Preview

Henry Lawson, Distinctly Visual Image Essay Example

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
610 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Henry Lawson, Distinctly Visual Image Essay Example
Good afternoon teachers and fellow year 12 students. The question posed, was “Henry Lawson creates a distinctly visual image of Australia.” Do you agree? I'm going to talk to you about why I agree that Henry Lawson creates a distinctly visual image of Australia in his stories and how he does it.
Henry Lawson is a well-known Australian author, who has written a number of short stories. Most of his stories are about the harsh conditions, in the Australian bush.

‘The Drover’s Wife’, one of Lawson’s short stories, is about a woman who lives in the bush with her 4 children while her husband is away for varying, prolonged periods of time, droving.
During this story, she is portrayed as a tough, determined woman facing many difficult challenges by herself including floods, drought and disease. This gives the reader an impression of her courage and strength.
Lawson describes the Drover’s wife as a ‘gaunt, sun-browned bush woman.’ This makes us as responders, imagine a woman who has had a hard life and been struggling.
The Australian bush is effectively described throughout the story with the use of visual imagery. The harsh conditions of Australia are brought to our attention by ‘Bush with no horizon, for the country is flat.’ The author describes how there are no distinctive features.
The bush is portrayed as an unfriendly place ‘nothing to relieve the eyes’. The author also illustrates how hard it is to survive in the outback ‘the bush consists of stunted rotten apple trees’.
Lawson uses descriptive language and adjectives to illustrate the house the family lives in. ‘the two roomed house is built of round timber slabs and stringy bark’ it describes how the primitive house is small and home-made.
Throughout the ‘Drover’s wife’, Lawson uses a number of language techniques. The use of visual imagery, descriptive writing and adjectives, creates strong images of the Australian bush and highlights how tough life is, to live there.

In another one of

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    In the Tim Winton’s novel ‘Lands Edge’ and the 2009 film ‘Australia,' varying images of Australia are explored, through the illustration of the landscape as a result of the descriptive language used and also through the use of visual techniques used in the film ‘Australia’. Tim Winton’s ‘Lands Edge’ depicts various images of the costal, remote costal and suburban life of Australia throughout his life. In contrast in the film ‘Australia’ portrays images of the remote rural desert Australia landscape and also Australia's wetland. In Addition, throughout both texts there are varying images of Australia to emphasis the different8 connections Australians have to the land which then generates a greater understanding to the reader by depicting the…

    • 396 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Discuss the construction of images in relation to two of the short stories, which you have studied, and one related text.…

    • 1380 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Distinctive visual have been created in ‘The Drover’s Wife’ through the composers use of sibilance and accumulation to create a sense of isolation. “The two-roomed house is built from round timber, slabs, and stringy-bark, and floored with split slabs.” This quote is used to allow the responder to visualise the pre-federation rudimentary home and not only how isolated it is from society but also how isolated it is from modern day housing. “Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of…

    • 1325 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Romulus’ limited relationship with Australian environment and culture is juxtaposed with Raimond’s enriching connection and avid experience of belonging. Gaita conveys this through a potent use of pathetic fallacy as Raimond “finds solace in the sparse scrub and open bushland” whereas his father perceives the bush in a manner that implies its deficiency: “desolate… symbols of deprivation and barrenness.” This blatant conflict of…

    • 1306 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Drovers Wife

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages

    The effect of the hardships of the environment on the drover’s wife is clearly seen through Lawson’s description of her physical appearance, “The gaunt sun-browned bush women”. This is further reinforced by the brutal and comfronting imagery used to portray her children as having a “ragged, dried up look”. Powerful imagery of the physical toll on this “once young city woman” is effective in establishing a strong impression of the woman battling against isolation in the bush.…

    • 803 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Distinctive voices

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages

    A number of distinctive voices are used in ‘Clancy of the Overflow’ by A.B. Paterson to paint an evocative picture of Australian society and to juxtapose images of the Australian bush against images of life in the city. The purpose of this poem is to highlight the unique characters of the Australian bush and to allow the reader to romanticise with the Australian bush. The pervading tone of the poem expressed by the clerk narrator is envy of the pleasures he imagines Clancy to experience living and working in the bush and derision of aspects of the city. The distinctive voices in the poem include the clerk narrator, the laconic character of Clancy, the ‘shearing mate’, the bush and finally the city.…

    • 287 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    In ‘The drover’s wife’ Lawson creates powerful images by employing distinctively visual language that enables the responder to feel the hardships that others face. Concrete sensory description is effectively used to create a beautiful image when The Drover’s wife sits to watch the snake all night. ‘A green sapling club laid in readiness on the dresser by her side, together with her sewing basket and copy of the young ladies journal.’ The journal is symbolic of the approach she takes in not letting the bush take away her femininity. Juxtaposing to this, the club is symbolic of what she needs to do, it displays her innovative ways and her ability to be content with her lifestyle. The sewing basket acts as a ‘bridge’ between the two as it represents both sides of the woman. Images of a resourceful, cooperative and woman of sophistication are conjured up in the responders mind. One is able establish a relationship of commendation with the drover’s wife whilst despising the Australian Bush for what it puts her through.…

    • 769 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The bush is displayed negatively through visual techniques in ‘The Drover’s Wife’ due to the unpredictibiliality and loneliness that an individual experiences. Throughout this text, Lawson expresses the bush as being a negative place to live. “No undergrowth. Nothing to relieve the eye… Nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilization” The use of assonance throughout the text, creates a sound of isolation in the bush and brings the responder to consider how although people choose to live there, it isn’t always seen as a positive way of life. The bush life can be extremely dangerous for one person let alone a whole family. A bush woman in ‘The Drover’s Wife’ faces a snake entering her home and having to quickly evacuate her children. “Snake! Mother, here’s a snake!” Effective dialogue is used to show how living in the bush causes the mother having to constantly worry whether the snake will strike at her or her children. Living in the bush is described as dangerous and lonely, displaying a negative atmosphere.…

    • 812 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Distinctively Visual

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages

    the short story “The Drover’s Wife” by Henry Lawson. An interesting visual scene of the role of a woman in society in the Australian outback is presented through the literary technique of chronological listing. when the drovers wife is up all night waiting for the snake to surface vivid recollections of her previous experiences of ‘drought’ ‘fire’ ‘floods’ ‘sickness’ ‘loss’ ‘stranger danger’ and ‘isolation’ gives us an insight into the interesting distinctively visual roles placed on a drovers wife in the Australian bush. Similarly in the film “Australia” by Baz Luhrmann we are shown through interesting film techniques of montage, tracking shots, and aerial views a wide array of distance (Darwin to Faraway Downs) from civilisation, various weather conditions communicating the hardships and the isolation endured in outback society.…

    • 520 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Distinctively Visual

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The vivid description of the bare outback setting makes the reader feel as if though this woman is cut off from the rest of the world and only her own company to keep the only other adult she speaks to is her husband’s brother “who comes over once a month with provisions. The brother-in-law kills one of the sheep occasionally, gives her what she needs of it, and takes the rest in return for other provisions”. We are given a highly visual glimpse of an unrelenting monotonous and isolating setting. This harsh, physical backdrop becomes an important narrative element in the characterisation of the mother. The technique of repetition adds emphasis and enhances the visual image. The expression ‘bush’ helps to create a visual which is distinctively an Australian outback setting. Lawson repeats this term to give the reader a sense of how harsh the setting is. The land is seen and dried out and decrepit “consisting of stunted, rotten native apple trees” Lawson goes onto describe the monotony of the landscape and a few “She oaks being the only thing to relieve the eye”.…

    • 285 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Much like many hardworking Australians, Henry Lawson failed to make it happen in the city, so he took a journey inland. This journey inland is a reflection of most of Henry Lawsons work, depicting the hard life of the country. Giving a different, realistic perspective to the usual laid-back image of the country lifestyle. ‘The Drover’s Wife’ written by Henry Lawson shows a hard-working mother willing to do anything for the protection of her kids, whilst her husband goes droving. Staying up at night to look out for a snake, fighting bushfires, dangerous men and trying to fight farm illnesses.…

    • 688 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The Drovers wife shows the harsh landscape of the australian outback through the tough times the drovers wife has to endure by herself to survive. The perception of her is that she is a protective mother and a persistent battler against the diasters of the australian outback. The use of alliteration “no undergrowth, nothing to relieve the eye…nineteen miles to the nearest…civilisation” shows the drovers wife as being desolated and isolated from society.…

    • 1001 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The sun was low and swollen, falling off the edge of that great faded blue abyss. The flat, empty horizon of reds and browns gave way to neat sections of farmland that flickered past like pages of a picture book. They were wheat fields, bristling and swaying in the early autumn breeze. I knew then M— wouldn’t be that much further. And it wasn’t; it appeared like a smudge of dark green on that lifeless line of longitude known as the outback.…

    • 982 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The most obvious and dominant change revealed in Tan and Marsden’s ‘The Rabbits’ ,is the environmental change to the Australian landscape. Visual and Language techniques are employed to clarify for readers, the destruction the rabbits inflicted to the environment. The visual technique colour is effectively used to depict the change the environment undergoes by changing the colour tones. The illustrations at the start of the book are warm reds and yellows conveying a strong, bold, earthy environment and as the book progresses the colours reflect a ‘sunny glow’ of progress and development and towards the end colours become more and more dark toned conveying a dead, desolate, empty environment. For example, pages 17, 18, 27, 28 and 29 are the darkest pages, they are bleak and all black or dark toned depicting the suffering and despair of the Possums and emphasising their loss of their environment and the family lost in the battles. It is through these changes of colour that an atmosphere is created and if we look at the first pages atmosphere and the last the difference between them makes the environmental change clearer and easier to comprehend. Another technique successfully used was the language technique; Rhetorical…

    • 875 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    The Drover

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages

    The story is about a family living out in the bush in Australian. The woman is alone with her kids while her husband is out working. The family is poor and the husband is therefore forced to be away from his family and work.…

    • 256 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays