the lawn." By contrasting the unattractive description of the garden to the exciting description of the clothesline, the composer conveys the special significance the clothesline had for the writer.
Yet the reader is abruptly moved on in time with the line, "Today,
however, it is bare". At first it seems we have returned to the present but we soon realise that her thoughts have wandered to another day in her childhood, when she climbed the washing line and sat in her "exalted position, almost sky-high". Here we share her feelings of joy and excitement as she surveys the world she knows. She describes this stage of her life in a almost child like, conversational tone, with simple and matter of fact statements. "Three little boys live there; I have stood on the fence and talked to them, even been in their house once."
She describes the boughs of the tree as beseeching or begging her to climb them, as if she neglected the tree in favor of the washing line. The wind is also described in a youthful way as if it were actually playing with her hair.
Many figures of speech are used in this text and they are just devises that bring life to the passage. The comparisons drawn in the first paragraph inspire the significance of the washing line and the washing, giving almost heroic qualities.
When describing the rest of the backyard she it literal, but when she returns to the washing line it becomes poetic language again. This is because she is making great comparison of her two eras, childhood and adulthood.
A small pilot light burning somewhere inside indicates the image of a pilot light which makes us think that her desire to climb on the line has never died and could burst out any minute. But the effect is that we realise that the potential for action may not be realised in adulthood.
There are too many things tying me to the ground, this last line refers to the speaker's physical weight as stopping her from climbing, but they also refer metaphorically to the responsibilities and restrictions that tie her to the ground. These lines express the speaker's sadness at how our perspective inevitably changes as we get older and become aware of the 'realities' of life. This leads to a view of the world that is from a practical perspective, rather than a carefree or imaginative perspective.
In the first paragraph the washing line is the "best climbing tree in the yard". In the last paragraph it is described as a "more age-warped washing line" with "sagging wires" and "spotted metallic arms' a different view of how it was seen first – the washing line has changed and so has the writers view of it, reflecting the influence of time and change in self.