Property of the Clan Formative Task

Discuss the key concerns of your text and explain how the composer reveals these to his audience.
Through the studies in this module, it has allowed me to gain knowledge and realise that there are still many issues and concerns being raised in our community, that determines whether our actions are acceptable or not by society. Through my analysis of the prescribed text, the play “A Property of the Clan” by Nick Enright, I have realised that there are still numerous concerns and problems in our younger society, with many of them the way we treat each other in a community. The text reveals discrimination, stereo typing, violence against women and mateship, which all need to be re-evaluated and altered by society, if we are going to change the way society judges the new generations.
The stereotyping and labeling of people, which is often directed in negative ways, has a tendency to put down the victim and make them feel useless. This makes them easy targets for those in society that tend to dehumanize those who are weaker than themselves. Enright in “A Property of the Clan” represents this cycle of stereotyping and abuse through the character of Tracey, who was murdered. This is shown in an early scene between Jared and Rachel when Rachel says “I mean Tracey. You called her a moll.” Jared the reply’s with “It’s true. Do you even know her?” This shows how people believe that Tracey was sexually promiscuous, but most do not really know the truth and so create negative rumors about others. The dehumanizing of Glen is reinforced through a scene between Jared and Rachel, “You know he’s a bit suss?” “Suss?” “They reckon he’s a suss dog. A poofter.” Through the use of derogatory colloquial expressions, Enright shows how quick people are to judge people, based on someone else’s assumptions or impression about the targeted person. Near the end of the play where Ricko uses colloquial expressions and a negative tone in “The way she came with a bottle of bourbon, and her little earrings bobbing, and her tits poking out of her t-shirt. She was up for it”, it suggests Ricko’s labeling and stereotyping of Tracey was based on her looks and his desire to have sex with her. Enright skillfully reveals a society that is based on what other people want to believe about another person, rather than on the truth.
Mateship is a strong theme in the play. Enright shows that it is a strong sense of loyalty which can also lead to moral dilemmas in the community. The repetition of “mate” throughout the play and Ricko’s imperative voice and commanding tone in “They’re your mates. Forget about it”, reinforces that Jared must not dob any of the boys in for the murder of Tracey, or all of his mates will have no respect for him and he will be left with no friends. This then has an effect later in the play when Jared smashes the mug that Rachel gave him, which symbolises Jared’s moral dilemma and how destructive misplaced loyalty can be. Enright’s use of colloquial language in “I was just yakking with her” and “bashing some poor bloody song to death”, suggest the amount of mateship between Ricko and Jared is a great deal. The behavior of Jared changes gradually throughout the play. The use of a simile in “Mate, I got to let it out, got to talk to someone, it sits in here like poison” suggests that Jared can no longer uphold his friendship and has to tell someone about the murder of Tracy, otherwise he will have a mental breakdown. Mateship plays a major role in the play and can be related to everyday life in our society, whether you do the correct thing and betray you friend or whether you bottle it up and keep it to yourself.
Discrimination is shown right throughout the play. Enright use discrimination to show that people make judgment on false rumors based on their sexuality, gender and age. Enright shows Age discrimination in “Your age and her age are different”, to suggest that Diane does not believe that jade is mature enough to be able to go to Ricko’s party with Tracey, even when the age difference is One year. The use of Patrachey in “Girls can’t balance right. Their centre of gravity is all up the shit.” Enright is suggesting that males are superior to females. The use of male superior as at the end of the play in “Not a bloody word about the boys. About why blokes grow up the way they do. And why nobody ever tries to change them.” Enright is suggesting that males do not get any restrictions placed on them in their teen years while girls are not even allowed to leave the house. Trough discrimination, Enright suggest that the local community at black rock needs to reconsider their classing and treatment of women to be able to stop discrimination in society.
Deal with grief, loss and suffering differently. Some people talk about it, while others bottle it up. Enright’s use of jades monologues on pages 34 and 44, suggest that it is a way of Jade dealing with the loss of her friend, and that she is struggling to understand what happened to Tracey. Enright uses juxtaposition in jade’s monologues with the male voices off the boys being arrested and Ricko’s confession. Enright emphasises this significance with Jades words are paralleled to the boys confessions to show her greater ability to deal with the death and to achieve closure on the case. Enright’s use of symbolism in “Great view. No salt build up on the windows”, suggests that Marion is able to see things more clearly than Diane who is caught between her emotions and her knowledge of the guilty boys. Enright displays Jared as the one who builds up all his emotions and lets them all up at once. The use of a simile in “I touch you and your like a barbed wire fence” to suggest that Jared has to be able to let his emotions out to be able to solve the murder of Tracey. The use of dealing with grief in the play, brings the emotional side of the play out, the actual truth about the play.
Enright presents to his audience a society that is torn between doing what is right and what is wrong. He revels that society needs to reconsider the way that the youth in the community socialise, if we are aiming to remove all the tragic consequences of underage drinking, discrimination, violence and stereotyping.