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Quotations:
Deconstruction of the question
into it's two parts: |
“Voices left their caves/And silence fell from its shackles,/ memories
strayed/ From behind sunken eyes … That shared their secrets/ With
storms and exiles.”
All night/ The kindness/ Of the sea continued -/ Breaking into/ Walled
up grief’s/ That men had sworn/ Would never be disclosed … |
“”I never knew you/ Except in the third person…”
“For the moment,/ I repeat, I never knew you,/ Let me be.”
Ï can give you/ The recognition/ Of eyesight and praise./ What more/ do
you want/ Besides/ The gift of despair.” |
The bicycle trip changed Ernesto Guevara’s perception of his country and
its people and the decision to make the trip
changed the course of his life, becoming the revolutionary Che
Guevara. |
Family escapes Nazi Germany to live in Africa. Changes the course of
their lives: went from great comfort to difficult and trying farm life
and had to learn to adapt. |
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“The journey, not the arrival,
matters.”
The colours represent the links
being made between one text and another.
If you choose your texts
carefully, you can choose texts that make it easier for you to make
connections. |
Leaving the known (Europe) for the unknown (Australia) is
taking a less common (well trodden) path
in life; there are no comforting patterns to
lean on (maps, compasses). The refugees on the boat experience
Attwood’s metaphorical terrain on their journey but are further down the
road to self discovery, “Voices left their caves/ And silence fell from
its shackles,/ Memories strayed/ From behind sunken eyes… |
For Skrzynecki the change of countries has given him the material that
he has needed to express in these poems. It has
made all the difference in that it has contributed to making him
who he is. He has come to terms with the tangle
of brambles in Attwood and knows that the threads can’t be
dissolved. He has a need to articulate his
experience as the men did on the ship in Crossing the Red Sea.
His journey and that of the refugees has had
the same life changing power as Guevara’s in Motorcycle Diaries.
Frost says “Yet knowing how
way leads on to way,/I doubted if I should ever come back.”
For Skrzynecki the feeling is very different
for, “Ön the river’s bank/ A lone tree/Whispers:/ “We will meet/ Before
you die. |
Guevara broke the course of his studies to travel with
no real idea of where he and his companion
would go. The journey changed the course of his life.
His journey as a revolutionary had all the
difficulties expressed by Attwood. ”… I move surrounded by a
tangle/of branches, a net of air and alternate/ light and dark, at all
times …He articulated his experiences in his
diaries. His journey made him take
the cause of his people as his life’s mission. Not unlike the tree that
whispers to Skrzynecki. |
Each member of the family faces a different challenge in
taking this unusual path: the father
never assimilates and returns after the war. The wife who is very
resistant comes to love the country and the daughter grows up regarding
herself as African. For them it has made all
the difference. The journey has not been
without hardships and they were not prepared for the struggle to survive.
The mother and father have to learn to
communicate again away from their comfortable surroundings. The
daughter is young enough to take her new surroundings as her own.
For her it is life altering and Africa is her home and
mission in life.
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Notice when you read across the notes
for each texts some techniques recur eg the use of first person; some
don't eg comparison or contrast.
You can talk
about the similarities and the differences in the techniques used by
composers.
But remember, they won't all use the
same technique in exactly the same way eg first person can be the
composer or a persona. |
Stages in the journey:
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First person:
addresses the postcard/ responder.
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First person
and journal form: immediacy and intimacy; shows the growth process. |
Creation of three distinct responses to the one
experience/ journey: father, mother and daughter. Saga quality to story.
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