The LPHS Senior Writing Competition was judged in September.

The quality and range of writing submitted was truly impressive, giving the judging teams a lot of pleasure but also quite a few challenges in weighing the competing merits of the entries. Congratulations to all those who entered, especially the following students:

Creative Prose
1st - Naomi Jutel

2nd - Megan Macdairmid

3rd - Liam Scott

Highly Commended - Jasper Seddon

Highly Commended - Bella Gasgoyne

Highly Commended - Ruby Hart

 
Poetry 

1st (and Highly Commended) - Shima Jack

2nd - Darcy Monteath

3rd - Sersha Forde

Highly Commended - Steen Zaragoza-Faoagali

Highly Commended - Emma Mitchell

Formal

1st - Shima Jack

2nd - Grace Jones

3rd - Maia Puricelli 

Highly Commended - Jasper Seddon

Highly Commended - Paxton Hall

Creative Prose 1st - Naomi Jutel

‘Knight, horse, or man?’ by Naomi Jutel

No mechanics of man have the shock-absorbing power of the cat in stealth mode. I move in the night as knight and horse combined, the master of my own destiny, riding upon none but my own. Not once have I been noticed, I simply watch behind my window, allowing the cyclic patterns of human nature to consume me. Never is it to falter, nor is it to wane, it comes as naturally as the seasons.

He was the promise of cold nights, the man responsible for painting white snow over Hazel’s red ground. Wren wore his face undeniably crumpled and cruel. His scalp was mottled and grey, a somewhat blurry reflection of his entire demeanour. The lasting smell of hair gel on his balding head was the give away that he may once have cared for his appearance, the stench of its forgotten presence wafted up to where I sat above him on the Dogwood tree. The man below me was different, he had not seen a mirror in a long time. It was the cryptic map of wrinkles that told the story of Wren’s icy past. He was a snow-man like creature who found little pleasure in the rituals his existence was bound to. He listened to the world through dits and dahs, dots and dashes, day after day. When the clouds told him rain was approaching, he’d sit on the bench beneath the Dogwood tree with pen and paper in hand. The decoded tongue of the rainstorms was friendly to the lonesome man, his last living company in the world of lost colour and beheaded daisies.

She was the promise that warmer days would return from the wrath of the winter bird. She was small. Soft. Solemn. I never knew her without the pink beret atop her head, the shade just pink enough to resemble both her blushing cheeks and the leaves of the holly trees. Freya walked as though the breeze carried her, speaking to it as it tickled her cheek. She would speak of her mother. She would speak of the birds she recognised. She would even speak of the days she would be put to rest, and Juno put to work. When the breeze paused, she would pick the pale Spring flowers. They smiled gleefully with open arms as the little girl welcomed them into her home. Often she’d sing, just loud enough for both the wind and I to hear. Here comes the sun do, do, do. Though she struggled to carry the tune, Freya’s voice coaxed the timid Spring creatures from beneath the ground to surface and greet the land - soon to be their own.

By the prodding of the little girl named Freya, he was the promise of birdsong. Juno wore his hair a shade of strawberry and his skin free of clothing. He arrived hand in hand with the sun. Wherever he went, she was sure to be too. By order of the sun, Juno held a very important job, in which he was to grant the serenity of his summery smile to the many onlookers of his three-month-long contract. Every frowning individual who trod by with slumped shoulders would stand upright, the rusted gears of each individual’s spine licking up the oil that Juno presented to it. When night arrived on the long Summer days, Juno thickened the air and welcomed the chorus of singing crickets and frogs and cicadas. The cohesive croaks and cries of the animals soothed the sun to sleep and welcomed the moon to take her place in the sky of a world rich in colour and sprouted daisies.

She was the promise of the colour red. Hazel clothed the leaves with a familiar vibrance, returning the stolen blush to their physique. For it was she who introduced the land to the range of reds and greens, I could only ever wonder how it was she did it. Hazel owned seven copies of The Kinks’ ‘Something Else’. The burnt nerves of taut trees unhooked for the three minutes it took for ‘Autumn Almanac’ to play each night at 6 pm, swaying to the voice of Ray Davies as Hazel did.The trees danced so hard that leaves fell, painting the ground red like a battlefield after war. Once the track had finished, she’d flip the record and play it through twice more. By the time Hazel (and the trees) finished dancing, her pasta was ready. She poured two great glasses with red wine, one for herself, and one for the visitor who never arrived. The first time I ever watched Hazel, I looked down upon the owner of the second wine glass, what a rude guest! The second time she ate pasta alone, I grew sad, as did the cooling weather in preparation of Wren’s wintery presence.

Though I stood not five metres from Mother’s ever-changing colour palette, meandering in the blind direction they each took, I had never been seen. Each window was lit and peopled, yet not once did they look up to meet my piercing orbs of light, black slits tainting the sickly yellow globes I call my own.

If Wren had only looked up to the branch of the Dogwood tree I stood on. Or if Freya had stopped to listen to what the breeze wished to tell her. Or if Juno had selfishly kept his smile to himself. Perhaps even the visitor would have eaten with Hazel if she didn’t play the record that made the leaves fall. But to do so would be to exist as something other than Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn. If each man were to live, bound by none other than themself, would it remain a world of men? Or of cats? All beings a combination of knight and horse. I frightfully pondered the anomalous thought... before licking my paws with a sigh.

Oh well.

Creative Prose 2nd - Megan Macdairmid

The Last Summer

That summer, Sarah and I toured the garden often. We’d walk, arm in arm, up the cobblestone path; one or other of us would stop to examine the roses, which were doing wonderfully that year; or to pluck a stem of the honeysuckle that climbed so elegantly up the back wall and tuck it gently behind the other’s ear. Sometimes, if the day was fine, we’d lay a blanket on the lawn and lie out there for hours, seldom talking, often not. On those days, when we didn’t speak, I’d lie there and watch her breathe, see the rise and fall of her chest and listen to her occasional sighs. She’d close her eyes against the sun, oblivious to the world, and to me. Daylight suited her, but everything suited her: she was quite beautiful, my cousin Sarah.

When we retired inside to lunch, Martha would often remark on how well Sarah was looking today; how her time in the garden became her; or how she must be famished from spending so much time outside. Invariably, Sarah would smile and mutter something wryly about flattery and Martha’s wages; but when she left for the washroom, Martha and I would exchange an anxious look. Both of us were privy to Sarah’s physical decline – often, it seemed, more so than she – yet our attempts to prevent it were futile. She seemed almost a different person that summer than the one I had moved in with the preceding fall.

After lunch, we’d move into the sitting room for the afternoon. I liked to play cards but Sarah cared to read: we rarely played cards. At around 3 o’clock, every day, I’d go to the kitchen and fix us both a cup of sweet tea. Martha would set out some biscuits on the coffee table, and we’d sit together and talk for a short while. This was always my favourite part of the day; Sarah and I shared a sweet tooth and a penchant for gossip. Often, we’d talk about our futures: her, to college and an academic husband; me, to New York and a job in a fancy department store. Sarah wanted two children, a boy and a girl. I wasn’t sure I wanted any. She talked about the house her family-to-be would live in, what their garden might look like, and the quiet suburbia she’d retire into once they’d left home. She talked about this life as if it had already happened, and I sat, listening, enraptured.

As the year wore on, Sarah grew less inclined to walk through the garden with me. More often than not, she’d prefer to sit beside the window inside, with a blanket over her legs despite the heat, and sleep the days away. I hated to be cooped up, but on these days I’d sit with her and work at crochet or cross-stitch; making her tea when she woke and tucking new blankets across her when I saw gooseflesh on her arms. On more than one occasion, she asked me to play for her. This I enjoyed very much. Martha would help me move her to the parlour, wrapped in blankets and sipping a mug of hot tea; I’d dress in fine clothes, and announce each piece with a show of excessive grandeur. Sarah would laugh, and then laugh more as I fumbled over the music – and then we’d both collapse into fits of giggles, and I could once again see a glimpse of the well Sarah that lived inside the sick one. It was a pleasure to play Sarah’s piano.

The days grew shorter. As summer faded into fall, I began to notice a change in Sarah. She rarely left her room, coming downstairs only for the hours between lunch and supper, and when she was up, she spoke less and less. Our garden walks were now a thing of the past. Despite Sarah’s worsening condition, our ritual of afternoon tea continued. For a few minutes every day, as we sipped our tea and chatted, Sarah would gush about trivial things – the book she was reading; the gardener’s son; or the nest of sparrows she could see from her window. As she talked, she’d come alive, transcending the barriers of her sickness and becoming once again the hopeful young girl I’d known since childhood. In these times, I was reminded once again of how pretty Sarah was. Sickness had not robbed her of her looks; instead, it suited them nicely. In her frailty, she’d become a perfect martyr.

One day in the early winter of that year, I sat with Martha at the lunch table while Sarah rested in her room. We sat in silence: there was little of consequence to speak about. Martha had served vegetable soup for lunch, and the pair of us ate it with bread and margarine. I looked out the dining room window into the garden, just touched by the early morning sun. The honeysuckle that climbed the back wall had long since died away, but the roses we’d spent so long admiring in the summer had bloomed late, and a few had yet to shed their petals. I thought about picking one and taking it to Sarah. When Martha began to clear the table, I excused myself and moved into the sitting room, where there was no window into the garden.

I tucked my legs underneath me on the sofa, pulling the blanket around my shoulders. Sarah’s blanket. It smelt of sickness; of talcum powder, and of the lilies which adorned her bedroom. A delicate smell, and a terrible one. I pressed it to my face, rubbing the knit against my cheek. I thought of how we had been that summer, walking through the garden, flowers in our hair, content. I thought of playing the piano, and of playing cards in the living room. I thought of Sarah, alone upstairs in her room; and then I closed my eyes, and prayed for summer to come more quickly.

Creative Prose 3rd - Liam Scott

Tihei mauri ora

It was the choices we made that sealed our fate. We chose to ignore the science. We chose to ignore the warnings. We chose to ignore the young people across the globe that protested against the effects of climate change.

My Koro was one of those kids. He tells us kids the stories over and over. It feels like it's in my bloodstream now, we’ve been told it so many times. I can recite it like my whakapapa. He says we must not forget. I’m not sure how we could forget anyway. Our oxygen starved cells cry out to us every moment as a constant reminder of governments across the world who chose oil, coal and money, over people and Papatūānuku.

Those protests started in 2018. We knew then. Now in 2077 we no longer have the luxury of choice or ignorance about whether to believe the science; to debate whether climate change was caused by human intervention or just part of the world’s natural cycle. We don’t have the luxury of free speech anymore either. If you speak out about The Foundation’s decisions and policies on the climate and health care, you have an oddly disproportionate statistical chance of being in a gruesome accident, committing suicide for no apparent reason, or suffering an unusually large build-up of death inducing lactic acid.

The prediction of humanity’s extinction was well documented, Koro says, although none of those documents exist now. They did not however give enough credit to the human body’s incredible ability to evolve: essentially adapt or die. That was how we now came to move from breathing oxygen to anaerobic respiration. Initially it was through natural means, our bodies adapted as the vegetation died off and the oxygen levels dropped. Season by season as the Amazon rainforest was felled, oxygen levels dropped, seas rose, adverse weather events increased, and the global temperature increased eventually melting the ice caps and rendering the polar bear extinct. That was one of the many, many creatures that we killed off.

The oxygen levels decreased and the gaps between the rich and the poor increased. Those who could afford it turned to genetic modification to aid in anaerobic respiration. Those who couldn’t afford healthcare became sicker. Those who suffered from Long Covid feared the worst due to the long term damage to their lungs. With the modifications humans changed. Food became scarce and again we turned to genetic engineering of a synthesised food substance that increases the glucose levels to assist with anaerobic respiration. However, the cost of this is a lack of nutrition that the old foods gave us.The new genetically engineered food gives us the sugar for respiration, but lacks protein, vitamins and minerals. We have reached the endgame. We are no longer living, we are just surviving.

Koro would enlighten us with stories back when oxygen wasn’t a precious commodity. There was a place called the botanical gardens. It was a place with many different plants with marvellous scents and wondrous colours, Koro said. He told us about picking fruit called cherries from the trees in Central Otago on his Christmas camping holidays. My Dad says he is just running his mouth and it isn’t good for him or us. Dad worries that someone will hear him and not attribute his stories simply to the ramblings of an old man. But I enjoy his stories. It brings me joy to think that people were happy and carefree at some point in history. It's when he gets really sassy with his storytelling that really riles Dad. Like when Koro tells the stories of the marches and the colourful signs made on a substance called paper and card made from trees; or about a man from a reality tv show who became President of a place called the United States of America. Apparently he would freely demonstrate his ignorance and stupidity to the world over an app called twitter and other platforms that were known as “social media”. “More like antisocial media”, Koro would say and I’d laugh, for the 100th time.

Tomorrow Koro has to go for his check up.

He won’t tell me that he can feel the lactic acid building in his cells since his last appointment when the doctor overheard our conversation in the waiting room. He won’t tell me of the increased pain, like a constant stitch from over exercising that reaches up through his leg and into his heart. He won’t tell me of the sudden change to his medication that is supposedly to ease that.

What he will tell me though, right to the end, is never let these stories of our people die. Never stop seeking the truth. Never stop seeking justice. For us. For Papatūānuku.

In the end for Koro it is the choices he made that seal his fate. I suspect they will seal mine too.

Poetry 1st (and Highly Commended) - Shima Jack

Poetry 2nd - Darcy Monteath

who's a dog's best friend?

i aint ever seen a dog walk a man.
imagine him; chained up ankles, sand rubbin’ raw on the peak of his knees,

sippin’ on drain water, dust mites n’ diesel.

he’d be spoilt, that man, no doubt, no doubt.

i aint ever seen a dog walk a man

but i seen menace of metal have a go at the belly of our ma

give her a big ol kiss goodnight or

take a bite out of her - the greedy bastard.

always wantin’

always grabbin’

never givin’

never sharin’

i aint ever seen a dog walk a man

all he ever does is be chewin’ on wasp nests n’ thickets

long rope n’ thistles, batteries n’ teabags

oh, he spits em out all right.

he spits n’ it seeps right into the skin of our ma and we weep, n’ weep, n’ weep

but there aint no use cryin over spilt milk

i heard a man say that once

so i stole it

‘cause if a dog can walk a man,

then we can have all the power in the world

i aint ever seen a dog walk a man

but i tell ya what i have seen;

big metal mouths that slobber on seeds

watchin our ma grow cysts of concrete and chemtrails

and she coughs’ n’ coughs’ n’ coughs

till dogs n’ cats n’ everything that bleeds

start coughin’ up the blood of man

till it’s a dog’s world no more

i aint ever seen a dog walk a man

funny thought that, huh?

man’s best friend or whateva

well this dog’s been waitin’ on his,

since man even got here.

Poetry 3rd - Sersha Forde

Escapades of Otepoti

There are villas, doily fringes hanging above verandas.

There are villas, mantel pieces crammed with empty bottles and medication.

There is no such thing as class in Dunedin.

There is Mornington, penguin classics are stacked as pillars in your living room. Your parents say they have no time to read.

There are bees that nuzzle summer’s clouds.

Your mother calls this place,

a pretentious wank.

It’s a pre teen gene and you sink in a dreamtime vacancy;

a morbid longing beyond your Dad’s lawnmower.

There is Portobello, the glare of the midday sun, a little warmth behind the window.

The bus drives at thirty

and I know where we’re going.

I’ve lived in this city all my life.

Our friend takes us into the backwoods. Everything is so deep and green

We pour each other elderflower cordial and drink from chipped camping mugs.

You can tell people things you never have before; here.

There is an op shop for avoidant coping mechanisms.

When things do not bode well for me I will spend Fifty dollars on a dress

A more complicated matter with mother of pearl buttons down the back

St Andrew Street is always raining.

There is West Harbour, a love-hate

I will ask myself for permission before i visit you

destination.

Repressed memories and cold coffee

It’s always sunday at 5 o'clock

In Port Chalmers i used to think arguments were the same as

honesty

Then I moved out

We weren't honest.

There is October 31st and kissing a stranger in a Scooby-Doo costume.

I will spurn in sober moments without recollection of this.

Am I overcompensating for something?

This is Sixteen in Dunedin.

Every poem seems to start with sifting through what makes them human

I don't know how to tell you

But maybe a torturous fire somehow alite on a rainy day

in mid June at murderers beach

Is that

in Dunedin.

Statement of intent- I wanted to write an ode to the city that I have spent the sixteen years of my life in, the city that haunts me with a distant longing for escape, but the city that has shown me Art and Music. Dunedin has taught me how to have an open mind,but that gossip exists even in the most undesirable of times. To live in a city with so many different areas filled with all sorts of common people. Being sixteen In dunedin is something that is often hard to treasure but the beauty and grace that I experience even in the little things should not be undervalued. I have a lot of trauma associated with the different areas in Dunedin and it felt very refreshing to write about my experiences here in a positive light. Rather so It has been very invigorating to perceive the place I call home without negative association. When I leave Dunedin I intend to reflect on this poem with a sense of belonging and nostalgia. 

Formal 1st - Shima Jack

Title: The Virgin Suicides

Author: Jeffrey Eugenides

Text Type: Novel

Title: Lolita

Author: Vladimir Nabokov

Text Type: Novel

READING RESPONSE: THE VIRGIN SUICIDES vs LOLITA

The two novels The Virgin Suicides by Jeffery Eugenides and Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov are fascinating in the same sense a half-rotted rabbit corpse on the side of the road is fascinating. First you see the spilling-out guts, the blood-matted fur, the glitter of black flies settling upon its side - the way you first see the stained, jarring themes of teen suicides in The Virgin Suicides and of pedophilia in Lolita. Then, when you lean closer, you see more detail - the sky reflected in the glassy eye, the curved white ribs like fingers, cupping the still red heart - or the eloquent way the authors spin society-wide themes into twisted, dark stories which are almost nightmarish in their nature - yet too rooted in aspects of life we see around us to be brushed off as bad dreams. Who killed the rabbit? How do our desires cloud our vision? Can love be selfish? How do we each try to escape the horror of the mundane?

Two intensely recurring themes in both novels are self-centered blind love, and the effects of crushing mundanity on our imaginations and desires. The narrators in The Virgin Suicides are a collective voice of the neighborhood boys who live near the Lisbon sisters, who are a metaphor for the “male gaze”. The story is told by them, many years after all the suicides, as the boys (now middle-aged men) carefully, lovingly, try to piece together the reasons for the suicides. They describe how obsessed they were with the girls, wanting to sneak into their house to see them showering, desperate to take them to the school dance, watching them in their house through binoculars. They worshipped them.

Yet - despite how intensely they watched the girls - they didn't truly see them - only a highly-romanticised dreamy idea of them which they themselves had created in their own minds. To the neighbourhood boys, the Lisbon girls are one single entity of femininity. When, finally, the boys are able to enter the Lisbon house to have dinner with the girls, they are surprised to see that each of the girls' faces are different - they are not identical, as they had imagined. When Trip Fontaine is able to fulfil his dream of taking Lux to the dance, and she begins to open up to him, he is suddenly repulsed by her and leaves. She is not conforming to the overly-simplified idea of the girl he has formed in his mind, an impossible and inhuman girl, the one he has truly been longing for.

There is one point where the boys almost become self-aware, saying "Our surveillance had been so focused we missed nothing but a simple returned gaze." The girls had actually been watching them back, wanting connection, but what the girls had wanted had never been the priority of the boys anyway. Their infatuation had been too close, too selfishly passionate, that they had actually pushed the real Lisbon sisters away for an imaginary mirage version of them. The boys also object to the sexualisation and degradation of the girls, either at the hands of their parents, or Lux's statutory rape, yet actively contribute to it themselves. They spy on the girls without permission, sneak into their house in order to watch them shower, and objectify their bodies, describing the lace dresses they wear to the dance as "bursting with their fructifying flesh". Again, their actions show they don't truly care for the Lisbon sisters - only, self-centeredly, for appearing to be saviours to them.

The girls finally ask the boys to their house late one night, the boys thinking they are all going to run away together. They stand in the dark house, so very unknowing, as the girls commit suicide all around them. This final act is the girls punishing the boys, showing them that they never really knew or understood them, despite how closely they watched them.

Many years after, the neighbourhood boys condemn the girls and their actions: "The essence of the suicides consisted not of sadness or mystery but simple selfishness. The girls took into their own hands decisions better left to God. They became too powerful to live among us, too self-concerned, too visionary, too blind…. They made us participate in their own madness, because we couldn’t help but retrace their steps, rethink their thoughts, and see that none of them led to us."

However, the most selfish ones are the boys. Even after the deaths of the Lisbon sisters, they can still only relate their actions of incredible personal misery and isolation to the effect on themselves.

This blind, self-centered, and misled love is mirrored in Lolita by Humbert Humbert. Firstly, and most obviously, Humbert's use of language demonstrates his warped, romanticised, and oversexualized view of Dolores Haze and other "nymphets". "Nymphet" is a term coined by Humbert Humbert to justify his sexual attraction to little girls. Two quotes display his self-deluded thinking: "Now I wish to introduce the following idea. Between the age limits of nine and fourteen there occur maidens who, to certain bewitched travelers, twice or many times older than they, reveal their true nature which is not human, but nymphic (that is, demoniac); and these chosen creatures I propose to designate as "nymphets".

Through the term "nymphet", Humbert Humbert uses the simple yet incredibly complex tool of language to dehumanise the girls he is attracted to, and therefore rationalizes his actions to the reader and to himself.

This unhinged justification is also repeated in the way he calls Dolores Haze "Lolita". To him, her real name, Dolores, (which means sorrow, or pain, bestowed in honour of the Virgin Mary) is dull and mundane. Lolita, on the other hand, is airy, light, and pretty - an elfish object of desire. Lolita

exists to no one but him - in the same way the singular, alluring, ultra-feminine entity of the Lisbon girls exists only to the neighborhood boys.

This use of language to influence our thinking is even ironically displayed in the fictional “foreword” - it is revealed that the text was originally labelled by Humbert Humbert as “Confessions of a White Widowed Male”, promising a very cold and candid description of his crimes. However, the novel is marketed as a “forbidden romance” with the much more attention-grabbing title of “Lolita”, often with a closeup of a young girl’s seductively painted lips. Further along the book, it slowly becomes clear to the reader that Dolores Haze is just a child. She is a lazy, selfish, shallow, annoying, illogical child, like every single other one. However, because Humbert does not view her as a little girl but as a nymphet, he is surprised, frustrated, and disappointed when she does not wish to read classical literature, or engage with him in intellectual conversation, or visit famous historical and natural tourist attractions along their travels. To the reader, she is not doing anything at all out of the ordinary for a child, but to Humbert Humbert she is not conforming to his imaginary idea of his perfect "nymphet" partner. Similarly - when the neighborhood boys enter the Lisbon house for the first time and look the Lisbon girls in the eye, they discover they all look like normal girls, not like the mysterious, otherworldly creatures as they had envisioned.

Further along in the story, Lolita runs away with a middle-aged playwright called Clare Quilty who was also attracted to little girls and asked her to star in a pornographic film. Correspondingly to the neighborhood boys’ indignation at that mistreatment of the Lisbon sisters, Humbert seeks out and kills Quilty to avenge her honour and quell his own jealousy. Yet - his own actions towards Dolores were equally, if not more, horrifically abusive, even if she was too young to realise it. There is no doubt Humbert Humbert loved Lolita with his whole entire being, loved her more than anything else in the world. However, “Lolita” does not truly exist anywhere except in his mind. His “love” was also entirely selfish. Everything he did to Dolores was a result of his desires overriding his rational and empathetic mind, and was always for his own benefit and never for Dolores’s.

As you peer into that skyward eye of the mangled rabbit corpse, looking closer and closer, trying to find out the answers of the universe, it suddenly blinks. You jump back.

Alive?

No. Only a spasm of death. I wish I could say fear not reader, but fear, because the monsters of selfish, blinded love lie hungry in wait not within the little rabbit - but within you.

Formal 2nd - Grace Jones

AS 91101

Writing Portfolio - Piece One

Essay on George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four

Exam Question: Analyse how key ideas were introduced in the opening of the text “ideas” may refer to character, theme or setting.

Portfolio - Statement of intention: In this essay, I am analysing how different key ideas were introduced in the opening of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. The key ideas that caught my interest: the consequences of totalitarian leadership; the psychological impact of surveillance; and the disintegration of hope, which plays a vital role in driving the plot forward. In this essay I will discuss characters, themes and settings from George Orwell’s final novel, using specific examples as evidence to support my argument.

Nineteen-Eighty-Four - George Orwell (1949)

What would it be like in a world where 2 + 2 = 5? Where ignorance is a people's greatest strength? Where chilling dictators loom in the background, just beyond reach? Nineteen Eighty-Four is a satirical dystopian novel by English author George Orwell. Since its initial release in June of 1949, it has become one of the most famous books in the English language for its analytical depth and ongoing relevance to our society. Orwell's ingenious - and scarily explicit - predictions of the effects that totalitarianism, 'pseudo-hope,' and surveillance have had on our sense of reality are vital ideas that the text centres around. Nineteen-Eighty-Four is a story of the negative aspects of power, a foretold tale of the destruction of Winston. Orwell establishes many of these key ideas in the introduction, including totalitarianism's war on the real, the effects mass surveillance has on the text's psychosocial setting, and the weaponization of hope in bureaucratic society.

Orwell draws the reader's attention to the consequences of totalitarian control, a key idea introduced in the opening chapter of Nineteen Eighty-Four and developed in the novel. Orwell sets the atmosphere of Nineteen Eighty-Four on the first page: stating that Victory Mansions smelt of "boiled cabbage and old rag mats." This pervading sense of poverty is vital in setting up the physical setting because Airstrip One reeks of post-revolutionary instability. Orwell uses this ambiance to introduce us to totalitarianism through the creation of Big Brother. Orwell establishes one of the novel's most prominent symbols, Big Brother, on the first page of the novel: "[The poster] depicted simply an enormous face, more than a meter wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black mustache and ruggedly handsome features… It was one of those pictures that are so contrived that the eyes follow you about when you move. BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU, the caption beneath it ran." Already Orwell has prompted the reader to question Nineteen-Eighty-Four's reality, pitching the question: is totalitarianism the product or the cause of this poverty? Later in the text, Orwell confirms the latter, "Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution to establish the dictatorship. The object of power is power." Orwell, who was very anti-bureaucratic, could see the flaws in the world he lived in - this poverty cycle caused by totalitarian leaders. He may have questioned what allowed these fascist dictators to remain in control? The idea of this centralised power is a fundamental aspect of the text due to how Orwell develops it into the war between fact and fiction. The simple connection between Orwell's Ingsoc, and totalitarian dictatorships, such as Nazi Germany, is the dictator's ability to blur the boundary between reality and subjective reality. Orwell, whom himself had just witnessed the end of the Second World War, created Ingsoc as a fascist dictatorship to warn us. When such systems control countries, both the individual and the 'collective brain' of society are indoctrinated by lies and the chosen propaganda. For Orwell, this takes the shape of the people's lack of power. The massacres and torture at concentration camp complexes in Germany are not so dissimilar to the reprogramming of the mind in the Ministry of Love; both were the consequences of totalitarian control. We cannot exclude such systems and events from analysis, and while not his lived experience, a part of his reality and the setting of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Even today, we must stay conscious and question even our most trusted leaders - every political and religious leader says they act in the best interests of the people, but how true is this? Democracy, which we love so much, only works in times of stability - people are more open to extremism when they lack the power over their situation.

The impact surveillance has on individuals is another key idea Orwell introduces in the text's opening, which, like many other aspects of Nineteen-Eighty-Four, is developed as the conflict between the physical and psychosocial setting. Surveillance is simply another tool that Ignsoc uses to control the outer party members. Nevertheless, what does surveillance look like in the opening of Nineteen-Eighty-Four? In the beginning, Orwell introduces the reader to two symbols of surveillance: the snooping helicopter and the ever-watching telescreen. The helicopter represents the physical surveillance of the individuals: "a helicopter skimmed down between the roofs, hovered for an instant like a bluebottle, and darted away again with curving flight. It was the police patrol, snooping into people's windows." Orwell uses the invasive nature of a swooping vehicle to incite discomfort in the reader, and it is this feeling of discomfort that is vital in introducing the psychosocial setting. The more significant symbol introduced in the opening is the telescreen because it has given Ingsoc the ability to alter human instinct psychologically. The telescreen, described as an oblong metal plaque, is a device that is designed to survey outer party members in their 'private' living quarters. Ingsoc could use this device to spy: "There was, of course, no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment… It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time". However, it seems that the most potent weapon of surveillance that Ingsoc has been able to conjure is not their ability to plug in and spy on outer party members whenever need be, but it is how the telescreen has caused the citizens to end up surveilling themselves - "you had to live- did live, from habit that became instinct- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized." In the novel, Doublethink can be the cause of the demise of the character - as seen by Winston, and even Parsons, whom his child ratted out - and it is this fear of being vaporized by the Thought Police that keeps the majority of subjects under the trance of Ingsoc's process of indoctrination. The inordinate surveillance that Ingsoc applies to everyone living under the Party ends the suggestion of individual thought; individualism is dead. In the novel, Orwell develops surveillance as a paranoia motif. This paranoia is a familiar feeling to when televisions were first introduced to England in the early 1930s. Orwell recalls how there was a genuine fear that this new technology would watch people back. Ingsoc enforces surveillance systems in Airstrip 1 that drastically increase the bureaucratic advantage by enforcing and encouraging surveillance methods of the individual. Ingsoc needs to control the outer members because this is how it remains in control. His narrow, siloed view compromises Winston's credibility on the events he finds himself in, and we as readers are dragged along in Winston's subjectivity, which Orwell has used to make us think about what surveillance does to people in the real world. Orwell was right about one thing; many platforms (such as Google) have developed so that surveillance has caused a lack of privacy. This idea of surveillance and how it can repress free speech is disturbingly relevant in today's age, as more and more of our private lives are put in the public eye through social media. One mistake can ruin a reputation, career, and social life. The online footprint is a shadow that can follow us forever, and yet many people - particularly those who have never had true privacy - do not fully grasp this. Younger generations have not necessarily experienced true privacy, as they cannot compare their reality to any other.

Ingsoc's weaponization of hope, a narrative perspective used to keep the reader in the same ignorance as to the characters, is a key idea introduced in the text's opening, which Orwell develops in Nineteen-Eighty-Four gradual disintegration of hope. Hope is an idea that is distinctive to the human condition. Intrinsic to the thriving and survival of what we consider to be humanity, hope exists as much "more than an emotional response and more than just a wistful desire based on an idle fancy."” However, hope as a construct in dystopian literature is regularly overlooked by the reader and the analyser, often receiving mundane overgeneralizations that show little difference from 'the situation is hopeless' or 'the protagonist gives people hope.' However, in Orwell's Nineteen-Eighty-Four, hope plays an integral role in the development of the plot, as it is utilized as a tool for manipulation and deceit by the Party. To some degree, every single action Winston makes against the Party was initiated by the Party themselves - for example, the diary Winston purchases from Mr. Charrington's store. Before the events of the novel, Winston had already committed Thought Crime by purchasing the book; "it was a particularly beautiful book. Its smooth creamy paper, a little yellow from age, was of a kind that had not been manufactured for at least forty years past". Winston, who was captivated by the object's appeal, purchased it, even though party members could not deal with the free market. At this point, Winston starts to possess 'pseudo-hope' (a sense of false hope that exists by investing hope in others), and the journey of ignorance for both the subject and the reader begins. It is now that the "magnitude of what he had undertaken" hit Winston, his lack of power against Big Brother. Winston's paranoia humanises him to the reader, makes us sympathise with him. Orwell draws the reader in, puts our trust in Winston's unreliable voice, so we are blinded by his ignorance - we trust his perspective, we root for him. We are swept up into his subjectivity, and as such, react to the twists and turns in the plot as he does. Consequently, this is why Orwell's 'final consciousness of failure' hits as it does. We progress through the novel possessing pseudo-hope, as Winston does. Ingsoc undermines the efforts of our would-be hero from the very beginning, and the foreshadowing and disintegration of hope continue throughout the text. Mr. Charrington implanted the diary into Winston's life, and as we know, Charrington would later reveal his true identity as a member of the Thought Police. The final consciousness of failure is an idea Orwell regularly visits in his works. However, in Nineteen-Eighty-Four, the manipulation and disintegration of hope are foretold, as Winston knows he will fail from the beginning. The long-term psychological manipulation and programming start in the very first chapter before even Winston has a chance to react.

The key ideas that have been analysed and discussed in this essay show the ongoing relevance of Nineteen-Eighty-Four. Yes, today's world is different from the world Orwell imagined, but crucially, the fundamental elements of society and our nature have been contested. As seen in the opening of the text, the tantalizing power of Big Brother is developed as a way to show how poverty and the lack of stability are a consequence of totalitarianism. Furthermore, dictators stay in power by controlling their subjects, and one method used in Nineteen-Eighty-Four is mass surveillance. In the novel, surveillance is portrayed as a negative hurdle for our would-be hero, and it is conceivable that Orwell felt that this would be true for the real world. Orwell's fears have come true, but not how he imagined them too. The last key idea discussed is the manipulation of hope. Orwell imagined a world where history and reality are a matter of opinion, and as far-fetched as it seems, our world is not so dissimilar to Orwell's. True hope, as we know it, is famous in Orwell's text for its absence.

References/ Bibliography:

• Lynskey, Dorian - ‘The Ministry of Truth: the Biography of George Orwell’s 1984’

• Ramirez, Luis Alberto - ‘An Unexpected Companion: Hope And Its Role In Dystopian Literature’ 

Formal 3rd - Maia Puricelli 

Significant connections across texts : How novels with autobiographical aspects are important to how history is viewed

Statement of Intent : This essay looks at three novels with semi-autobiographical narrations, One Hundred Years Of Solitude by Colombian author Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The House of the Spirits by Chilean author Isabel Allende, American novelist Alice Walker’s The Color Purple, and an autobiography written by poet Maya Angelou, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings. Throughout the essay, I look at the ways in which each of these novels, through their autobiographical connections, deal with history and the illusion of progress, how they present us with character growth, and insert empathy into history through the development of characters.

How do we feel when we read a novel, a fictionalized story, something that has been made up and carefully curated? Does something change when we find out that our favorite character was really based on a real life person, that that fictional story is now something almost tangible? It is no accident when authors take their own experiences, to play into how they shape their ficionolised ones. But there are times in literature, where history is told, renamed and repatriated through the art of fiction. Even within autobiographies and nonfiction, history becomes someone's property. It becomes someone's story to tell and for the readers, it’s as if we are living that person's life for the duration of the book. How much more is there to take away from a subject when you see it through a character's eyes? What is there to uncover that may have otherwise not been there? Some may say that it is the best and most genuine way of recounting history, but is there always one side to history? When we read these fictional stories about events taken from colonial times and traumatic moments in history that destroy societies, it is almost as if we are being handed history and being told to decide how the story ends, what to do with that information. Often, it is not once mentioned that a novel is semi-autobiographical - it could be heavily influenced by the author's past and experiences but only through analysing the author themselves is when the stars align. We are now able to uncover the rawness of a piece of writing, where it all comes from. History perceived through autobiographical novels and autobiographies themselves is incredibly educational and a perceptive way of thinking, differing from much of the conventional ways of looking at history. It allows for depth and a decorative, nuanced look into historical events.

The texts One Hundred Years Of Solitude written by Gabrial Garcia Marquez and The House of the Spirits by Isabel Allende are hugely interwoven in the way their histories overlap. Through the use of magical realism, at once the texts become unattainable to us in the real world, leaving a gap to fill between how the authors got from a tangible place to a place riddled with magic. I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings is Maya Angelou's first autobiography of seven, demonstrating a raw and personal account of her life in Southern America, as a young black girl. Novels like those written by Marquz and Allende, contrasted with Maya Angelou's writings in her autobiography, demonstrate how this magical, semi-autobiographical form of narration holds history in such a delicate way and influences the way history is written about and consumed, let alone acknowledged. The last text covered in this essay is Alice Walkers’ The Color Purple. A book that exercises nuanced story telling, interwoven with emotions and a fragile history. There is an aspect of growth seen in the main protagonists of these last two books, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings and The Color Purple, leading on to comment on the remarkability of growth within such dire conditions - such as the history of racism in America. The House of The Spirits matches the non-linear time flow that is found in One Hundred Years Of Solitude, where we are following a generational family with the concept of time and of progression forward, toward one direction, is virtually non-existent. This is a product of how history has deemed itself to be an illusion of progress. Subsequent to this, how a non-linear narrative present in novels with semi-autobiographical aspects to them, drives questions on what colonisers and dictatorships really mean when they say ‘we promise you progress”. Finally, within these four texts, the development of characters and the perspective from which the story is introduced to us is a common denominator for all. It is prevalent within all novels with autobiographical aspects; from Clara the Clairvoyant in The House of The Spirits to Ceile in The Color Purple. The characters in these texts are carefully crafted with an impeccable amount of depth that begs the question; How can we look at history without acknowledging these characters, however small and insignificant they may be, and begin to tell stories through their unique beauty?

Alice Walker’s semi-autobiographical novel and Angelou’s autobiography, present us with character growth, and symbols of hope. Both critically acclaimed novels The Color Purple and I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, have protagonists that over the course of their lives in the books shift and move, while their inner monologues grow. Celie, in The Color Purple, is introduced to us through her Letters to God. This excerpt is from the first opening line in the novel, “Dear God, I am fourteen years old. I have always been a good girl. Maybe you can give me a sign letting me know what is happening to me.” Here, Celie has distanced her mind from her body, almost reaching a point where she struggles to feel anything anymore. The rest of the letter goes on to account her getting raped by her father and the numbness she feels going through her life, and all through these traumatic events. In Maya Angelou's recount of her life, she talks about her struggles grappling with that true identity of a young, black girl in Southern America. The author says at one point “If growing up is painful for the southern black girl, being aware of her displacement is the rust on the razor that threatens the throat. It is an unnecessary insult.” where we as the readers become aware of the point of view from which this story starts. Angelou places us forefront in her struggle, she allows us to see retrospectively how her life has influenced her tone in her writing. Applying Maya’s inner monologue used in her autobiography, to Celie in The Color Purple, we can see how these two intertwine in their ability to produce ideas of history cradled by protagonists of similar backgrounds. Both passages see the world in front of them with a distinctly different attitude, so to connect them through their journeys of growth demonstrates the room allowed for hope to bloom in both fictionalized and truful accounts of history. When Angelou brings in this idea of ‘awareness’ that she grapples with growing up, it can then be juxtaposed with Celie’s ‘predetermined fate’ that is introduced to the readers almost subconsciously. As she falls victim to this idea - or more so, this reality - Celie navigates her way through family strife and historical trauma while the author continuously reminds us of her place within herself. When she writes “All my life I had to fight. I had to fight my daddy. I had to fight my brothers. I had to fight my cousins and my uncles. A girl child ain't safe in a family of men. But I never thought I'd have to fight in my own house. She let out her breath. I loves Harpo, she say. God knows I do. But I'll kill him dead before I let him beat me.” Maya Angelou’s words of “awareness of her displacement” lie plainly in Walker's writing. She talks about her “own house” and with that, the importance of personal faith and what Celie's relationship towards her own personal faith and security within herself is, reveals itself to the readers. Celie struggles with personal faith, where her sense of security lies, all throughout Walker's novels, her life is filled with a search for something greater, something to explain the pain caused. In the end, Celie symbolises a powerful idea in her findings of greatness through the letters of her sister, Nettie. Nettie and Celies relationship is something that acts as this catalyst for the systems of growth identified in this novel. Maya Angelou takes her autobiography to celebrate the importance of love and relationships under the constant oppression she grows up in, Alice Walker brings love in her novel in sort of the same way as Maya. So as to demonstrate hope and beauty in a distraught world. For Celie a lot of her struggle lies her reason to live and love, underneath all the trauma and hurt she experiences. For all of her life she is silenced because of the colour of her skin and her gender, as this starts almost as soon as she can speak, her sense of her own importance is virtually extinguished by society and even those she calls family. The role of both characters, as women, in their societies, is mirrored from one book to another, but what ultimately determines how these two, autobiographically centred books are connected, is through each journey within themselves. Maya finds hope, much like Celie, against a backdrop of hurt and trauma. Through a strengthened connection towards such stories such as Celie and Maya’s, ones riddled with beauty and emotion, we read these novels and autobiographies and are able to then insert our empathy into history.

It is uncertain whether Isabel Allende really did read One Hundred Years Of Solitude and later wrote her own novel, the House of the Spirits, doing so as an ode to the former with what was labeled at the time as a “feminist” and “radical” peice of writing. Nevertheless, we have two novels, heavily influenced by the history of South American colonialism and dictatorship, written by the likes of two authors who lived through events such as the overthrow of a government, the colonization of a country, the persecution of families, and the ill treatment of slaves. With this in mind, the connection made between the two with their flow of non-linear time, is not one unfamiliar to autobiographical novels. It produces this idea of the illusion of progress, something omnipresent in the history of colonialism. In One Hundred Years Of Solitude we follow the Buendia family, a distraught and dysfunctional family that through turbulent times, encounter an insomnia plague, the colonisation of their town Macondo and its agriculture, and a bloody massacre of hundreds of workers on strike. Marquez plagues the town with insomnia, as if to demonstrate the vulnerability of a town so deeply enriched with generational ties, but also as the author's recapitulation of the town's sufferings, happening time and time again. Colonel Auereliano Buendia says at one point in the novel “look at the mess we’ve got ourselves into, just because we invited a gringo to eat some bananas” and from here, the town succumbs to being pulled apart from its roots. Colonel Buendia makes light of this situation through his satirical dialogue, and we see the town’s sufferings once again through this next event; the bloody massacre of hundreds of workers. Marquez writes “(S)omething happened that did not bring on fright but a kind of hallucination. The captain gave the order to fire and fourteen machine guns answered at once…...but not the slightest reaction was perceived, not a cry, not even a sigh among the compact crowd that seemed petrified by an instantaneous invulnerability.” The last turning point in the illusion of progress is then unveiled in this event. Here, the town of Macondo and the Buendia family have been beaten down and lost all their dignity time and time again. Not only in its heartbreaking and completely unethical qualities are the readers hugely impacted - because this affects us nonetheless - but it is through its almost mind-numbing quality that we become, in a sense, controlled by Marquezes writing. We become almost senseless to the constant “illusion of progress” that Marquez writes into his novel. In the House of The Spirits, Allende narrates the lives of 3 generations of women living in “The Big House on The Corner” and each time we are again reminded of the former generation, whether it be through the spirits Clara leaves behind, saving her presence within the house, or all through the similar, politically centred men who are brought in separately by all three of the women. The semi-autobiographical novel centers itself around the three women, Clara, Blanca and Alba, who each become attached to different men, one mirroring the other. But, although this follows their relationships within each other, the women are not defined by who they marry instead they are defined by the way they mirror each other in their actions. Alba, in her final words says this “At times I feel as if I had lived all this before and that I have already written these very words, but I know it was not I……..the space of a single life is brief, passing so quickly that we never get a chance to see the relationship between events; we cannot gauge the consequences of our acts, and we believe in the fiction of past, present and future, but it may also be true that everything happens simultaneously” This example mirrors the power that these relationships have, to run parallel alongside each other, and to show the illusion of progress - time and time again. It is here that Isabel alludes to this idea of progression and how flawed it really is. She then places these characters in positions where they become affluent toward the males, in their magical powers and their able minds. She uses these 3-dimensional, psychologically magical beings to stand above the ‘political rubbish’ that occupy the male population of their town, and ultimately, they juxtapose each other. It is predominantly through them that we are able to see the illusion of progress within the politically polarized town. The actions of the male antagonists such as Pedro Tercero, who falls in love with Blanca, and Esteban Trueba who marries Clara, oppose almost everything that these women bring to the table. Esteban Trueba dies alongside Alba as she meditates on the generations before her and as Allende lets him die she says this “(A)s my grandfather slowly lost the rage that had tormented him throughout his life, (Clara) appeared as she had been at her best….thanks to her presence Esteban Trueba was abe to die happy, murmuring her name: Clara, clearest, clairvoyant.” So much brings us back around to the start of the novel with this excerpt from the death of Esteban Trueba who is the eldest and the longest lived throughout the entire novel, at start and at ending points the novel draws to him to link it, and “Clara the Clairvoyant” which is the title of one of the first chapters is back in our presence once again. History repeats itself, as societies we are constantly being thrown into dictatorships and rulings that exert similar ideas as the past ones, much of which are worded only slightly differently, or developed through the use of different mechanisms, all getting them to the same endpoint. Therefore, if history follows this pattern, the lives of these magical realist characters, which are written with strong autobiographical links, naturally, follow a similar path. It is here that we can identify the powerful link that these novels have, while both being semi-autobiographical of the author's lives.

The development of characters and how the authors deal with each of them acts as a common denominator, connecting these books. We are able to see how books, specifically semi-autobiographical ones, hold true to having nuanced characters as a method of keeping their account of history personal and touched with beauty. So, why is this trait important and omni-present in books that base themselves on real events? We crave that recognisable trait in literature, us humans. This crucial trait of insignificance, or beauty in the smallest things, all which is found in characters strewn throughout these novels, allows readers to relate to the text. And when dealing with history, this form of it acknowledges these characters and inserts them into moments like these to suggest empathy and a sensitivity towards these events. “Kneeling her pew, Blanca would inhale the intense smell of the virgin’s incense and lilies, suffering that combined torment of nausea, guilt and boredom. It was the only thing she disliked about the school. She loved the high-vaulted stone corridors, the immaculate cleanliness of the marble floors, the naked white walls, and the iron Christ who stood watch in the vestibule. She was a romantic, sentimental child, with a preference for solitude, few friends and a propensity to be moved to tears when the roses in the garden bloomed.” This detailed account of Blanca's presence, her composure, draws on a romanticized and aestheticised ideal of religion, as well as the symbolism of ‘the iron Christ’ in the bathroom which dawns on ideas of purity and innocence within this character. Here, Allende demonstrates a nuanced account of her characters where we can identify a development that shows us how to love, how to become attached and pulls on our emotions as if to pull us in. Much like this beautifully poetic passage of Blanca, Alice Walker leans into this with her description of Nettie and her children towards the final passages in her book. Nettie, to Celie, is a symbol of hope and beauty, therefore her descriptions of her and later her children show us the power of this, outwardly and toward the readers. “I feel a little peculiar round the children. For one thing they grown. And I see they think me and Nettie and Shug and Albert and Samuel and Harpo and Sofia and Jack and Odessa real old and don't know much what going on. But I don't think us feel old at all. And us so happy. Matter of fact, I think this the youngest us ever felt.” That last line holds the reader's emotion with the same intensity that Allende's writing does and we can analyse how the beauty from these characters and their emotions is ever so strong in books with autobiographical stories. It is in Maya Angelou's last chapters of her autobiography that we see emotion and a connection akin to Allende's novel and The Color Purple. As she navitages her way through being pregnant at sixteen, Maya writes “Just as gratefulness was confused in my mind with love, so possession became mixed up with motherhood. I had a baby. He was beautiful and mine. Totally mine. No one had brought him for me.” and once again we are introduced to the power of literature through emotion, through these autobiographical accounts of history and what becomes at once most important are these nuanced moments of fragile beauty. How we have become so accustomed to seeing history and the plight of a society through the shifting realms of media, is what makes the importance of these fictionalized stories and how they resonate with their descriptions of love and happiness most impactful. Each one different in how they found love, but equal in resonance.

Never has it been a more pressing moment to look at history and analyse how, and where, our actions towards conflicting issues stem from. It is clear, in the analysis of these particular novels and autobiographies, that what is most present is a true and emotional tone, something that very much influences the way that us as readers grasp and attain the knowledge within. Maya Angelou, in her grasping, honest, and true, early life story, speaks to us with that same tone that Marquez uses to interweave magical qualities with realist ideas, his own, personal experiences. They both narrate with nuanced human qualities. Those that each and everyone of us possess and have the ability to relate to when we read accounts of history such as those in Angelou and Marquez’s novels. So, through this exploration of these four novel, and connections such as the illusion of progress, growth within characters, questions of what it means to put your heart out on a page and write something so heavily woven with semi-autobiographical still remain, but what is clear is the effect of which this has on us as readers. And we are left with knowledge and an introspective link between history, magic, relationships, and human beings ourselves; as Alice Walker writes in her novel “I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ask. And that in wondering ‘bout the big things and asking ‘bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, the more I love.”