C: Craft of Writing

Question 1

Politics and the English Language - George Orwell

Answer 1

• Orwell examines the ways the English language is often used in ways that conceal the writer’s actual meaning, rather than express it.
• ‘The decline of a language must ultimately have political and economic causes’
• ‘The English language is in a bad way.’
• ‘The great enemy of clear language is insincerity.’
• ‘I have again and again committed the very faults I am protesting against.’

Question 2

Eulogy for Gough Whitlam - Noel Pearson

Answer 2

• Powerful use of rhetorical devices, anecdotal recollections and historical and cultural references.
• The eulogy becomes a call of action.
• First sentence ‘Paul Keating said the reward for public life is public progress.’
• Repetition ‘This old man’
• Inclusive language ‘We salute this old man for his great love and dedication to his country and to the Australian people.’
• Simile, intertextuality (Life of Brian) ‘And 38 years later we are like John Cleese, Eric Idle and Michael Palin’s Jewish insurgents ranting against the despotic rule of Rome, defiantly demanding ‘and what did the Romans ever do for us anyway?’
• Long paragraph, list of achievements.

Question 3

How to Marry Your Daughters - Helen Garner

Answer 3

• Review essay adopts a witty and playful tone as it narrates the author’s experience of reading Jane Austen’s novel ‘Pride and Prejudice’
• Old/formal to contemporary language ‘Mr Fitzwilliam Darcy, the ill-natured, land-owning uber-spunk.’
• Austenesque language ‘where, dispos’d among charmingly group’d cushions, I settled in for the duration.’
• Hyperbole ‘Here Austen gives us five enthralling pages of Elizabeth thinking.’
• Humour ‘Lydia Bennet, at sixteen, is a piece of trash.’
• Colloquial language ‘And long live the Ludias of this world, the slack molls who provide the grit in the engine of the marriage plot; for without them it would run so smoothly that the rest of us would fall into despair.’

Question 4

The Ghost of Firozsha Baag - Rohinton Mistry

Answer 4

• The text focuses on the authenticity of voice in narratives.
• The grammatical paradigms remind us that it does not matter as long as you get your meaning across.
• The overarching metaphor of ghosts, or fears, are really a representation of our desires thus the text is relevant despite our attachment or distance from the cultural representations.
• The repetition and motif are an effective way of creating voice for the character and as such, allow the reader to feel empathy and compassion for their experiences.
• Themes about vulnerability and isolation. Jaakaylee is a perpetual outsider.
• The narrative style is an effective meandering of thought that can occur when people are trying to tell a story but are interrupted by things that keep occuring to them: ‘But I was saying…’.