Short Story Rationale (rough idea) - The Boxer

The aspects of journey that I will be exploring in my short story are physical and inner journeys. The protagonist of the story is a young boxer who joined the Jimmy Sharman boxing tent to learn how to defend himself. The setting is the return to his home town for the local show. The Boxer has learnt about himself though the many fights he has had. The concept of journey in my story is that life is a circle and you have the option to either repeating the journey or going down different path. I will represent the concept of journey in the story through having a linear structure and the setting will be in the boxing ring. The techniques used will be a flashback to the boxer’s childhood and imagery of the boxing ring. The attitudes unpinning the story that is you have control of your own journey.

My Daddy's a Diver Short Story Review

My Daddy’s a Diver meets the short story genre requirements well except in a few areas, an example being that it is only written from one perspective and it doesn’t have a balance of showing and telling in the story. The story does meet many of the short story genre requirements, one being that the story is based within a 24 hour period. Another example is that it has a restricted setting which is the ocean and their home. The story was a restricted number of characters; the father, the daughter and the fish. The purpose of the story is to evoke feelings of love, loss and companionship. The story connects on an emotional level with the reader, the emotions it arouses in the reader are sadness, pity, hope and love.  An example of how the uses language effectively is “lifting its seal he let the seawater in, bathing his face, easing the sadness,” this effectively shows how strongly the dad feels about the loss of his wife and the burden of grief he has been left with. The values that underpin this text are love and the importance of having a partner to share your life with. The type of journey evident in the story is inner journey.  This is shown by the realization of the father from the death of his wife that there can be hope and redemption of the new life and love from his daughter.  The story is very effective as it has strong imagery of loss but loss is also represented in the killing of the fish’s companion. The story also is effective as it shows the value of love one has for their partner in life and that love is such a previous thing and must be cherished.

Unpolished Gem Homework Part 3 – What does this section say about “Journey”? Justify your response by referring to the text and quoting from it.

In the third part of Alice Pung’s novel, Unpolished Gem it represents the concept of ‘Journey’ through the text as it highlights the physical journey and also shows the inner journey they take as well. In the beginning of this section, Alice describes her family’s achievement of finally having their own ‘great Australian dream’ come true and how her family see immigrants who just arrived in Australia starting to take their own journey. Alice refers the ‘Great Australian dream’ in this section which is the desire to own a large house and to have decent or well paying job.  Alice’s family in the section seem to have ended their journey in reaching their ‘Great Australian Dream’ as they are moving into their new house. The physical journey conveyed in this section  is the physical moving into their new house, which also has  inner journey aspect of making their dreams come true from when they first moved to Australia. Alice subtly conveys the aspects of inner journey in this section by using several different angles. Many layers of meanings are shown  in her inner journey, example from the text being, “Gone were the days of where a one-dollar plastic brown vinyl coat a birthday present from the government.” This sentence from the text makes the reader look deeper back through her life, like how her family were once immigrants to Australia and how their attitude has changed since then. Alice and her family watch new immigrants arrive like they did once before, but they feel pity, guilt, resentment and have a different understanding. They now understand how to integrate into society by trying to remove the stereotype about Asian’s and peasantry and how they have lost the amazement they once had. Another angle of inner journey Alice expresses in the text is about the pressures she had as a child to be successful for her parents as they work so hard for Alice to have a better life. The text shows this pressure Alice feels as a child, “parents killing themselves with dangerous chemicals just so you can live a comfortable life, there no comfort within” (p.136). This section explores the physical and inner journeys Alice’s family have been through to build their life in Australia.

Unpolished Jem Part 1 Homework- Narrative

The Bald Sparrow

Crack! Crack! Went the eggs in the tall oak tree, there were three little eggs waiting to be hatched. Large jagged cracks started to appear through the outer shell of the eggs as they wobbled, the little nestlings trying to break free. The two baby black feathered sparrows hatched from their turquoise blue eggs and the mother called one Arnold and the other Harold. The mother waited in paiently for her third baby to erupt from its shell, but it did not. The third egg was not even moving and it did not look like the rest either thought the mother bird. It was a golden brown colour which was very different to the other eggs. The mother bird fed her hungey chicks,  Harold and Arnold and then continued to sit on the last egg for as long as it took to hatch. It took another week before the mother bird finally heard tapping sounds and she looked down to see a tiny crack forming on the egg. The egg slit in two to reveal a baby bird with brown tuft and a large ugly bald head inside her nest.

“What the hell is this ugly thing?” The mother bird thought as she stared speechlessly at it. She couldn’t  think of what to call ‘it’ so she called it Noname.

As Noname grew older mother bird noticed more and more strange things about him, like he didn’t have black feathers or a short blunt beak like Arnold and Harold had. Noname looked completely different to his brothers, he had brown feathers and a very sharp beak.

One day Harold and Arnold were teasing Noname for being bald and different. No matter how much Noname tried he couldn’t get them to stop calling him names.

“Weirdo, loser, I hope you fall out of the tree Noname” called Arnold and Harold.

“I am just the same as you, just leave me alone!” yelled Noname despairingly. It was no use as the more he tried to be like them, the more different he seemed from them. Noname’s bald head soon turned to pearl white feathers and his wings became twice as long as his brothers. It was always so humiliating to be different; he just wanted to be like his brothers with black feathers.

But one day Noname realised that he didn’t need to fit in with his brothers  and maybe being  different was better. On that day Noname decided to leave the nest,  his brothers and his mother bird to go off and have his own adventures. He decided he would pick his own name which would be Eagle.

English Homework- Bonfire

An early childhood memory was one of lighting a bonfire with my cousin Anne, on a pitch black night during the summer holidays. I remember my dad lighting a match and it rolling through the air and landing on the kindling with a burst of flaming embers. The sparks of fire grew hotter which engulfed the large logs spreading light around Anne and I. The trails of baby embers flying towards the night sky drew our eyes to the billions of twinkling lights above.  I marveled at how clearly the stars shone as we sat by the bonfire, but to Anne they were so familiar. As the flames dimed the quietness of the night was more noticeable over the crackling coals. As Anne lived a long way from town you couldn’t hear the city noises that I was used too, instead there were the sounds of the birds and the dogs barking. We laughed together as we loaded marshmallows upon our roast sticks and waved them over the shimmering coals. We shared stories of our previous term at school and enjoyed the friendship we have. It is always fun visiting Anne at her property as it gives me an insight into life living on the land which is very different to my life on the Gold Coast.

Research Activity - Vietnam War

 When did it occur?

• last for 10 years from 1962-1972

Who was involved?

• countries involved were America, Australia, France, south Vietnam and north Vietnam

What was Australias's involment 

•  Australian 60,000 personnel were involved

Protest Movements

• first protests were small and non-violent

• in the early year Australias involment in the war was not widely opposed, 
• As Australias commitment grew, as conscripts began to make up a large percentage of those being deployed and killed 
• the public increasingly came to believe that the war was being lost, oppostion grew 
• early 1970's more than 200,000 people marched in the streets of major cities in protest
• final stages of the war public opion began to change in 1969 55% of australians favoured withdrawing the troops.
• during 1970 and 1971 huge protests called Vietnam Moratoriums (stop the war) saw hundreds of thousands of people take to the streets to protest.

Call of conscription

• Australia's national service scheme was introduced in 1964
• during the early years of the war, when Australia's contribution was limited to member of the regular army the public was disinterested
• only when the commitment increased to include national servicemen, particulary after 1968 Tet Offensive, did wide spread opposition to australia's participation in teh war develop
• after 1968 both United States and Australia began to withraw troops from Vietnam, teh period of major protest.

Public Treatment of vets from the war and ongoing health problems

• they didnt have a warm welcome home
• arrived at the dead of night
• people blamed them for the war and the way it had been conducted
• many soldiers had been abused as baby killers , rapists and murders on their return
• by 1987 attitudes towards the vets had changed they were given a welcome home parade in Sydney, 25,000 vets marched to the cheers of several hundred thousand onlookers
• many stories of disturbed veterans suffering from post-tramatic stress disorder and continuing to suffer from their time in Vietnam

Hovercar Racer by Matthew Reilly

I also liked this book by Matthew Reilly. I really liked this book, i think that it would make a pretty good movie. The main character is Jason Chaser, but my favorite character is the Bug who is Jason's little brother. I also added a copy of the synopsis of this book so you know what it is about. I thought that it was a great read.

A SPORT LIKE NO OTHER
In the world of the near future, the most popular sport in the world is hover car racing. Superfast and dangerous, its heroes are the racers: part fighter pilot, part race-car driver, all superstar.
A BRUTAL QUALIFYING SCHOOL
But to get to the Pro Circuit, you must first pass through the International Race School, a brutal cauldron of wild races on even wilder courses, where only the best of the best will survive.
JASON AND THE ARGONAUT
This is the story of Jason Chaser, a talented young racer selected to attend the Race School. He's younger than the other students. He's smaller. His trusty car, the Argonaut, is older. But Jason Chaser is no ordinary racer. And as he races against the best drivers in the world he will learn that at Race School winning is everything, that not everyone in this world fights fair, and that you never ever have any friends on the track.
Strap on your seat belts and hold on tight because the pace of reading just went supersonic! From Matthew Reilly, author of "Ice Station" and "Scarecrow", comes his most original novel yet - no less than the fastest story ever told.