AUSTRALIAN AND CANADIAN LITERATURE

THE BULL CALF

In the poem "The Bull Calf" the stanzas go from good to bad feeling. This is the same way that the calf's life goes.
This is also the way that the narrator's feelings for the calf's life go. There are also many symbols throughout the
poem. Without these deeper meanings the poem is just about a calf the dies because it can't produce any milk.
"The thing could barely stand." ("The Bull Calf" line 1). The calf is referred to as a thing not an animal or creature.
This is the way the author blocks emotion. The first line in the first stanza is a contradiction from the rest of the
stanza because the rest of it has a positive attitude and the first sentence shows that the animal is weak. The third and
the fourth line show the glory of the animal by hinting to royalty. The last line in the first stanza helps to back this
information up by pointing to Richard the second. In the fifth line the narrator uses thee word us this connects him to
the event. "The fierce sunlight tugging the maize from the ground" ("The Bull Calf" line 6). This is imagery, the
sunlight showing promise and hope, maize is yellow this refers us back to the sun through the similar color. The last
line refers to Richard the second this makes the poem flow better into the next stanza, Richard the second was
lowered from his rank much like the calf is going to be. "No money in bull calves", Freeman had said." ("The Bull
Calf" line 10). This statement starts the stanza off in a negative way and contradicts the first stanza. It also
introduces a man and money. This hints that men run the world of nature because of their bitter outlooks and
concentration on money, which shows the bad effects of capitalism. "Snuffing pathetically" ("The Bull Calf" line
12). This shows a major contrast from the first stanza, which continues more through the poem.

My gaze slipped off his hat toward the empty sky That circled over the black knot of men,
Over us and the calf waiting for the first blow. ("The Bull Calf" line 14-16).
This puts the event into perspective. While it is only a small event, it is related to the whole world that shows its
importance. "Struck," ("The Bull Calf" line 17). This is the first line in the third stanza, it is only one word, but is
very effective and gets the point across. The three periods in a row shows something is expected to happen it is
going to be important but one does not know weather it is going to be good or bad. "Darkening eyes" this is
imagery. Imagery emphasizes the effect of the idea, line, or stanza that helps the reader understands the poem.
"Of his frightened look growing smaller and smaller
Till we were only the ponderous mallet" ("The Bull Calf" line 22 & 23). This shows the unimportance of humans
once this happens. The humans are degraded down to a stick. This makes sense because the calf doesn't care about
the humans, only about the weapon that did this to him. "Like a block of wood." ("The Bull Calf" line 26). This is a
simile it helps to show the harsh treatment by relating it to something else.
"It made a wet sound, a sepulchral gurgle,
As the warm sides bulged and flattened." ("The Bull Calf" line 30 & 31). Here the narrator uses more imagery to
emphasize the horrible death of the calf. The narrator uses the word "asleep" it shows that the animal is peaceful
now and is in a comfortable position. "Bereft of pride and so beautiful now," ("The Bull Calf" line 34). The calf is
beautiful in death, which shows the inner beauty of the calf. "Bereft of pride" brings the reader back to the beginning
of the poem but there is no pride any more. "I turned and away and wept." ("The Bull Calf" line 36). This is the
narrator's emotion. This is important since it refers to himself, because it shows that he is upset. This one line
justifies the entire poem with the extensive imagery and harsh comparisons. They are but in they're to explain these
emotions about the events of the poem.
When reading poetry you must look for the deeper meanings in every line. If just reading over poetry one cannot get
the poem as whole. If you were not to look into the poem you would have not realized that this event happened
while the author was watching it.

Humans sometimes have the tendency to keep things that are only useful for their own personal benefit. In these two
poems, "Names of Horses • by Donald Hall and "The Bull Calf • by Irving Layton, the things that the people
would use for their benefit are animals. In "Names of Horses •, the horse is killed because of old age and weakness.
In the "The Bull Calf, • the calf is killed because no money could be profited from it on the farm. In both poems,
the animals have no purpose to the owners, which proves that humans only keep things that are going to benefit
themselves. These poems have many things in common and a few differences. One thing they have in common is
the theme of assured death and that farm animals are only useful if they help profit the owners.These poems have
many things in common, beginning with the farm life. The owners have these farms to make a living. The part that
really connects these two poems is that there is no benefit from keeping the old and restless horse in "Names of
Horses • or raising the calf in "The Bull Calf. • The result is their untimely deaths. Another thing that these two
poems have in common is their symbolic meaning. Yes, these animals were just taken out to pasture and killed, but
there's much more behind that. In "Names of Horses, • there was a sense of respect and love. The owner just
wanted to help take away the horses' pain. The symbolic meaning in "The Bull Calf • was the feeling of remorse
from the narrator. The bull calf was dead and there was nothing he could do about it.One difference in these two
poems is that the death of the horse seems more suitable. The killing of the bull calf at such a young age, just barely
after it was born seems to be a little bit more unacceptable. Another difference in these two poems is the tone.

NOTES TOWARDS A POEM THAT CAN NEVER BE WRITTEN

First, let's break this down geographically. The country that Atwood's referring to in her opening lines is Canada. It's
no Land of the Free, but it's pretty okay: after all, Atwood isn't too worried that anyone might hurt her or throw her
in jail just for writing some poem. In fact, she seems pretty sure that no one's going to pay any attention to it at all.
So, wait: maybe Canada isn't so great? Atwood is trying to say some serious stuff here; why isn't anyone listening?In
literary terms, we could say that Atwood is taking on the old-timey role of the poet-prophet here. Cute, huh?
Basically, the speaker of this poem wants to say her piece against injustice, but it's clear that she doesn't think she'll
be heard. What's interesting is that she recognizes that being ignored also means being safe—something that
outspoken women in other parts of the world don't necessarily get to feel.On the surface, this seems like a great
feminist poem. Atwood talks about violence against women, and other forms of oppression too. On top of that, it's
clear that her speaker wants to do something to help. But let's take a step back for a second and think about this
poem through the lens of postcolonial feminist theory. If we do, we'll notice a big problem.Remember how in
"Under Western Eyes," Chandra Talpade Mohanty warns Western feminists about speaking for women overseas?
Let's take a look at what Atwood's doing here. Not only is she using a poem to imagine a "poem that can never be
written," she's also implying that the poem can't be written "elsewhere" because there (wherever "there" is), the
violence and oppression is just too...well, violent and oppressive!That's a sad thought for sure, but it's also Really
Convenient for Atwood. Now she gets to write the poem that she says couldn't be written somewhere else! So on the
one hand: speaking out against injustice. Bully for her. On the other: make sure you don't speak in a way that takes
other folks' voices away from them!

Motifs

Photographs

In her poems, Atwood uses photographs to explore identity, particularly the facades women adopt to conform (at
least superficially) to society. “This is a photograph of me,” the first poem in her first collection, plays with the
conventional equation of appearance and reality. The photograph obscures, rather than reveals, the speaker’s
mysterious identity and history. Similarly, the speaker of “In the Tourist Centre in Boston” reflects on the perceived
discrepancy between photographic images of Canada and her own memories of the place. The speaker’s “private
mirage” takes precedence over the glossy colorized certainties depicted in the photographs. In the poem “Girl and
Horse, 1 9 2 8 ,” from Procedures for Underground, the speaker contemplates an old photograph of a girl, “someone
I never knew,” and tries to imagine what the girl was thinking. In the end of the poem, the speaker turns over the
photograph, whereupon the girl waves and rides “out of sight.” Thus photographs are no longer static recorders of a
fixed history in which “nothing can change, grow older.” Instead, photographs represent the truths a viewer chooses
to invent. More than a decade later, in “Postcards,” Atwood describes a photograph only to comment on its inability
to capture the realities of a place.

Symbols

The Snake

Traditionally a symbol of sexuality and wisdom, the figure of the snake pervades much of Atwood’s work. In the
section of Interlunardedicated exclusively to variations on the appearance of the snake, Atwood offers a bold reason
for this recurring interest: “O snake,” she says in the first line of “Psalm to Snake,” “you are an argument / for
poetry.” To Atwood, this slithering beast symbolizes the unseen forces driving the universe. According to the poem
“Bad Mouth,” a snake is also “fanged,” carnivorous, and prone to “gorge on blood,” characteristics much in keeping
with the violent worldview presented in much of Atwood’s poetry.In “Eating Snake,” the speaker rejects the
common comparison of the snake to the phallus (insisting on “two differences: / snake tastes like chicken, and who
ever credited the prick with wisdom?”). In “She,” the poet dismisses the easy analogies (a whip, a rope, the phallus)
and describes the snake as a far more complicated creature “with nothing in it but blood.” Atwood uses the
masculine pronoun to describe this bloodthirsty creature, admitting in the last line that she does so out of habit. The
poem ends with the line “It could be she,” suggesting that women are equally capable of predatory behavior. For a
poet obsessed with the individual’s capacity for self-concealment, the snake’s “gradual shedding”—its regular
trading of one skin for another—offers an exceptionally rich metaphor for human transformations, undertaken for
survival or amusement.

The Moon

Of the many symbols Atwood takes from the natural world, the moon is among the most malleable. Traditionally
invoked as a female goddess, the moon offers a vehicle for Atwood’s interest in darkness and the brief illuminations
that interrupt it. In her poetry, the moon can symbolize totality, mystery, menace, and oblivion. In “You Begin,”
from Selected Poems II: 1 9 7 6 –1 9 8 6 , a child’s mouth is compared to “an O or the moon.” In “A Red Shirt,”
from Two-Headed Poems, she describes the male desire for woman to be “bloodless / as a moon on water.” In
“Night Poem,” also from Two-Headed Poems, the moon becomes a “beige moon damp as a mushroom.” In
“Mushrooms,” from True Stories, Atwood echoes this image in her description of mushrooms as “poisonous moons,
pale yellow.” In the title poem from this collection, the ever-elusive nature of “truth” can only be approximated in
list form, as “a moon, crumpled papers, a coin.” In “Landcrab I,” she speaks of “that dance / you do for the
moon.”The moon sees all but never comments. It is the silent, inscrutable, and probably an indifferent observer of
the human comedy unfolding below. Atwood emphasizes this point in “Landcrab II,” in which the subject identifies
itself as a “category, a noun / in a language not human, / infra-red in moonlight / a tidal wave in air.” In “Last Day,”
Atwood writes, “Everything / leans into the pulpy moon,” suggesting the tug of this “pulpy,” murky object just
beyond human reach. To Atwood, the moon symbolizes several layers of contradictions, the spirit of multiplicity
and ambiguity that animates all her poetry. It is visible but mysterious, massive but ephemeral, cyclical but
unpredictable. As she puts it in “Sunset II”: “Now there’s a moon, / an irony.” The moon can be anything the viewer
decides it is, as in “Against Still Life,” when an “orange in the middle of the table” is transformed into, among other
items, “an orange moon.” The moon is the proof of human subjectivity, “the reason for poetry.”

The Female Body

The female body represents servitude and entrapment, victimization and imprisonment—otherness as defined by a
men. It is a battlefield of violence, as in the section “Torture” from “Notes Towards A Poem That Can Never Be
Written,” from True Stories, in which the speaker describes a woman’s body as a “mute symbol” of grotesque
weakness: “they sewed her face / shut, closed her mouth / to the size of a straw, / and put her back on the streets.” In
another poem in this series, “A Woman’s Issue,” a young girl is “made to sing while they scrape the flesh / from
between her legs, then tie her thighs / till she scabs over and is called healed.” The area between a woman’s legs is
“enemy territory”; when violated, it is proof of man’s “uneasy power.” A woman’s body is the theater on which
men’s brutal rituals are enacted, as they vie for supremacy.The female body also demonstrates the unbreakable
connection between the Earth and women, proof of a woman’s vulnerability and mortality. In “You Begin,” the
speaker emphatically identifies the child’s hand to teach her that her body is ultimately her own. “Five Poems for
Grandmothers” observes, sons “branch out, but / one woman leads to another.” While the female body can represent
continuity, sensual pleasure, and self-reliance, in most of Atwood’s work, there is some disjunction between
substance and spirit, between flesh and essence. In “The Woman Makes Peace With Her Faulty Heart,” the narrator
characterizes a woman’s relationship to her body as an “uneasy truce, / and honor between criminals.”

FRAMED

Reprinted from Claire Harris's Traveling to Find a Remedy (1986) with the permission of the author and the
publisher, Fiddlehead Poetry Books and Goose Lane Editions, Ltd.Claire Harris, a native of Trinidad, is a resident
of Calgary, Canada, where she has taught high school English and drama. She began her writing and publishing
career in 1975, during a leave of absence in Nigeria. A winner of The Writer's Guild of Alberta Award, she has also
received the Alberta Culture Poetry Prize for her book of poetry, Traveling to Find a Remedy and the
Commonwealth Award for the Americas region for her book Fables from the Women's Quarters. Her other books
include Translation into Fiction, The Conception of Winter, Drawing Down a Daughter, and Dipped in Shadow.
. Claire Harris, poet (born 13 June 1937 in Port -of-Spain, Trinidad). Harris has written numerous

collections of poetry since her first volume, Fables from the Women’s Quarters, was published in

1984. Her work has garnered national and international acclaim — she was nominated for the

Governor General’s Award for Poetry, Fables won the Commonwealth Award for Poetry. Harris’

poetry often voices the psychological struggles experienced by women of color who f ace

oppression and violence.

Early Life and Career

Harris earned a BA from University College, Dublin, and a post-graduate diploma from the University of the West

Indies, Jamaica. After emigrating to Canada in 1966, she taught high school English. A decade later, she began to

publish poetry . Using such verse techniques as contrasting prose and poetry on the page, or alternating journalistic

prose with the voice of prophecy, Harris dramatizes and makes public the psychological struggles experienced by

women of colour who face oppression. This approach makes her poetic mission unique among Black poets writing

in Canada today.

Style and Themes

Although Harris deals with such themes as mortality and female complicity in women's victimhood, she recurs often

to the problem of Black women's search for identity and cultural belonging in Western culture. In "Nude on a Pale

Staircase" (Fables from the Women's Quarters, 1984), she depicts the isolation and rising anger of an East Indian

wife whose marriage to an Italian-Canadian man has degenerated into mere habit. The husband's contemptuous

remark about his wife's home culture triggers in her a sudden and devastating awareness of her own otherness, to

which she responds wordlessly by dropping the breakfast dishes on the floor. She cradles a broken cup handle as if it

were precious, creating an image of her resigned acceptance of her broken sense of identity. However, in Travelling

to Find a Remedy (1986), the speaker of the title poem takes an opposite route from that of the Indian wife. Instead

of journeying away from her home, this speaker deliberately travels toward her ancestral Africa. Thinking she can

"throw / [her] heart across alien centuries / and slavery," she discovers that she "was not born to it." Marriage to an

African man will not be the solution to the problem of cultural belonging. Nor can Africa's culture-ways survive

unchanged in North America: of an African mask brought home to Calgary, the poet remarks, "you are / left a

fiction..." (Translation Into Fiction, 1984).

In Drawing down a Daughter (1992) and She (2000), two novellas of mixed prose and poetry, Harris adds a new

urgency to the search for a cultural home. The speakers confront the demands placed upon mothers to transmit a

cultural past to a child. In Drawing Down a Daughter, the pregnant speaker wants to remain in her adoptive Canada,
while her Canadian-born husband wants their child to be brought up in Trinidad (see Caribbean People). The

conflict remains unresolved. The speaker of She, a victim of multiple personality disorder, becomes a metaphor for

the cultural absences and confusions faced by women of colour. The speaker and her alter personalities, which

represent voices ranging from British English to Trinidadian Creole, can only resolve their conflicts by means of

mutual awareness and medical assistance. In both of these works, the cultural identity the speakers want to

communicate to children can only be achieved by recreating the self through what Harris speaks of, in "And

So...Home," as "conjuring."Claire Harris has won numerous awards for her poetry, including the Commonwealth

Awardfor Poetry for the Americas Region (1985), the Writers' Guild of Alberta Award for poetry (1987), the

Alberta Culture poetry prize (1988), and the Alberta Culture Special Award (1990).

MELBOURNE

Chris Wallace-Crabbe was born in 1934. His father was a journalist and his mother a pianist, and he describes his
family tradition as 'military-bohemian Scots'. After leaving school he worked as cadet metallurgist at the Royal
Mint, Melbourne, then, at diverse jobs, including six months in the RAAF, before attending the University of
Melbourne. Graduating in English and philosophy, he became Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative
Writing, Melbourne University, from1961 to 1963; Over the next decades he became Reader in English, and then
held a Personal Chair from 1988. He was Harkness Fellow at Yale University, 1965-67, Professor of Australian
Studies at Harvard, 1987-8, and Visiting Professor at the University of Venice, 1973 and 2005. He has given many
readings of his poetry around the world.Wallace-Crabbe is an important figure in Australian poetry, as a poet, a
critic and as an advocate for poetry. Since his first book, The Music of Division, appeared in 1959, he has published
more than twenty two volumes. In the eighties he began to publish with OUP, with The Amorous Cannibal.
Wallace-Crabbe's poetry ranges from the syllogistic poems of his earlier career to the more public and political
poems of his later career. Frequently set in Melbourne, the poems explore the dissolution of modern life and an
ongoing search for joy that he believes all humans experience. The critic Ron Sharp says of Wallace-
Crabbe's Telling a Hawk from a Handsaw: 'This sometimes comic, sometimes irreverent streak in Wallace-Crabbe is
one of the great spurs to his imagination, and it extends to his unending delight in the antic accidents and felicities of
the language itself." Overall his work offers a wry urbanity, 'playing with shifts of register, from the pungent
demotic to sometimes noble speech', as Michael Sharkey observes, as well as a finely tuned sense of 'the absurdity
of politics, deluded leaders and idealists, and the saving grace of comedy".Chris Wallace-Crabbe chairs Australian
Poetry Limited in The Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, Victoria. Since his retirement he has been Professor Emeritus in
The Australian Centre, University of Melbourne. He has written a novel, published literary criticism, essays and
artists' books in collaboration with the painter Bruno Levi, and edited many anthologies of essays and poetry.This
recording was made in Melbourne in January 2009 by Carol Jenkins for River Road Press, showing Wallace-Crabbe
in fine form with a clear and nuanced reading that gives the poems room to do their work.In 2011, Chris Wallace-
Crabbe was made a Member of the Order of Australia for service to the arts as as a leading poet, critic and educator,
and as an ambassador and advocate for the humanities both nationally and internationally, and through support for
emerging writers.
Chris Wallace-Crabbe's Favourite Poetry Sayings:
"Poetry matters, because it distils its native language for the attention of the true reader, one who resembles Sir
Walter Raleigh's 'judicious sharp spectator'" - Chris Wallace-Crabbe
"Poetry will not teach us how to live well, but it will incite in us the wish to." - David Constantine
"Poetry is chiefly a matter of gists and piths." - Ezra Pound

WOMAN TO MAN
 Judith Wright was a prolific Australian poet, critic, and short-story writer, who published more than 50 books.
Wright was also an uncompromising environmentalist and social activist campaigning for Aboriginal land rights.
She believed that the poet should be concerned with national and social problems. She died at the age of 85. The
poem Woman to Man is about the fear of a woman in giving birth to a child. It clearly exhibits the psyche or the
fear of a pregnant woman. The poem opens with the description of the child, a foetus. The woman, the mother, is
anxious about the child. She describes the child as an eyeless labourer that grows inside the darkness of her womb.
She holds the child in her womb. The foetus is said to be shapeless and selfless. Childbirth is compared with the
resurrection day. The child is safe, silent and swift inside her womb. It is enthusiastically expecting to see the world
or the light outside its mother’s womb.The, according to the mother, “is no child with a child’s face”. This might
refer to the identity crisis of aborigines in Australia or could plainly mean that the mother is unaware of the gender
of the foetus. They, the woman and her husband, has not yet named the child. They both exist with the hope that
the child would bring into their lives. They call the child as their and hunter and their chase. The child, to be born,
would become the third member of their family.The child is the product of the strength of the man and the flesh of
her breast. The child is said to be the crystal of their eyes, meaning their hope and faith of their posterity or future.
The child is compared with an intricate rose. The child gives them paradoxical notions of their life in future. The
child is considered as the question and answer and as the maker and the made. Being optimistic about the child’s
future the poem culminates or concludes with a note of fear. The mother shudders at the thought of the child’s head
butting out of her womb, to see the light reflected by the blade. This threat metaphorically informs us about the
mother’s fear as an aborigine, who suffers the worldly life once been experienced to reality. I was slightly confused
when I read this poem at first, but it became apparent from the rich metaphors, that it was about the sexual relation
between the woman and man. It is also about conception - or rather the potential of creating a child from this sexual
act - told from the woman's point of view.Judith Wright was very bold in writing such a poem since it was published
in 1949, when such issues weren't discussed in the public, but as a well regarded poet, she had achieved a good
reputation for expressing herself, and therefore could write a subjective poem about this issue.The main idea of this
poem, is based upon female sexuality and sensuality, and that sex is symbolic of life, or death if pregnancy fails.The
title seems to mean now, "Woman to Man" as if the woman is offering herself to the Man, offering her body to
create a child, through the act of sex. It also means that the woman has something to give to the man, not only the
pleasure, but through blood and pain, a child.The language compliments the mood of this poem, as it varies from a
sad and melancholy cry, to a voice of hope, all in a constant confident feel, and by this, the poet's reflections and
contemplation's are communicated successfully to us, making us feel in the same way she has felt.The first stanza
begins with a bold and confident entry describing in a simple way the sexual relation between the man and the
woman; or better said; Woman to Man. The 'seed' which the woman holds - has the potential of becoming a child.
The image of the day of birth as a 'resurrection day' is important in this respect for, just as the resurrection of Christ
defeated death, so too, does each individual conception.
The author of this text is the Australian poet Judith Wright. The title of this text is Woman To Man. The form of this
text is a poem. The visual appearance of the text on the page indicates to us that it is a poem: it is positioned in the
centre of the page and it is made up of uniform sections, or stanzas. The form is more constrained than that of a
novel, which runs freely across the page from left to right. The text also utilises formal poetic features, such as:
multiple stanzas containing equal numbers of lines ;line breaks between stanzas ;and a regular number of beats per
line. The knowledge that Judith Wright is a well-known poet adds to the evidence that this is a poem. This text has
more than one intended audience. The primary audience is Judith Wright's husband. It is a well-known fact (in
literary circles) that Wright addressed this poem to her husband when she was pregnant with one of their children.
The intimate nature of this exchange between Wright and her husband is evident in her use of personal pronouns: "
you and I have known it well" ;" your arm " ;" my breast ". The second intended audience is every woman and every
man, as an expression of something from every woman to every man. The title Woman To Man makes the poem
universal, more than just a poem from Judith Wright to her husband. There are no names given to the woman and
the man within the world of the poem. The experience of 'the Woman' becomes the experience of 'every woman'.
The third audience for this text is the literati the world of literature. Judith Wright is a well-known Australian poet
;this poem has been published many times ;this poem obviously did not stay between Wright and her husband. The
poem displays the poet's highly technical and sophisticated control over language: this skill has been analysed in
essays and studied in schools for years. The poem requires an intelligent and educated audience to appreciate its
poetic proficiency. Wright's purpose in writing this text was to articulate her feelings about her unborn child and its
creation. On one level this was an announcement to her husband about the procreative act: " the third who lay in our
embrace" and the mystery of the operations of life, " silent, swift and deep from sight ". She reveals, to her husband,
her emotions about the child they have created, as it grows inside her. However, Wright has also taken a feminist
stance by speaking about conception, pregnancy and childbirth in an era when women did not speak of such things
publicly. Her purpose is not only to reveal her emotions to her husband, but to reveal her emotions to the world. We
need to consider the social context of the poem. Woman To Man was written in 1949. During the post-war years
Australia was experiencing a period of affluence. Men were enjoying their role as 'breadwinner' and the 'traditional'
place for women was in the home with the children. While Wright, on one level, is tenderly revealing her emotions
about her 'yet to be born' child she is also taking a feminist stance. She is being up front and confrontational by
speaking so openly about the act of sexual intercourse, conception, pregnancy and birth. This was something that
was 'not done' in 1949. The physical and emotional context of pregnancy and its effect on Wright also needs to be
considered. Wright was heavily pregnant at the time of writing the poem. Her body had undergone many physical
changes and she was on the verge of giving birth. The physical experience of the child in her womb (" the blind head
butting in the dark ") and the emotional experience of pregnancy would have been a major part of her life during the
time in which she wrote Woman To Man. I have never experienced pregnancy. The context of my reading of the
poem cannot include first-hand knowledge of pregnancy: my reading of this text is shaped by the knowledge I have
gleaned from textbooks, school lectures and conversations with pregnant friends. The closest I have been to
experiencing the intense emotions expressed by Wright is through my experience of my mother's pregnancy with my
younger sister. However, I believe that the physical side of pregnancy cannot be truly appreciated unless you have
experienced it yourself. I can only imagine the physical and emotional changes that accompany pregnancy. While I
admire the feeling and richness of Wright's poem, I have yet to truly connect with it. It is the last line, "O hold me,
for I am afraid" that I find myself relating to, but not for the same reasons as Wright. Wright feels vulnerable and in
need of.I was slightly confused when I read this poem at first, but it became apparent from the rich metaphors, that it
was about the sexual relation between the woman and man. It is also about conception - or rather the potential of
creating a child from this sexual act - told from the woman's point of view.
Judith Wright was very bold in writing such a poem since it was published in 1949, when such issues weren't
discussed in the public, but as a well-regarded poet, she had achieved a good reputation for expressing herself, and
therefore could write a subjective poem about this issue.
The main idea of this poem, is based upon female sexuality and sensuality, and that sex is symbolic of life, or death
if pregnancy fails. The title seems to mean now, "Woman to Man" as if the woman is offering herself to the Man,
offering her body to create a child, through the act of sex. It also means that the woman has something to give to the
man, not only the pleasure, but through blood and pain, a child.
The language compliments the mood...

... middle of paper ...

...s the proud yet fearful instrument of this process.

The poem has a rhythmic pattern that compliments the metaphors and paradoxes. The stanzas begin and end,
individually, for the first and last lines rhyme, which creates a feeling of ?wholleness? to each stanza, quite
appropriate to the act of creating or bearing a child.
It is like a song, a pentameter that begins bold, but ends in a quiet tone, making its reader reflect, not only about the
ending, but the entire poem as a serious issue, that fornication is, or can be, a holy act.

The central ideas of the poem Women To Man and Eve To Her Daughters by Judith Wright are a women's feelings
about the birth of her child and Man's obsession with technology and women's submissiveness. The poet uses listing,
imagery, metaphor, alliteration and biblical allusion to convey the meaning of the poem.In Women To Man, the
persona is contemplating the birth of her baby. The persona is excited about the impending birth. She is amazed at
the growth of the baby. She describes the layers of the baby's body as the "intricate and folded rose. • She describes
the creation of the baby as "our hunter and our chase. • At the same time the women fears the birth. She says "the
blaze of light along the blade • when thinking about the moment of birth. At the end of the poem she simply but
powerfully states that "I am afraid •.Judith Wright as well uses metaphor skilfully in Women To Man. Many of her
metaphors are complex and powerful. The persona again describes her baby as "our hunter and our chase • giving
the meaning of the blind force lovemaking, which has driven the two lovers together. However at the same time they
"chase • the goal of reproduction. The striking metaphor "This is the blood's wild tree that grows the intricate and
folded rose • suggest the image of the body of the baby as the word "tree • suggests the tree of life, while "wild •
suggests the passion that created the child.Judith Wright also uses the poetic technique of alliteration in Women To
Man. The persona describes the bearing of the child as "The selfless, shapeless seed I hold •. The poem starts gentle
and soft until she says " ¦ the blind head butting at the dark.

Social issues are displayed in many poets’ work and their beliefs on these issues are exposed intentionally through
the use of various techniques. Judith Wright conveyed her view on social issues in most of her poems, and built her
argument by using a variety of poetic techniques which position the reader to comprehend her beliefs. By
developing a socially critical perspective through her poems, Wright’s view of the world’s social issues is presented
to the reader in a way that forces them to ponder on the aspects of society mentioned. “Woman to Man” and
“Remittance Man” are two poems through which Wrights beliefs on pregnancy, the relationship between man and
wife, and social dissatisfaction due to context are examined. Poetic techniques or devices such as rhythm, figurative
language and rhyme all position the reader not only to be aware of the social issue, but also to understand it, often
through Wright’s perspective. “Woman to Man” is an example of a poem which examines a social issue through
poetic techniques, based on Wright’s context at the time.“Woman to Man” by Judith Wright expresses a woman’s
thoughts on pregnancy and was written when Wright herself was pregnant. Due to this fact, one can assume that the
poem explores Judith Wright’s thoughts on pregnancy as she speaks to her husband through the poem, expressing
her feelings through various poetic techniques. The poem displays an unusual strength for moving the reader
through the emotional tension, the development of ideas and the structure as this delicate topic is handled with
precaution and disciplined craftsmanship. The steady progression of ideas seen in the well laid out structure causes a
more dramatic reading on a subject which Wright felt so strongly about.The poem “Woman to Man” has evidently
been written with confidence and emotional sincerity as Wright shows she knows what she wants to say. One can
see this through the easy balance of the lines, even in line three which ends, or is maintained with a dash. This is
meant to be a silence for the reader to ponder on what has just been mentioned. Again, the balance is maintained in
the last line by a comma, which also indicates silence and thus stresses the four last words “for I am afraid”. These
words portray strong feeling of anxiety and mirror Wrights feelings about her pregnancy at the time. The poem
identifies with her emotions and the issue of pregnancy affecting marriage not only through structure, but also
through speed and rhythm.Wright reinforces her feelings about her pregnancy and her belief that pregnancy is sacred
through the speed and rhythm of the poem “Woman to Man”. It also gives the reader a feeling about what is
occurring in the poem, in this case, sexual intercourse. The increasing speed and urgency of the lines suggested by
the use of short vowels, particularly in the last stanza, where the second last line can be seen as the orgasm. The
image in this line is exaggerated through the power of its series of single syllables which alternate light and heavy
stresses, combined with short vowels and plosive consonants (b, t, a), mainly in the stressed words, ‘blaze’, ‘light’
and ‘blade’. A relaxation after the climax is suggested in the last line as the vowels are longer and the consonants
softer. The ‘d’s still suggest fear in the words ‘hold’ and ‘afraid’ replacing the passion of the sexual act. Throughout
the poem, rhythm and speed create an atmosphere of beauty and excitement, all of which Wright feels during
pregnancy. The solemn tone created by the previous stresses indicates the woman’s realisation about what she is
taking on. Another technique which supports Wright’s feelings about the issue is imagery.Imagery is one of the
focal techniques used in Judith Wright’s “Woman to Man”. It creates an image in the reader’s mind supporting the
emotion Wright felt when she wrote the poem. There are three kinds of imagery in the poem; abstract imagery,
figurative imagery and literal imagery. “The eyeless labourer in the night” (line 1) is not meant to be taken literally,
but is suggesting a living but less than human entity which is identified only through the action which is its most
important attribute. “The blood’s wild tree” (line 14) is another abstract image which suggests the consequences of
the wilderness that is ‘in the blood’ when a person is sexually aroused. Another assumption which can be made from
this is that like a tree rooted in the dark earth, the woman’s form provides a vehicle for the continuing chain of life.
These abstract images withhold Wright’s support for the woman’s role in continuing life and her feelings about
pregnancy. Figurative imagery in “the intricate and folded rose” shows the parallel between an unfolding rosebud
and an unfolding personality in the child, but also in the mother and father as they take on parenthood. Wright also
uses images metaphorically. The curve of the woman’s breast and the strength of the man’s arm are used to suggest
the feminine and masculine essentials involved in conception. All of these images allow the reader to comprehend
the beauty of conception and the way Wright feels about this. She shows her obvious joy and admiration for the
concept through the images she creates. Wright’s joy and appreciation of the birth cycle, from conception is shown
through the poetic conventions in the poem “woman to man”. She upholds her social standing, suggesting that she is
against abortion and values marriage and the beauty of its outcomes. Through structure, speed and rhythm and
imagery, the reader can gain an understanding of Wright’s emotions at the time and can also see her view of
pregnancy as being sacred. Another poem which validates the conjecture that poetic techniques are used to construct
a socially critical perspective is “remittance man”, also by Judith Wright.Throughout the poem “Remittance Man”,
by Judith Wright, a socially critical point of view is maintained through poetic techniques evident in the poem.
Wright’s love for the Australian lifestyle as opposed to a rushed English lifestyle is evident in a variety of ways. We
also see her dissatisfaction with the genteel life of the time. An assumption can be made that the man was sent away
from a country that he didn’t like anyway, “accepted his pittance with an easy air” (line2). The poem uses a binary
opposition to view the Australian lifestyle as much more favourable over the English lifestyle. This can be noticed
through the wording Wright uses to describe each place. Figurative language is often used in the poem to create a
mood or set a tone to uphold the scene being described.Figurative language plays a major role in the comparison of
the country lifestyle in Australia as opposed to the lifestyle the remittance man once had. Symbolism is used in the
fourth line; “pheasant-shooting” is a literal detail which is used symbolically to show the exclusive life of privilege
led by land owners. “The aunts in the close” (line 4) symbolises the way women were treated back then, and shows
women imprisoned in gentility. The society of the time was very male dominated, as shown through other symbols
in the poem. “Rainy elms seen through the nursery window” (line 19) and “the formal roses” (line 25) can also be
seen to signify the restrictive nature of the genteel life. Alliteration in stanza three creates a sound in the reader’s
mind of swinging trees, suggesting a peaceful and relaxing place, “sparse swinging shadow of trees” (line 10). This
in reinforced by “blue blowing smoke” (line 8) where the easy flowing ‘bl’ sound shows an effortlessness sense of
freedom in the Australian lifestyle. Judith Wright shows her favourable attitude toward Australia over England in
this poem through the techniques mentioned, and reinforces this when the reader gains an overall satisfaction with
the Australian lifestyle.“Remittance Man” is written and shows Wright’s admiration for the Australian country
through poetic techniques, but also shows her dissatisfaction for the city lifestyle. The binary opposition between
Australia and England can be indicating Wright’s obvious love for her country, no matter what it’s been through.
Gentility in the world in the time of the poem was obviously looked down upon, but is gratified by the description of
Wright’s cherished country. Wright uses poetic devices in her work to show and make an impact on the reader about
her social beliefs. She is critical about many social issues, such as patriotism, pregnancy and marriage in the poems
“Woman to Man” and “Remittance Man”. The reader is positioned in these poems to react and comprehend
Wright’s beliefs through poetic techniques including figurative language, structure, rhythm and rhyme. Wright’s
critical perspective is evident in most of her poems, as is her love for her country and for life itself, which can be
admired by readers and poets to this day.

TOWARDS DECOLONISING AUSTRALIA

Contains a literary discussion on the possibilities of breaking from national traditions and mythological histories in
writing. It was a commonplace that the form of the novel remained tied to its origin in the early stage of imperialism.
Even in independent postcolonial states, the novel continues to confine possibility within the same colonial and
capitalist hierarchies of freedom and order. Contradicting this tendency, this paper will examine three options used
by settler Australian novelists to escape the dominance of metropolitan order: the family chronicle takes possession
of the colonial place but can only reproduce the imperial patterns within the new colonial space; the novel of
migration frees its characters from this dominance but jeopardizes their possession of space; and finally, the novel of
resistance reclaims its space by locating the place in the past. These forms will be examined in the work of Miles
Franklin, Frank Hardy, Adib Khan, Janet Turner Hospital, Liam Davison and Rodney Hall. Furthermore, the paper
suggests that Australia can become postcolonial only by coming to terms with the rewriting of national history from
the perspective of the Aboriginal peoples whose displacement and marginalization provided the conditions for
colonialism.

John McLaren (public servant)

Sir John Gilbert McLaren CMG (15 October 1871 – 27 July 1958) was a senior Australian public servant. He was
a commissioner of the Public Service Board, Secretary of the Prime Minister's Department and served an
appointment as official secretary, High Commissioner's Office in London.

Life and career[edit]

John McLaren was born in Parramatta on 15 October 1871. [1] He was educated at Sydney Boys High School.[2]
In 1901, McLaren joined the Commonwealth Public Service in the Postmaster-General's Department.[2]
Between 1921 and June 1928, McLaren was Secretary of the Department of Home and Territories.[2]
In June 1928, McLaren was promoted to the Public Service Board as second member. [3] He departed his Board
position in December 1928, to take on the role of Secretary of the Prime Minister's Department.[4]
McLaren died in Strathfield on 27 July 1958. [1]

THE ELEPHANT WHO WOULD BE A POET

Rienzi Crusz (born 17 October 1925) is a Canadian poet born in Galle, Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). At the age of 40, in
1965, Crusz immigrated to Toronto, Canada, and soon after began publishing poetry. Though his poetry deals with a
wide variety of human experience, Crusz is best known for his poetry that illuminates his experience of immigration,
migrancy and the alienation of exile.[1]As a young child Crusz's family moved to Colombo, where he attended high
school at St. Joseph's and St. Peter's colleges. Crusz's education was in English, and he was exposed to much of the
canon of Western literature including Shakespeare, Milton, and Dylan Thomas (to whom he is sometimes
compared), which would later influence his writing. Nonetheless, his poetry cites Sri Lanka as a place of memory
and longing, Buddhism in "Karma" and other poems, the sounds of the rabana drum and classical Sri Lankan dance,
though as he said in a 2014 interview that his work is "not a travel book". His Catholicupbringing would also
heavily influence his poetry especially "Gambolling with the Divine". [1]Crusz received a Bachelor of Arts in history
at the University of Colombo in 1948. In 1951 Crusz went to England to study library science at the School of
Librarianship and Archives at the University of London as a Colombo Plan Scholar. After returning from England
Crusz worked at the Central Bank of Ceylon as chief reference librarian until immigrating to Canada in 1965. Crusz
earned a Bachelor of Library Science at the University of Toronto after his arrival, and then attained a Master of
Arts in History at the University of Waterloo. He remained at the University of Waterloo until 1993 as a senior
reference and collections development librarian. His library work greatly influenced his non-fiction
publications.[1][2]Crusz began his literary career as a storyteller for his three children. In Sri Lanka he wrote "Bumpis,
the magic Elephant" which portrays Canada as a haven. Chelva Kanaganayakam describes this early story as
"prophetic", as it foreshadows his later experience of immigration and exile.[3]After his arrival in Canada, Crusz was
encouraged to continue writing by Irving Layton, then published his first poems in several literary magazines and
journals such as The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review and Canadian Forum.[4]Flesh and Thorn, put into print in
1974 with pen and ink drawings by Virgil Burnett, is Crusz's first published collection of poetry. Although much of
Crusz's work has been described as autobiographic, it is Flesh and Thorn that most resounds with Crusz's personal
life.Elephant and Ice, Crusz's second collection of poetry, was published in 1980 and reissued in a limited edition in
2005 of 500 numbered and signed copies. It has been most used to examine Crusz's comparisons of Canada and Sri
Lanka. Crusz's work is full of dualities, the most apparent being that of his "negotiation" of Canada and Sri Lanka
and where he stands in relation to each country. Even the title of this book is binary, with Elephant standing for Sri
Lanka and Ice for Canada.[5] The critic Arun Mukherjee writes in the essay "Songs of an Immigrant" that Crusz's
binaries show that he is divided in his loyalties and that he uses his Sri Lankan past to "scrutinize his life in
Canada".[6] As a post-colonial poet, Crusz questions both homelands, Sri Lanka and Canada, but makes little
reference to his time in England as a student.Crusz went on to publish more volumes of poetry,"Singing against the
Wind" (1985, reissued in 2005), A Time for Loving(1986), Still Close to the Raven (1989, reissued in 2008), The
Rain Doesn't Know me Anymore (1992), Beatitudes of Ice(1995; reissued in 2008) and Insurgent Rain: Selected
Poems 1974–1996 (1997) before publishing Lord of the Mountain: The Sardiel Poems (1999),"Love Where the
Nights are Green" (2007) "Enough to be Mortal Now" (2009), "Don't tell me that I'm not an elephant" (2012).Lord
of the Mountain is an anomaly among Crusz's works, a mixed genre (prose and poetry) work about the life, trial and
death of the Sri Lankan Robin Hood, Sardiel. Sardiel was a famous Sri Lankan bandit of the mid-nineteenth century
who robbed from the rich to help the poor. He was captured and hanged in 1864. Sardiel is generally celebrated in
Sri Lanka as a national hero; many stories and articles have been written about him and he is a favourite story of Sri
Lankan children[7][8]Like the popular stories told about Sardiel, Crusz initially celebrates Sardiel in Lord of the
Mountain by writing of Sardiel as the "champion of the underdog" and showing how Sardiel resented and resisted
the occupation of the colonial British. In "Obituary for the Nakoti Chettiar" where "the body of one of the richest
merchants in the city was found in a cruelly mangled state at the foot of a huge bo tree just outside a Buddhist
temple" and in "The White Arabian's Flank" where "once, twice, three times, [Sardiel's] serrated blade flashes, finds
it target" in an Arab horse trader's body,however, Crusz complicates the character of Sardiel by revealing his
immoral side as well: Crusz portrays some of Sardiel's exploits as not necessarily being for the greater good. [9] For
example, when Sardiel begins to doubt the nobility in his crimes in the poem "Which Way?", [10]the reader too has
reason to doubt Sardiel's virtue in his actions as a criminal and after capture. Crusz also emphasised Sardiel's
conversion from Buddhism to Christianity upon his capture in Lord of the Mountain. This historical fact underlines
the dichotomies in this work and asks readers to think critically about the complex motives for the adoption of
Christianity by Sri Lankans under colonial rule. In a private correspondence Crusz has described Sardiel's
conversion as "courageous".[7]Like Ondaatje's "The Collected Works of Billy the Kid", readers' sympathies are
initially attached to a bandit as protagonist, only to find them questioned later without necessarily attaching to the
antagonist.Crusz also published several non-fiction books, of note is Ralph Nader: a Bibliography, 1960–1982,
published at a time (first-edition, 1973) when Ralph Nader's views against triumphant consumerism were gaining
understanding among the public.After Crusz sent Irving Layton a few pieces when he first began writing, Layton
said about them, "The poems are very good indeed".[11] In Dark Antonyms and Paradise, the most comprehensive
book about Crusz's work to date,[when?] Chelva Kanaganayakam has shown that Crusz is legitimate in his uses of the
themes of immigration and alienation.[12] Crusz's work appears in Sinhalese and English in Sri Lanka, in translation
to French in "Ce qu'Ile dit" and in McGraw-Hill's "Constructing Meaning: Skills for Understanding Contemporary
Texts". As a Sri Lankan writer in Canada, some[who?] would compare him with Michael Ondaatje.

WALTZING MATILDA

Once a jolly swagman camped by a billabong

 Once - a single time

 jolly - gay, but not in the same sense as that understood by the young men of Darlinghurst. (US readers
subsitiute "San Francisco" or something similar in place of "Darlinghurst".)

 swagman - itinerant worker, called a swagman because of the "swag" normally carried by such persons. A
swag comprises the worldly belongings of the swagman, wrapped in a blanket and formed into a back-
pack. A swagman is also known as a "swaggie"

 camped - made camp (nothing to to do with the behaviour of the Darlinghurst set)

 billabong - oxbow lake formed when a meandering river cuts through its own course leaving a segment of
the river isolated from the main stream
Under the shade of a coolabah tree

 under - beneath. Implies that there is something above (this may be wishful thinking)

 shade - half a pair of sunglasses

 coolabah - type of tree which grows in some of Australia's wetlands

 tree - a woody thing with leaves, which gets pissed upon by dogs

And he sang as he watched and waited 'till his billy boiled

 and he - a distortion of the swagman's name (Andy)

 sang - another distortion

 watched - something the swaggie did while waiting

 waited - something the swaggie did while watching

 'till - another distortion. Not to be confused with the money receptacle found at the checkout in most stores.

 billy - a tin can with a lid, and a looped wire handle over the top. Used by denizens of the Australian
outback as a cooking utensil primarily for the boiling of water to make tea

 boiled - what happened to the water when it was heated to 100 degrees. (This effect is not so apparent in
backward countries like the US, where the water must be heated to over 200 degrees before anything
interesting happens)

You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

 You'll - a distortion

 come - no comment

 waltzing - walking; the term used by swagmen to describe their means of travel

 matilda - the name given by one particular swagman to his swag. Apparently the swaggie in question was a
Dutchman who came to Australia after his wife, Matilda, had died. He adopted the swaggie's lifestyle, and
named his swag in memory of his wife. Use of the name spread. (This is supposed to be a true story.
Really.)

Waltzing matilda, waltzing matilda

You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

And he sang as he watched and waited 'till his billy boiled

You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Down came a jumbuck to drink at the billabong

 down - opposite of up (see next line of song)

  jumbuck - a sheep, specifically a young ram

 drink - to swallow water or other liquid, to imbibe alcoholic beverages (the latter being somewhat unlikely
behaviour for a sheep, so water is assumed - this assumption may not be correct however, since it is said "to
drink at" as opposed to "from")

Up jumped the swagman and grabbed him with glee

 up - opposite of down (see previous line of song)

 jumped - to have performed a jump or leap, or in this case probably just standing up briskly.

 grabbed - seized suddenly, snached

 glee - Matilda had been dead for quite some time

And he sang as he shoved that jumbuck in his tucker-bag

 shoved - pushed, stuffed, packed. Presumably after skinning and gutting

 tucker - food, hence "tucker-bag"

 bag - sack, usually made of hessian. The term also refers to a woman of similar appearance (to the hessian
bag, not the sheep.)

You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

Down came the squatter mounted on his thoroughbred

 squatter - a landholder through occupancy rather than purchase

 mounted - sitting upon (we hope this is not a reference to the Darlinghurst types mentioned at the
beginning)

 thoroughbred - a breed of horse. Not much use in the Australian bush or as a farm horse, but probably
ridden by the squatter as a symbol of wealth. A similar phenomenon may be observed in Sydney, where
one can see the odd yuppie driving his Ferrari over the Harbour Bridge in the peak-hour.

Down came the troopers, one, two, three

 trooper - outback policeman

 one, two, three - just to show that the swaggie could count

Where's that jolly jumbuck you've got in your tucker-bag

 a singularly redundant question

You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me

 waltzing - a dance performed by sheep stealers whilst suspended from a gibbet by a rope
Waltzing matilda ... (etc)

Up jumped the swagman and jumped into the billabong

 jumped(1) - (see previous definition)

 jumped(2) - in this case probably more of a misguided leap, especially when one considers the ending to
the song

You'll never take me alive said he

 alive - what the sheep isn't

Now his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong

You'll come a-waltzing matilda with me.

THE SILLY BASTARD COULDN'T SWIM !

"Waltzing Matilda" is Australia's best-known bush ballad, and has been described as the country's "unofficial
national anthem".[1]The title was Australian slang for travelling on foot (waltzing, derived from the German auf der
Walz) with one's belongings in a "matilda" (swag) slung over one's back.[2] The song narrates the story of an
itinerant worker, or "swagman", making a drink of billy tea at a bush camp and capturing a jumbuck (sheep) to eat.
When the sheep's owner, a squatter, arrives with three police officers to arrest the swagman for the theft, he commits
suicide by drowning himself in a nearby billabong (watering hole), after which his ghost haunts the site.The original
lyrics were written in 1895 by Australian poet Banjo Paterson, and were first published as sheet music in 1903.
Extensive folklore surrounds the song and the process of its creation, to the extent that it has its own museum,
the Waltzing Matilda Centre in Winton, Queensland, where Paterson wrote the lyrics.[3] In 2012, to remind
Australians of the song's significance, Winton organised the inaugural Waltzing Matilda Day to be held on 6 April,
the anniversary of its first performance.[4][5]The song was first recorded in 1926 as performed by John Collinson and
Russell Callow.[6] In 2008, this recording of "Waltzing Matilda" was added to the Sounds of Australia registry in
the National Film and Sound Archive which says that there are more recordings of "Waltzing Matilda" than any
other Australian song.[4]A number of alternative theories for the origins or meaning of "Waltzing Matilda" have been
proposed since the time it was written; however, most experts now essentially agree on the details outlined above.
Some oral stories collected during the twentieth century claimed that Paterson had merely modified a pre-existing
bush song, but there is no evidence for this. In 1905 Paterson himself published a book of bush ballads he had
collected from around Australia entitled Old Bush Songs, with nothing resembling "Waltzing Matilda" in it. Nor do
any other publications or recordings of bush ballads include anything to suggest it pre-dated Paterson. Meanwhile,
handwritten manuscripts from the time the song originated indicate the song's origins with Paterson and Christina
Macpherson, as do their own recollections and other pieces of evidence. [8]There has been speculation[13] about the
relationship "Waltzing Matilda" bears to an English song, "The Bold Fusilier" (also known as "Marching through
Rochester", referring to Rochester in Kent and the Duke of Marlborough), a song sung to the same tune and dated by
some back to the 18th century but first printed in 1900. [14] There is, however, no documentary proof that "The Bold
Fusilier" existed before 1900, and evidence suggests that this song was in fact written as a parody of "Waltzing
Matilda" by English soldiers during the Boer War where Australian soldiers are known to have sung "Waltzing
Matilda" as a theme.[8] The first verse of "The Bold Fusilier" is:

A bold fusilier came marching back through Rochester

Off from the wars in the north country,
And he sang as he marched
Through the crowded streets of Rochester,
Who'll be a soldier for Marlboro and me?
In 2008 amateur Australian historian Peter Forrest claimed that the widespread belief that Paterson had penned the
ballad as a socialist anthem, inspired by the Great Shearers' Strike, was false and a "misappropriation" by political
groups.[15]Forrest asserted that Paterson had in fact written the self-described "ditty" as part of his flirtation with
Macpherson, despite his engagement to someone else.[16] This theory was not shared by other historians like Ross
Fitzgerald, emeritus professor in history and politics at Griffith University, who argued that the defeat of the strike
in the area that Paterson was visiting only several months before the song's creation would have been in his mind,
most likely consciously but at least "unconsciously", and thus was likely to have been an inspiration for the
song.[16] Fitzgerald stated, "the two things aren't mutually exclusive" [16]—a view shared by others who, while not
denying the significance of Paterson's relationship with Macpherson, nonetheless recognise the underlying story of
the shearers' strike and Hoffmeister's death in the lyrics of the song. [8]

MY COUNTRY

My Country Poem Annotation

Initial Thoughts:
Mackellar is describing the country that she loves.
"running in your veins". This represents blood and heritage.
"Strong love of grey-blue distance" speaks for the size and space of the country

Definitions:
Coppice - A thicket of small trees or bushes
Lithe - Thin, supple, and graceful

Title:
The title 'My Country' immediately converses up images of the unique countryside and diverse oceans.

Tone and Connotations:

The poem begins with Mackellar describing another country. This is because she has portrayed it as "ordered
woods" and soft, dim skies". But then she continues and the tone becomes more of a love affair with Australia with
Mackellar saying "My love is otherwise". This brings to mind Australia's natural assets. The beauty in the abundant
and varied landscapes.

Devices:
Onomatopoeia - “drumming of an army” creates a feel that soldiers are marching to the beat of nature.
Alliteration - "lithe linanas", "flood, fire and famine". The use of alliteration helps to emphasize the characteristics
of Australian rural life.
Imagery - An example of this is "of droughts and flooding rains". This describes Australia as cruel in times of
droughts and unpredictable in the rainy season.
Personification - By using words like, "she" and "her" the poet personifies Australia. The audience gets a feel that
Australia is not just lifeless piece of land.

Form:
My Country is a rhyming poem, fourteen stanzas in length. The opening two stanzas describe the British landscape,
but this is not the country the young Dorothea Mackellar yearns for.The genre is part of bush poetry and does not
tell a story.
Context:
Dorothea Mackellar was born on 1 July 1885. She was an Australian poet and fiction writer. Mackellar was
educated at home and began writing at a very young age. Her best-known poem is My Country, written at age 19 in
1904, while homesick in England.

Overall Meaning:
This poem deals with nature descriptions about Australia. It was written in order to inform people about the beauty
and the wilderness of this country. Dorothea Mackellar’s ‘My Country’ is a poem expressing Mackellar’s deep
passion and love for her country, Australia. The whole poem’s intention seems to evoke the sense of praising for the
country and express Mackellar’s deep love for the country.

This cherished, timeless poem by Dorothea Mackellar clearly describes the Australian landscape, which is an
important part of identity. The landscape is important to Australians because of its diversity which provides a very
wide range of lifestyles and occupations, culture and history. The poet personifies Australia by using words like
"she" and "her". By doing this the reader gets a feel that Australia is not just a lifeless piece of land, but sharing the
same characteristics of a person. Just as sailors refer to their boats as “her” or “she”, because they have a deep
affection for the sea. I believe Mackellar is using the same affection when describing her love of the Australian
landscape. Feminine affection is usually stronger hence the use of “she” and “her”. In the first stanza the poet is
comparing the natural landscape of another country to that of Australia. She describes the other country (England)
as tame because it is portrayed with "ordered woods" and "soft skies". However Mackellar characterizes Australia
as wild with a vivid description of the starkness and cruel beauty of the country she loved by using words like
"ragged mountains" and "sweeping plains”. As well as the rugged mountains and plains, Australia’s landscape
boasts deserts, surf beaches, beautiful reefs and majestic forests. All of these enable us to enjoy the best of both
worlds in our own country. Mackellar is emphasizing the differences between England and Australia to highlight
the unique identity of her adopted country. Mackellar paints a picture which takes the reader on a descriptive
journey of Australia's natural environment. An example of this is shown in the line, "of droughts and flooding rains".
This describes Australia as cruel in times of droughts and unpredictable in the rainy season. Throughout this
absorbing poem Dorothea uses the poetic technique of alliteration, such as "lithe lianas", "steady and soaking," and
"flood, fire and famine." Mackellar uses this alliteration to emphasize the characteristics of Australian rural life and
to create the effect that Australia is sometimes harsh and unpredictable. Dorothea's endearing description of the
country she loved with its ragged ranges, cruel and dark landscape and sweeping vistas, captivates the reader and
engages them on a journey through her imaginative portrayal of the Australian landscape.

The love of field and coppice,

Of green and shaded lanes.
Of ordered woods and gardens
Is running in your veins,
Strong love of grey-blue distance
Brown streams and soft dim skies
I know but cannot share it,
My love is otherwise.

This brings to mind Australia’s natural assets. The beauty in the abundant and varied landscapes which feed into you
as a resident of this country.A “Strong love of grey-blue distance” speaks for the size and space of the country and
against the relative claustrophobia that smaller, more peopled countries have to deal with.She says she knows about
“brown streams and soft dim skies” but she does not experience them where she lives. This suggests that she has
been to other countries and compared them with her own. Her love is considered and well conceived but still only
reserved for the epic expanses of sky-line and dramatic colourful streams.
I love a sunburnt country,
A land of sweeping plains,
Of ragged mountain ranges,
Of droughts and flooding rains.
I love her far horizons,
I love her jewel-sea,
Her beauty and her terror –
The wide brown land for me!

This is the famous stanza. And you can see why! Her joy is infectious. The picture she paints physically moves you,
if you’re not already there.Her affection for this country has an extremety bourne in and of the land itself. She loves
the good of it: the sweeping plains, the mountains and the ‘jewel-sea’ and all the resplendent beauty there for you to
see.Her love takes in and encompasses the bad: the droughts, and floods, the terrors of living in her country, even
the expanse brownness within it. She shows a knowledge of her country and an attraction to the country, and not a
fantastic, idealised version of the same. This injects a realism that wouldn’t otherwise exist in this poem. It helps
you believe that the place she describes is real, not imagined.This stanza is why the poem is so famous and timeless.
She deftly illustrates an amazing land, a place that could live comfortably in fantasy except for the fact that it is real.

A stark white ring-barked forest

All tragic to the moon,
The sapphire-misted mountains,
The hot gold hush of noon.
Green tangle of the brushes,
Where lithe lianas coil,
And orchids deck the tree-tops
And ferns the warm dark soil.

Ms MacKellar continues, even though she does not need to. One can imagine that this is out of love because she still
has more to say. At the same time it makes you question who her audience is. It is reasonable to surmise at this stage
that she means this to be read by non-Australians as much if not more than her fellow Ozzies themselves.It does also
have an extra poignancy to it for expatriates. Especially those who have been away for years. It’s fair to suspect that
perhaps she herself misses her country. Though there is no telling evidence within the poem conveying this in any
definitive way.

Core of my heart, my country!

Her pitiless blue sky,
When sick at heart, around us,
We see the cattle die –
But then the grey clouds gather,
And we can bless again
The drumming of an army,
The steady, soaking rain.
This first line is almost a lament. “Core of my heart, my country!” You can imagine her bemoaning a wayward or
long lost child. Her declaration is filled with such love for a selfish, inconsiderate land. When she speaks of cattle
dying you can tell that she knows all about its effects and is not immune to this dismay. In the next lines she forgives
her country as nature returns in abundance. The “grey clouds gather” like legions and the rescuing army descends,
soaking life through again.

Core of my heart, my country!

Land of the Rainbow Gold,
For flood and fire and famine,
She pays us back threefold –
Over the thirsty paddocks,
Watch, after many days,
The filmy veil of greenness
That thickens as we gaze.

It is telling how she repeats this the line “Core of my heart, my country!” and identifies herself with the flood, fire
and famine as well as the golden rainbow. Even as she recognises the bad so too the good does not escape her
attention. The generosity of the land is noted as it “pays us back threefold” and it’s so clear that you can see the
plants growing.

An opal-hearted country,
A wilful, lavish land –
All you who have not loved her,
You will not understand –
Though earth holds many splendours,
Wherever I may die,
I know to what brown country
My homing thoughts will fly.

Opal is a gem. It is rich and irridescent, but it’s also a stone. So the description “opal-hearted” is apt, encompassing
both the extremeties of its goodness and the inherent challenges involved in living in and loving this land.This
experience defines a relationship between Australians and tehir land. It hones their personalities into a mould that
cannot occur in many other places. THis is why she continues to say that anyone who has not experienced this
cannot understand that even though the earth has no shortage of beauty and wonder when she dies, her last thoughts
will be headed towards her home, the “brown country.”

“My Country” is an iconic patriotic poem about Australia, written by Dorothea Mackellar (1885–1968) at the age
of 19 while homesick in the United Kingdom. After travelling through Europe extensively with her father during her
teenage years, she started writing the poem in London in 1904[1] and re-wrote it several times before her return
to Sydney. The poem was first published in The Spectator in London on 5 September 1908 under the title “Core of
My Heart”.[2] It was reprinted in many Australian newspapers, quickly becoming well known and establishing
Mackellar as a poet.Mackellar’s family owned substantial properties in the Gunnedah district of New South
Wales and a property (Torryburn) in the Paterson district of the Hunter Region. The inspiration for her poems
undoubtedly came from the time she spent on the rural properties as a child. [citation needed] The poem is believed to have
been directly inspired by witnessing the breaking of a drought when she was at Torryburn;[3] “My Country” uses
imagery to describe the land after the breaking of a long drought. Of ragged mountain ranges possibly refers to
the Mount Royal Ranges, and the Barrington Tops.To many[who?] the poem is an overtly 20dealized20ed version of
“The Australian condition”, as Mackellar’s family were of considerable fortune and social favour. The poem reflects
the 20dealized20ed and somewhat 20dealized reflection of a writer yearning to be taken back to Gunnedah.The
first stanza, lesser-known, refers to England, and the fact that the vast majority of Australians of that era were of
British birth or ancestry. The second stanza describes Australia and is amongst the best-known pieces of Australian
poetry.In an interview in 1967, Mackellar described her reasons for writing the poem.[4]Not really a special reason.
But a friend was speaking to me about England. We had both recently come back from England. And she was
talking about Australia and what it didn’t have, compared to England. And I began talking about what it did have
that England hadn’t, that you couldn’t expect to know the country to have. ‘Cause, of course, there are lots of
wonderful things, especially in the older parts, but they’re not the same, and, of course, the people who came here
first... I’m not blaming them for it. But it was so different to anything they’d known, they didn’t
understand.MacKellar’s first anthology of poems, The Closed Door, published in Australia in 1911, included the
poem. The last line of the third stanza, “And ferns the warm dark soil” was originally “And ferns the crimson soil”.
Her second anthology, The Witch Maid & Other Verses, published in 1914, included the original version. [5]A
recording of “My Country” made by the radio and TV actor Leonard Teale became so popular in the 1970s that his
reading of the first lines of the second stanza were often used to parody him.

MONEY AND FRIENDS

Money and Friends is a 1991 Australian play written by David Williamson. Mathematician Peter gets in financial
trouble because of his brother's bankruptcy. His neighbour Margaret decides to seek help from his wealthy friends
but they are reluctant to lend him money.Williamson and his wife had a beach house north of Sydney (pearl beach).
This community inspired him with the idea for the play:This small beach community I've found over the years has
tighter bondings than anything you find in the big city... I observed myself getting very affectionate to people and
very attached to people that I normally wouldn't meet in the city... We were sitting on our deck one day", he
continued, "and the talk was all of disaster, of friends, because this recession in Australia for the first time has hit the
middle class, as well as the working class. There were a lot of professional people in Australia in 1990, when this
play was set, suddenly finding themselves out of jobs. And I thought, 'What would happen to this little tribe if its
most loved member suddenly had a personal financial disaster? Would anyone come to their aid?' And I started
asking myself the question: 'If one of my friends suddenly was devastated through no fault of their own, would I
write the check out?' And I wasn't sure I would.[2]Williamson has long felt that Australian theatre critics were hostile
to his work. Prior to the opening of this play, he faxed five critics asking for a fair go. Williamson later says this was
"ill-judged. To try to influence critics' opinion before the play is not something you should do and I wouldn't do it if
I had my time over again".[3]The play was enormously successful, touring Australia for a year, and is frequently
revived.The play was also performed in the US directed by Michael Blakemore.[4]Fellow Australian
playwright Louis Nowra said he never understood Williamson's popularity with audiences until he saw a production
of Money and Friends.I watched an audience laughing with recognition as the story unfolded and it occurred to me
that Williamson was probably one of the few Australian playwrights who didn’t talk down to or at his audiences. He
was one of them and he and the audience were engaged in a conversation as equals. His work was one gigantic
affirmation of their lives and ideas. He didn’t undermine their beliefs, in fact, he corroborated them. One could say
that, for his audiences, familiarity bred contentment.[5]No movie has been made of the play although Williamson
thought it "would work well on film; I can say that because I’ve seen the Polish version, which they filmed very
effectively as a television movie.
Peter, a professor of pure mathematics, weekends at Crystal Inlet as do most of his friends: Conrad (a star television
reporter) and his wife Jaquie; Stephen (a surgeon) and his wife Penny; Alex (a mega-lawyer) and his wife Vicki; and
Margaret, a history professor, Peter's closest friend. Peter and Margaret are the exceptions to wealth and marriage-
his wife passed away and her husband left her for a younger woman. As this weekend begins, Margaret is a little
more bitter than usual and Peter is a little more accommodating as they've both got something bothering them.
During drinks one evening, Margaret, fed up with the "tribe," gets a little too nasty, ending the evening on a sour
note. Margaret's honesty prompts Peter to tell her that he's about to lose everything unless he can come with $40,000
to cover a failed loan. She insists he tell everyone and ask for their help, but he refuses and makes her promise not
reveal anything. the weekend progresses, and taking Margaret's lead, Peter attempts some honesty, starting with her.
He tells Margaret to stop picking up younger men, and then goes on to inform his other friends what he really thinks,
leaving them stunned. Initially, except Margaret, they never want to see him again, but soon realize that what Peter
did was actually good for them. Realizing that Peter is really their best friend, Alex and Vicki plan a surprise party
in his honor. In light of these plans Margaret can't keep quiet and spills the story of Peter's financial trouble,
suggesting they should loan him $40,000. Despite their wealth, however, they'd rather die than part with any of their
money, even to help their friend. In the end, all are forced to make decisions regarding Peter's debt, and as money
initially tore them apart, it will inevitably bring some of the friends back together again

A FINE BALANCE
After her father died when she was young, Dina Shroff was raised by her strict brother Nusswan. One night at the
cinema, she met Rustom Dalal, and after a couple weeks, the two fell in love and got married. On their third
anniversary, however, Rustom has a bicycle accident and is killed, leaving Dina alone. After Rustom's aunt teaches
Dina sewing, Dina pays her rent by being a tailor. However, her eyes begin to deteriorate, so she is forced to find
another means of income. Her friend, Zenobia, finds a border to rent out one of the rooms in Dina's flat and also
introduces Dina to Mrs. Gupta, who offers her tailoring piece work if she can employ two tailors.Originally from a
family of cobblers, Ishvar and his brother, Narayan, are sent by their father to Ashraf Chacha to become apprentice
tailors. Once they had finished their apprentiship, Narayan returns to his village, marries and starts up a successful
tailoring business. His wife gives birth to a son, Omprakesh, and when he is of age, he is sent to Ashraf to also learn
to be a tailor. During an election, Narayan, being of a lower caste, decides that he would like to have his own vote
rather than having the upper caste members vote for him. For holding this opinion, he is tortured and killed, and his
family burnt alive in their hut. Only Ishvar and Om survived because they were with Ashraf. The pair remained at
the tailor shop until business started to slow down, and then they headed into the city to look for work. After six
months of living on Nawaz's balcony, they finally found work with Dina Dalal, who needed two tailors. On the way
to her flat, they met Maneck Kolah, who was going to be her border, and they all three immediately became friends.
Now employed, they rented a small hut from a slumlord. Unfamiliar with the conditions, they were shown the ropes
by Rajaram, who also became a good friend.Originally from the picturesque mountains, Maneck was sent to college
to study refrigeration and air conditioning by his father. After experiencing abuse at the hands of some rowdy
students at the college hostel, he told his father that he could not return to the school, so his mother found someone
who needed a boarder, and so it was arranged that Maneck would live with Dina Dalal and attend college in the
city.Meanwhile, the political landscape was changing. After winning the election, the Prime Minister was accused,
and found guilty of, electoral fraud. To avoid being thrown out of Parliament, she declared a state of emergency and
threw her accusers in jail. The press was censored and laws were passed that gave uncontrollable power to the
authorities. Compulsory sterilisation was put in place and beautification laws saw slums flattened and beggars taken
off the streets.The tailors began working with Dina Dalal, who was initially a strict employer. They had their tea
down at the Vishram Vegetarian Restaurant, where they quickly became regulars. Once Maneck moved in, he also
joined the tailors for their tea at the Vishram and the three quickly became good friends. One day before they had
left for work, a fleet of buses assembled outside their colony. They were all forced onto the buses and taken to a big
meeting where the Prime Minister was speaking. While Dina was angry that they hadn't shown up for work that day,
she was glad they got back safely after the meeting.After finishing up another day at work, the tailors returned home
to find their colony being demolished--under the laws of the Emergency order, slums such as theirs were illegal.
They gathered what belongings they could and slept on the railway station for the night. The next day, they made an
arrangement with the nightwatchman at an all-night chemist to sleep in the doorway, leaving their trunk with their
belongings at Dina's house. However, while they were sleeping, policemen and trucks raided the street, packed all
the beggars, including the tailors, into the truck and drove them to an irrigation project, where they were told they
would work for food and board. On the way there, the tailors became friendly with a beggar named Shankar, who
had lived on the street his whole life. While at the project, the tailors had a hard time adjusting to the nature of the
work and would often fall ill and injure themselves. Shankar, with no legs, was unable to work in the fields so would
wait on the patients, particularly the tailors. Their rescue came in the form of Beggarmaster, Shankar's boss, who
bought the crippled and injured back from the project manager, and as a favour to Shankar, and also for a price, the
manager also bought back the tailors,. He returned them to Dina's flat, where he would pick up his monthly fee for
having saved them.While the tailors were gone, Dina had been at a loss as to what to do, so Maneck had helped her
finish the last order that they had started. When they returned, she was so determined she would not lose them again
that she offered to allow them to stay on her veranda. As the weeks passed, they developed a comfortable routine
and even ate their daily meals together; it was almost as if they were a family. That is until one night when there was
a knock on the door, and Ibrahim, the rent collector, gave them a final notice because Dina was not supposed to be
running a business out of her home. Dina ignored this notice, and a few weeks later, Ibrahim again knocked on the
door, this time with two goondas, who destroyed most of her belongings in the flat. They had forty-eight hours to
vacate. They told this story to Beggarmaster, who came to collect his fee the next day, and who assured them that as
long as he was paying them, there would no trouble from the landlord.By this time, Ishvar was beginning to think
about finding a wife for Om, and Maneck's final exams were approaching. After making some inquiries, Ishvar
discovered that there were four potential families and organised a trip back to his village for the wedding. Dina
agreed to let Om's new wife sleep on the veranda also. A few days after the tailors had left, Beggarmaster arrived
with the bad news that Shankar, who he had recently discovered was his brother, had been killed. Dina and Maneck
went to the funeral in place of the tailors. A few days later, Maneck returned home to the mountains for the holidays,
and Dina was again alone in the flat.Back in Ishvar's village, they reunited with Ashraf, their teacher and were
saddened to hear that his wife had died. While they were shopping in the market place, they came across Thakur
Dharamsi, who was responsible for the death of their family, and unable to contain himself, Om spat at him. Later
that day, while shopping, garbage trucks and policemen swarmed the square, taking people at random. In the scuffle,
a policeman hit Ashraf in the head and left him to die while the policeman forced Ishvar and Om onto the trucks.
They were taken to a sterilisation camp just outside the city, and were forced to have the operation. While resting in
the recovery tent, the Thakur came around to inspect the premises, and seeing Om, ordered that he be castrated. The
doctors had no choice but to oblige.It took a few weeks for Om to recover from this, but once he did, his uncle
began to get ill, his legs swelling up and turning black. Sick with blood poisoning, his legs had to be amputated, and
he, like Shankar had to learn to get around on a rolling platform made for him by Ashraf's relatives. The tailors
decided to return to the city.Meanwhile, Dina had received a letter from Maneck saying that he had been offered a
job in the Gulf and would not be returning to the city. When the tailors did not return, she was forced return the
sewing machines. One day a badly injured man knocked on her door and asked for the tailors because he was a
previous acquaintance of theirs. When she said that they were not there, he asked if she knew Beggarmaster, and she
told the injured man when was the day and time that she next expected a visit from him. When Beggarmaster did not
show up, she became suspicious and received a visit from Ibrahim, who was no longer working for the landlord.
Ibrahim told her that the injured man had murdered Beggarmaster and that Dina was no longer safe from the
landlord. Ibrahim advised Dina to seek legal help. She went to the courthouse to arrange this, but eventually was
forced from her apartment by the same goondas, who moved her furniture onto the street. Dina had no choice but to
go back and live with her brother.Eight years later, Maneck returned from the Gulf for his father's funeral, arriving
in the middle of riots where Sikh's were being slaughtered. The riots had been provoked by the murder of the Prime
Minister by her Sikh guards. After cremating his father, Maneck became very depressed about what had been
happening in his country since he had left. He returned to the city to visit Dina and the tailors, and after tracking her
down at her brother's place, learned what had happened since he had left. As he left Dina's brother's house, he passed
the tailors, now beggars, in the street, but could not bring himself to talk to them. It all became too much for him,
and he ended his life by jumping in front of a train. Meanwhile, the tailors made their regular visit to Dina's kitchen,
and she fed them, hurrying them along because her sister-in-law would be home early.

A Fine Balance is the second novel by Rohinton Mistry. Set in "an unidentified city" in India, initially in 1975 and
later in 1984 during the turmoil of The Emergency.[2] The book concerns four characters from varied backgrounds –
Dina Dalal, Ishvar Darji, his nephew Omprakash Darji and the young student Maneck Kohlah – who come together
and develop a bond.

First published by McClelland and Stewart in 1995, it won the 1995 Giller Prize.[3] It was shortlisted for the Booker
Prize in 1996. It was one of the only two Canadian books selected for Oprah's Book Club, and was one of the
selected books in the 2002 edition of Canada Reads, championed by actressMegan Follows.

An acclaimed stage adaptation of the novel by the Tamasha Theatre Companywas produced at the Hampstead
Theatre in London, England in 2006 and later revived in 2007.

Plot summary[edit]

The book exposes the changes in Indian society from independence in 1947 to the Emergency called by Indian
Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Mistry was generally critical of Gandhi in the book. Gandhi, however, is never
referred to by name by any of the characters, and is instead called simply "the Prime Minister". The characters, from
diverse backgrounds, are brought together by economic forces changing India.
Prologue; Ishvar and Om's story[edit]

Ishvar and Omprakash's family is part of the Chamaar caste, who traditionally cured leather and were
considereduntouchable. In an attempt to break away from the restrictive caste system, Ishvar's father apprentices his
sons Ishvar and Narayan to a Muslim tailor, Ashraf Chacha, in a nearby town, and so they became tailors. As a
result of their skills, which are also passed on to Narayan's son Omprakash (Om), Ishvar and Om move
to Bombay to get work, by then unavailable in the town near their village because a pre-made clothing shop has
opened.A powerful upper-caste village thug, Thakur Dharamsi, later has his henchmen murder Narayan and his
family for having the temerity to ask for a ballot. Ishvar and Omprakash are the only two who escape the killing as
they lodged with Ashraf in the nearby town.At the beginning of the book, the two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash, are
on their way to the flat of widow Dina Dalal via a train. While on the train, they meet a college student named
Maneck Kohlah, who coincidentally is also on his way to the flat of Dina Dalal to be a boarder. Maneck, from a
small mountain village in northern India, moves to the city to acquire a college certificate "as a back-up" in case his
father's soft drink business is no longer able to compete after the building of a highway near their village. Maneck
and the two tailors become friends and go to Dina's flat together. Dina hires Ishvar and Om for piecework, and is
happy to let Maneck stay with her.Dina, from a traditionally wealthy Parsi family, maintains tenuous independence
from her brother by living in the flat of her deceased husband, who was a chemist.
Dina's Story[edit]

Dina grew up in a wealthy family. Her father was a medical doctor who died when she was twelve. Her mother was
withdrawn and unable to take care of Dina after her father's death, so the job fell to Nusswan, Dina's elder brother.
Nusswan was rather abusive to Dina, forcing her to do all the cooking, cleaning, and drop out of school, and hitting
her when she went against his wishes. Dina rebelled against Nusswan and his prospective suitors for her when she
came of age, and found her own husband, Rustom Dalal, a chemist, at a concert hall. Nusswan and his wife Ruby
were happy to let her marry Rustom and move to his flat.Dina and Rustom lived happily for three years until
Rustom died on their third wedding anniversary, after being hit by a car while on his bicycle. Dina became a tailor
under the guidance of Rustom's surrogate parents to avoid having to move in with Nusswan. After twenty years her
eyesight gave out from complicated embroidery and she was once again jobless. She eventually met a lady from a
company called Au Revoir Exports - Mrs Gupta - who would buy ready-made dresses in patterns. She agrees to let
Dina sew the patterns. But since Dina has very poor eyesight, she decides to hire tailors. She also decides to have a
paying guest to generate more income for her rent.The tailors rent their own sewing machines, and come to Dina's
flat each day for nearly two weeks before the first round of dresses is completed. The three get along fairly well, but
Dina and Omprakash do not see eye to eye all the time. Omprakash is angry that Dina is a middle-person; he wants
to sew for Au Revoir directly.
Maneck's story[edit]

Maneck was born in a mountain town to loving parents, Mr and Mrs Kohlah. His father owned a grocery store that
had been in the family for generations. The store sold household necessities and manufactured the locally popular
soda, Kohlah Cola. Maneck spent his days going to school, helping at the store, and going on walks with his father.
When he was in the fourth standard, Maneck was sent to boarding school to help his education, much to his dismay.
After this, his relationship with his parents deteriorates because he does not wish to be separated from them and
feels betrayed. His parents send him to a college and choose his major, refrigeration and air-conditioning.Maneck
goes to college and stays at the student hostel. Maneck becomes friends with his neighbor, Avinash, who is also the
student president and who teaches him how to get rid of vermin in his room. Avinash also teaches Maneck chess and
they play together often. Avinash later becomes involved in political events, for which Maneck has little interest,
and their friendship is no longer a priority for Avinash. They start seeing each other quite infrequently. But when the
Emergency is declared in India, political activists had to go into hiding in order to be safe, Avinash included.
Maneck, after a humiliatingragging session by fellow hostel students, has his mother arrange a different living
situation for him, and he moves in with Dina Dalal.
Effects of the Emergency[edit]

Dina and the tailors' business runs fairly smoothly for almost a year, but effects of the Emergency bother them often.
The shantytown where the tailors live is knocked down in a government "beautification" program, and the residents
are uncompensated and forced to move into the streets. Later Ishvar and Om are rounded up by a police beggar raid
and are sold to a labor camp. After two months in the camp, they bribe their way out with the help of the
Beggarmaster, a kind of pimp for beggars. Ishvar and Om are lucky and Dina decides to let them stay with her. The
tailors and Dina find trouble from the landlord, because she is not supposed to be running a business from her flat.
She pretends that Ishvar is her husband and Om their son and also gets protection from the Beggarmaster.Ishvar and
Om return to their village to find a wife for Omprakash, who is now eighteen. Maneck returns home, finished with
his first year in college (he has received a certificate but not a degree), but has stiff relations with his family and
finds that his father's business is failing due to the invasion of cheap commercial sodas. He takes a lucrative job
in Middle EasternDubai to escape the conditions.Dina being alone now, and her protector the Beggarmaster having
been murdered, has no protection from the landlord who wants to break her apartment's rent control and charge
more rent, so she is evicted. Dina is forced to move back to her brother Nusswan's house.Omprakash and Ishvar
return to their old town to find that Ashraf Chacha is an elderly man whose wife died and daughters were all married
off. He gives them a place to stay while they search for marriage prospects for Om. While they walk around the
village, they run into the upper-caste Thakur Dharamsi. Omprakash recognizes him and spits in his direction. Thakur
in turn recognizes Om, and decides to somehow pay Om back for his disrespect of an upper caste member. When
Ashraf Chacha, Ishvar, and Om are in the village, they run into herders from the Family Planning Centre. As the
Centre in this city did not fill its quota, they took random people from the street and forced them into a truck that
drove them to the Family Planning Centre. All three are beaten into the truck and since Ashraf Chacha is so old, he
is gravely injured and later dies on the street. Ishvar and Omprakash beg to escape the forced sterilization, but
the vasectomy takes place. As they lie in an outside tent recovering, Thakur Dharamsi comes by and coerced the
doctor to give Om a castration. Ishvar's legs become infected due to the vasectomy and must be amputated.
However, Ishvar and Om have nowhere to go now that Ashraf Chacha has died. His son-in-law sells his house and
they are forced to leave town.
Epilogue: 1984[edit]

Eight years later, Maneck returns home for the second time from Dubai for his father's funeral. Maneck is repulsed
by the violence that follows after the Prime Minister's assassination, for which Sikhs are killed. He returns home and
attends the funeral, but cannot bring himself to truly miss his father, only the father of his young childhood.While at
home he reads old newspapers and learns that Avinash's three sisters have hung themselves, unable to bear their
parents' humiliation at not being able to provide dowries for their marriages. Shocked and shaken, he decides to visit
Dina in Bombay for better news. He learns from Dina the horrific lives that Ishvar and Om – one disabled and the
other castrated – have led as beggars after their village visit. As Maneck leaves, he encounters Om and Ishvar on the
street. The two former tailors are nearly unrecognizable because of their filth, and don't appear to recall him. They
say "Salaam" to him, but he doesn't know what to say and walks on.Maneck goes to the train station, his world
shattered. He walks out on the tracks as an express train approaches the station and commits suicide by letting the
train run over him.It turns out that Om and Ishvar were on their way to visit Dina. They are still friends, and she
gives them meals and money when the house is empty. Dina and the beggars discuss their lives and how Maneck has
changed from a pleasant and friendly college student to a distant refrigeration specialist. Om and Ishvar leave,
promising to visit after the weekend. Dina washes up their plates, and returns the plates to the cupboard, where they
are to be used later by Nusswan and Ruby.

CRITICAL STUDY OF WOMEN CHARACTERS

Over the past eleven years Rohinton Mistry has established himself as one of Canada’s most critically acclaimed
writers, with his three works of award-winning fiction, Tales from Firozha Baag ( 1987); Such a Long Journey
(1991) and “A Fine Balance (1995) have received virtually unanimous praise. Despite this widespread enthusiasm
for Mistry’s work, there is one area of his fiction that has received recurring criticism: his portrayal of women. Many
critics find Rohinton Mistry’s female characters are unidimensional and limited. They are seen to be house bound,
rarely leaving their apartments, complexes while their male counterparts venture far and wide, not only in and
around Bombay but also places such as Delhi. By attending the social contexts of his female characters’ lives from a
feminist perspective, this analysis examines the ways Mistry interprets the situations of women – their experiences,
histories and responsibilities as wives, widows, mothers and single women – within the cultural rubric of Parsi
India.In Rohinton Mistry’s novel, “A Fine Balance”, he has portrayed a galaxy of characters efficiently and
elegantly. By portraying a cross section of Indian society especially those who called riff-raff, the writers draw the
real picture of India. There are four protagonists in the novel Dina Dalal, Ishvar, Om Prakash and Maneck Kohlah in
this novel. The other leading characters are beggar master, Rajaram, the hair collector. Thakur Dharmasi, Vasantra
Valmik, Ibrahim the rent-collector, Shaker- the beggar, Ashraf chacha, Mumtaz Chachi, Dukhi Mochi, his wife
Rupa, Mrs. Gupta Narayan, Radha, Rustom Nussawan, Ruby, Monkey Man, Jeevan, the tailor and others.In “A Fine
Balance”, however falls victim to enforce sterilization, indicating the socio-political environment in India during
1975-77 Emergency. His characters, for example, experience the everyday trials of human condition such as the
death of family members and friends, financial despair and common disagreements that occur between husbands and
wives. In a review of “AFine Balance”, Linda Revie points out that while Mistry does include several depictions of
male sexual desire and power. He also expresses the despair and indignities of the human experience-when all is
said and done. Mistry creates ‘a fine balance’ between the sexes. In another review, John Ball observes that Dina,
the main character in the novel emerges as a woman of rich complexity and strength. Mistry’s portrayal of Behroze,
an emancipated parsi girl in ‘Tales From Firozsha Baag” explores a new generation of young women who despite
the mistrust of conservative parents, are willing to play “a lead role in seeking intimacy with boys of their age
group”.The criticism and praise that Mistry has received for his treatment of women only scratches the surface of the
broad range of females, he has created in his three works of fiction. This has created in his three works of fiction.
This discussion will focus on the wives, widows, mothers and single women in each of his books, while at the same
time, examining the intimate details of their private and public hives. I addition to the exploration of women in India
and in particular, parsi women, this study will also use a variety of socio-historical and cultural theories that aim to
explain the alternately oppressed and liberated status of women in their various role.The four main characters
converge in Dina’s apartment as refugees from contracting caste, gender or social roles. They each live in an
unimportant position in the context of India. They are transferred by the community and try to center their own
individuality. The apartment is viewed as the worldly site of individuals in a troublesome society. Their life in
Bombay is contrary to their expectations and symbolizes the anguish, pain, anxiety and restlessness of people cut of
from their native villages.Dina fights for her independence and individuality but she faces the continuous Failures
and threats by society. Finally she loses her flat and forced to her brother’s home as a servant. Rohinton Mistry
highlights crucial events in the country’s chronicle by depicting the background of each protagonist. “A Fine
Balance” illustrates the deeper insight of political, nativity and struggle of suffering people. It always focuses on the
deep structure of the individual’s existences of human life. “A Fine Balance” is taken up for analyzing the human
sufferings in which Rohinton Mistry ultimately gives a space of endless sufferings of the individuals.Dina, chooses
to be displaced her home, because she wants to assert her individuality and sense of self. She has grown up in
Bombay, but her sense of independence after her husband’s accidental death keeps her away from her family. She
resolves to restructure her life without being economically dependent on a man. For her, life is a series of emotional
upheavals and relocations of emotional bonds. Emergency made both Dina and Manech fail in their attempt. In the
name of poverty alleviation and civic beautification, beggars are carried away and made to be slaves in labour
camps.Dina Dalal’s new family creates an idyllic space where different cultures mingle and people of different
classes transgress sanctioned spaces in symbiotic equations. Rohinton Mistry, the socio-political novelist, emerges
as a significant literary figure during the recent years. “A Fine Balance” has established him firmly as a significant
literary figure in the Indian and Indo-Canadian traditions of fiction writing.Three sisters, whose father is too poor to
provide then dowries, hang themselves to spare their parents the shame of having unmarried daughters. A picture of
them hanging from a ceiling appears in the newspaper after their brother Avinash, a college student union chairman
who is the only source of future income for that family gets killed in police custody. The writer describes the plight
of a poor old man who undergoes vasectomy and because of that he dies. He agrees to be operated upon because of
cash bonus and gifts, which may help for his grand daughter’s dowry. Mistry portrays this shameful aspect of Indian
society. He highlights the injustices done to women, interrogates the marginalization of woman in the male-
dominated society and contends that inequality between the sexes is caused by the cultural construction of gender
differences.Do you know how fortunate you are in our community? Among the unenlightened, widows are thrown
away like garbage. If you were a Hindu, in the old days you would have had to be a good little sati and leap onto
your husband’s funeral pyre, be roasted with his (AFB 52)In the above passage, Dina’s brother, Nusswan,
personifies the difference between the cultural pattern of Hindu and Parsi Community while suggesting her to
remarry agter her husband’s death. He points out the parsi community which won’t forbid a widow in marrying
again. Here Mistry highlights the generosity of his own culture or community. Even in Parsi community there is
discrimination between male abd female. Dina’s brother, too ill treats her, does not allow her to visit her friends,
makes her do the household chores and she is expected to the little tigress”, said Nusswan (AFB 14)After Mrs.
Shoroff’s death, despite of her keen desire to pursue her education, Dina is not allowed even to matriculate.
Nusswan, her brother tries to impose his will on and suggests to her that she could marry a person of his choice, but
Dina protests and asserts her individuality. She marries Ruston Dalal, whom she loves intensely. Dina is the symbol
of the “new woman” who refuses to be acquiescent and submissive and does not accept the stereotypical feminine
role assigned to her. Even on that cruel night, when her husband dies, she behaves in a very dignified manner. “No
wailing, no beating the chest or tearing the hair like you might expect from a woman who had suffered such a shock,
such a loss”. (AFB 46)Dina refuses to buckle under pressure and resolves to rebuild her life without being
economically dependent on a man. She emerges as a strong, progressive and an independent woman. She fetches
two tailors, Ishvar and Om and starts working for Au Revoir Exports. Mistry stresses the fact that in post colonial
India the plight of the common people is no different and it requires amelioration and freedom from exploitation and
injustice. One of the characters says, “of course, for ordinary people, nothing has changed”. It seems as if the native
rulers have merely replaced the foreign rulers and the Indian government has failed to resolve the basic problems of
poverty, hunger, unemployment, illiteracy and disease.Sexual exploitation based on religion is one of the major
perspectives of Mistry. An untouchable woman is a selfless and soulless object to be sexploited. The guard in
Mistry’s “A Fine Balance” is so confident of the social ostracism a tame community woman can be subjected to;
intimidated by: One shout from me and they will come in running. I only have to shout, and the owner and his sons
would be here at once. They would strip you and whip you for stealing…… They would take turns doing shameful
thingsto your lovely soft body…… I don’t have anything. That’s why I came here in the night, for the sake ofmy
child…” I only have to shout once”, he warned Roopa’s exploitation by the watchman of the richman’s orchard is
Mistry’s harsh comment on the double standards evident even in the practice of un touchability.It is an instance of
tragic irony that a high – caste lustful man who would consider himself polluted even by the shadow of a low-caste
still covets and sleeps with a desirable low-caste woman. The text raises difficult questions such as right and wrong
in such a dubious social context.There is yet another cruel, dastardly, beastly and inhuman sexploitation of tanner
woman narrated in Mistry’s novel: “And you won’t for many more. She must be hiding in her hut. She refused to go
to the field with zamindar’s son, so they shaved her head and walked her naked through the square”.(AFB 97)Mistry
pictures how the women are harassed by the priest in temples and churches. The educated and unemployed youth
and the lawyers in the Bombay court do not spare women from sexual harassment. When Dina approaches the court
gate, a group of lawyers surround her and demand charges, showing their degree and advising her to be careful in
choosing the lawyer, some of them make indecent advances. Mistry coneys his own moral attitudes and liberal
views through characters. Various episodes in the novel reveal Mistry’s sympathy for the oppressed and his
righteous anger at the excesses during the period of Emergency. A Fine Balance opens with a train journey and
concludes with “Epilogue” 1984, after Dina completes her journey emancipation and self-realisation.

CONCLUSION:
Rohinton Mistry’s characters are ordinary people belonging to the lower middle class of society. At the same time,
the goodness of Mistry’s characters, that likens them to the epical heroes of ancient literature. Mistry locates innate
goodness compelling circumstances. The author focuses on how an ordinary person, by sheer grit and imagination,
overcomes stupendous problem.
Thus, Mistry has very poignantly captured the tumult brought the heroism in ordinary people. The heroism of the
ordinary people embodies the true essence of man, because the ordinary man dominates the world in terms of
number – which should be the criterion now that kings and queens are gone.

NOTES - A Fine Balance, the second novel by Rohinton Mistry,a Bombay-born writer now living near Toronto,
Canada, moves between the four characters caught in the whirlpool of events unfolding during
theemergency imposed in India by Indira Gandhi in 1975.These four unfortunate characters are Ishvar Darji and
Omprakash Darji, uncle-nephew duo who hail from an impoverished Indian village; these cobblers-turned-tailors
struggle in the unnamed city by the sea (a thinly veiled Bombay), Dina Dalal, a widow from middle class Parsi
family, and Maneck Kohlah, a Parsi teenager from mountainous village in northern India. The Emergency looms
large like a shadow in the life of these four central characters. The 603-page novel that was the finalist for a Booker
Prize revolves around them.Dina is a vivacious young widow who lives on her own after her husband’s death. She
lives on an apartment left by her late husband Rostum who was killed in an accident while cycling to fetch ice-
cream for the guests at his home party. Ishvar and Om are the victims of the cruelty that is caste system in India--
they have fled the caste-violence of their village. Maneck, fed up with the ragging and filth of hostel is a paying
guest at Dina’s. The tailors are hired by Dina who supplies clothes to Au Revoir Export Company. Thus, necessity
forces these four characters to share a cramped apartment. But they also share their stories that are marked by
sadness, loss, poverty, hunger and other tragic aspects of life.Mistry reveals the theme of the novel through the
character of Valmiki, the former proofreader at The Times of India who loves to quote WB Yeats:“You see, you
cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to buzz beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as
stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.”The novel--first
published in 1995--is divided into 16 chapters; each chapter has a title such as City by the Sea, For Dreams to Grow,
In a Village by a River, Sailing Under One Flag, Return of Solitude etc. It has a prologue dated 1975 and ends with
an epilogue of 1984. This time frame reminded me of Aravind Adiga’s story collection Between the
Assassinations that is set in the period between the murder of Indira Gandhi and her son Rajiv Gandhi. When one of
the characters, Maneck returns from Dubai after working for 8 years towards the end of the book, we are told that
Indira Gandhi is killed by her security guards. Maneck encounters a country ravaged by communal violence
whereby his Sikh cab driver has to shave his head and beard fearing the backlash. The novel ends as her son Rajiv
takes over.What struck me most with Mistry’s story is whenever I thought the characters have finally overcome all
the obstacles, terrible things happen to them. When a defiant Om finally agrees to get married, the two tailors
embark on a journey to search for a suitable bride. But soon, they are caught in a state sponsored terror. They are
forced to undergo sterilization spearheaded by Sanjay Gandhi, Indira Gandhi’s infamous son. As if it was not
enough, Ishvar’s legs have to be mutilated whereas Om is castrated. In the very beginning of their work with Dina,
both of them are arrested and taken to a rally to attend prime minister’s speech.It is no exaggeration to say that
Mistry is a master storyteller. The descriptions are vivid, the dialogues sharp and the narrative well constructed. The
chapters dealing with the struggle of Dukhi, Ishvar’s father in the feudal, superstitious and tradition bound village
are very poignant, hence superb. Dukhi’s shack is put on fire by high caste people killing the family members except
Ishvar and Om.Though the character of Maneck, unlike other three, is not well drawn, there are others who
complement the story. There is Ashraf Chacha, the amicable mentor of Ishvar and Narayan who pay him back by
saving his family from massacre during the Hindu-Muslim riot following the partition of India and Pakistan. There
is Rustom, who meets Dina in a concert; they fall in love and marry despite the objection from Dina’s family. His
fondness for cycling leads to his death. Ibrahim, the rent collector who indulges in looking back at his life with
regret and bitterness because his malicious job involves threatening the tenants like Dina. The plethora of characters
adds to the story that is both evocative and condensed. It also has characters like Rajaram who changes his
profession only to deceive people, Monkeyman who kills the ruthless Beggarmaster—the latter runs a begging
industry and even justifies the disfigurement of beggars’ organs. There is Dina’s nagging brother Nusswan.But
ultimately it’s the four main characters that are at the heart of the novel.It is said that it’s better to read Charles
Dickens (with whom Mistry is often compared) to learn about Victorian England; similarly, one should
read Shakespeare in order to know about life in Elizabethan period. Echoing these lines, I would recommend a
reading of A Fine Balance to know what life was like for ordinary Indians during Emergency in India. Though at
times dark and melancholy, it’s a rich, rewarding book.

THE STONE DIARIES

Life suspended in stone is one theme of the book. Daisy as narrator often focuses on passionate attachments of those
she is describing, and Daisy’s life begins in her parents’ lives: Cuyler Goodwill a skilled stonecutter and Mercy
Stone a heavy and still woman. Cuyler believes his marriage to Mercy and his passion for her dislodged “the stone
in his throat” and gave him the power of true speech. Cuyler builds a stone tower to mark Mercy’s gravesite, work in
which passion and stone interplay in his carving of the images for some of the stones in the tower, leaving him to
feel the presence of God in his work, life within stone.Under his final stone production, the pyramid, Cuyler places a
time capsule the small contents of which include Mercy’s wedding ring. He has been unable to find the right words
to accompany the ring and give it to Daisy; he finds it far less troubling “to bury this treasure beneath a weight of
stone—his pyramid, dense, heavy, complex, full of secrets, a sort of machine.” Cuyler’s treasure beneath stone is
echoed when Daisy, her great-niece Victoria, and Victoria’s boyfriend Lewis Roy visit God’s Gate on the Orkney
Islands, where the niece and Lewis Roy closely examine the outcropping rock to “find a microscopic tracing of
buried life. Life turned to stone.”The final working of this theme appears as Daisy, aware of dying, returns to the
stone images: “Stone is how she finally sees herself.” In her death, Daisy feels herself reunited with her mother, no
longer orphaned and alone, life now suspended in stone.Shields’s novel also reveals consistent missed connections
and failures of understanding, perhaps best exemplified by the fairly cool relationship between Daisy and Barker.
Daisy reads women’s magazines and tries to follow advice offered on keeping her husband happy, advice that never
addresses the ultimate loneliness of each of them: their failure to connect. The failure to understand also appears in
Daisy’s not recognizing her niece Beverly’s need when she stops for a visit to the family. With Beverly, however,
Daisy later has and takes advantage of the opportunity to make connections, offering the young woman a home in
which she can bring up her child, Victoria.

1.Quote：Maybe that was all that was the matter with her, nothing but loneliness, not the unhappiness of life itself,

but only a seasonal attack of loneliness. And Mercy Goodwill, the poor dear young soul, was lonely too—– Mrs.
Flett knows, suddenly, that this is true……She and Mercy are alone in the world, two solitary souls, side by side in
their separate houses, locked up with the same circle of anxious hunger. (Page18)Context:One day, Mrs. Flett was
hanging out the wash under the dazzling sunlight, she was thinking of the sweet scene of Goodwill’s house between
the young husband and kind Mercy. And she came up with an idea of asking Mercy to come to her home and have
tea together. And that in Mrs. Flett’s mind, Mercy is in the similar situation with her.Analysis:Mrs. Flett has a
husband and three sons and she lived with his husband and two of the sons together. The men all worked on the
quarry all day long while she was doing the housework alone. As this kind of life going on, she felt lonesome and be
tired to endure the pressure. She was disappointed at her tightfisted husband and they lived together without love.
She paid attention to young Mercy and thought Mercy was also lonely though she was kind and her husband said
soft words to her daily. She was full of loneliness and was willing to change her life style. This reflects that at that
time, the loneliness of women and they had no choice but stayed at home to do the housework, they experienced the
unfair attitude from the social and could not do what they want. In addition, she wanted to find someone she loved to
live but not only was arranged to live with a spouse without love.

2. Quote:She’s had these gusts of grief before. The illness she suffers is orphan hood—-she recognizes it in the same
way you recognize a migraine coming on: here it comes again—-and again—-and here she lies, stranded,
genderless, ageless, alone.These are frightening times for Mrs. Flett, when she feels herself anointed by loneliness,
the full weight of it.Context:Daisy was slept on the bed and waiting the back of her second husband, Barker Flett.
She thought of her own mother and the connection between herself and the world, the ring, which was left for her by
her mother but her father forgot to give it to her. What is more is that, she thought of the foreign coin appeared on
her head after she was born.Analysis:Daisy found that she forgot something even her father’s name. She was afraid
to suffer the pressure of losing memories. She felt lonesome and kept on thinking of the previous things. While
Barker was busy to working outside, she could only stayed at home and waiting for him, she even couldn’t find the
evidence of her existence in the world. She even had thought the loneliness of her since she was young. This reveals
that, the darkness of loneliness feeling had disturbed her and she did not exist as a true human since she was born.
She was decadent sometimes and struggled to release. She experienced a lot of difficulties and didn’t have sense of
securely.
DEcades of parched solitude have made him a voyeur in his own life. (Page 159)Idleness: the notion frightens him,
and so do his old temptations—–solitude, silence. (Page 161)He could never understand where that longing came
from, but he once confessed to my father, who was fond of retelling the story, that he felt perfectly the infant’s
loneliness; it was loneliness of an extreme and incurable variety, the sort of loneliness he himself had suffered since
leaving home at eighteen. (Page 258)The blameless teeth, hair and bones of Daisy Goodwill embrace this final form,
or rather, it embraces her, allowing her access, at last, to a trance of solitude, attaching its weight to her faltering
pendulum heart, her stiffened coral lungs. (Page 355)