Maestro

Distinctively visual images evoke profound ideas and notions about society, culture and values which enables responders to perceive reality in a new light, challenging or reinforcing their own ideas and attitudes. Through the use of distinctively visual images, composers are able to add depths and complexity to the characters within their respective texts in a way that shapes and deepen their responder’s perceptions of these characters. In the postmodern novel “Maestro” by Peter Goldsworthy, distinctively visual images is used to convey Edward Keller’s traumatic and shady past, allowing the audience to perceive his distressing past experiences with greater depth and clarity. Additionally, Goldsworthy uses distinctively visual images to illustrate Keller’s isolation and displacement in Darwin while also highlighting the complex and nebulous relationship between him and his student, Paul. Similarly, I have used distinctively visual images to represent how Goldsworthy’s characterization of Keller has shaped perceptions of him, allowing the audience to see both his past as a musician in Vienna and his life as an exile attempting to escape his traumatic past.

Firstly, Goldsworthy uses distinctively visual images to highlight how Keller’s traumatic past has colored both his perceptions of the world at large and the way in which he exposes himself through music. When Mrs. Crabbe describes Vienna’s ‘beautiful architecture’, Keller immediately rebukes her, metaphorically deriding it as mere ‘movie set architecture’. The juxtaposition of Mrs. Crabbe’s admiration against Keller’s contempt for Vienna’s ‘ornamental facades’ illuminates the way in which Keller’s traumatic past has distorted his view of the world, causing him to perceive only frivolity, imperfection and worthlessness. This enables the reader to perceive Keller’s traumatic experiences in Vienna – a ‘city of military pomp and processions’. Similarly, Paul’s metaphorical reference to Keller’s face as “the sun