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Lawson's "Drovers Wife" and "The Loaded Dog": Themes of Hardship, Persistence, and Mateship

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Lawson's "Drovers Wife" and "The Loaded Dog": Themes of Hardship, Persistence, and Mateship
English Assignment Distinctively Visual
Visuals are distinctive because they make texts more enjoyable and engaging for audiences, as illustrated by Henry Lawson in the "Drovers Wife" and "The Loaded Dog". these 2 short stories convey the themes of hardship, persistence and mateship by living in tretrous conditions of the environment and surving in them.he uses these distinctively visual elements to provide context, create humour, describe setting and help communicate and devolop ideas.

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. Thepersonification “Big black yellow eyed dog of all breeds” conveys that only rough, and masculine characteristics can thrive within the outback of the Australian bush. Furthermore the “Young Lady’s Journal…for her surrounding’s not favourable of the development of the womanly side of nature” conveys the journal as a symbol of the drover’s wife leaving her womanhood in the past in order to brave the rough and terrible conditions of the bush. The hardships faced by the people in the bush can be seen in the juxtaposition, “Thunder rolls and rain comes in torrent/the drought of eighteen ruins him” which illustrates the unpredictability of the outback lifestyle. Finally the extended imagery that portrays the wife and her children as “ragged dried up looking children…gaunt sun brown woman” conveys the stoic vision of both the land and its inhabitants as worn and exhausted.
In addition the powerful setting of the outback itself is seen to create the image of the settlers. The endless ‘travel’ motif in “That monotony that makes a man

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