Preview

Analytical Response to a Satirical Text

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
645 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Analytical Response to a Satirical Text
Analytical Response to a Satirical Text

John Marsden and Shaun Tan’s ‘The Rabbits’ is an enthralling allegorical picture book which depicts the story of the colonisation of Australia. The message of the text shows that when the European people who are referred to as ‘the Rabbits’ came to Australia, the Indigenous Australians are soon overrun and invaded by them. This story is intended to symbolise the fight between the Indigenous Australians and the Outsiders. There is an emotional depth to both Marsden and Tan’s work that strongly affects the audience. The use of very simple text and evocative pictures help to convey Marsden’s and Tan’s point of view.

Throughout the text, the author uses various visual techniques to help create an empathetic relationship between the reader and the Indigenous Australians. Tan introduced a surreal quality of imagery throughout the book. The illustrations were ambiguous in terms of mixed admiration and dread, they were exaggerated but not caricatured or didactic. The illustrations throughout the book are very detailed and help to enhance the story immensely. The colourful images at the start of the book, before the Rabbits arrive, symbolise that the Indigenous Australians lived in a healthy, happy and harmonious environment. However, this transitions into dark and dull imagery when the outsiders arrive. This portrays that the Rabbits distorted the Indigenous Australians culture, heritage, history and way of life. The arrows on the Rabbit’s flag which point in every direction represent their never ending invasion of the Indigenous Australian’s land. As the story progresses the quantity of numbats, which represent the Indigenous Australians, decreases tremendously and the amount of rabbits increases. This symbolises the growing of the European population and the diminishing of the Indigenous Australians. The detailed imagery of the kangaroos with spears and the rabbits with guns symbolise the fights between the Indigenous

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The book Nanberry written by Jackie French gets readers to be interested in early Australia because of its historical accuracy, telling the reader both stories of the Aboriginals and the white settlers and how they felt about each other. This is shown when Nanberry first sees White people: ‘Nanberry stared out between the trees. He could see people! men with white faces, their bodies covered in the skins of strange animals, blue red and brownish grey.’ (p.3.) Color imagery is used to describe the strange colors that the Aboriginals saw worn by the white settlers, with their strange animal skins colored in unnatural colours like blue and red, which were rarely seen in the natural environment. Also because of the bright coloured clothing they wore they stood out from the greens and brown in the natural landscape. The Aboriginals found this peculiar, showing that the white people did…

    • 580 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    There are many views surrounding the Charlie Hebdo firebombing from January 7th. Many journalists from sources such as The Guardian, FOX News, and the New York Times say that the shooting of cartoonists in defense of religious beliefs is unethical and immoral. However, these approaches to the issue of freedom of speech presented by the Hebdo cartoons, which portray the Muslim prophet Mohammed in derogatory and lewd sketches, are represented quite differently by Joe Sacco in his comic titled On Satire. In this comic, Sacco demonstrates his opinion on the issue of freedom of speech by showing how offensive the material was that Hebdo had published. This was easily…

    • 308 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    The migrant experience describes an individual’s change form one social context to another. Such a vast difference of results in a complicated confrontation of values. Hence a sense of belonging lies inherent in the individual’s ability to marry or reconcile identity with their social environment. Raimond Gaita’s semi-autobiographical memoir Romulus, My Father and the Australian’s feature article Alice Pung on New Australians both explore the difficulties faced when immigrating and how a new found sense of belonging occurs through a transformation of identity and values. John Marsden and Shawn Tan’s picture book The Rabbits use the graphical and written to demonstrate the loss of identity due to a loss…

    • 651 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Demographic transformations in the Australian populace guaranteed that, for the first time, Australians born in Australia outstripped persons born abroad. Satisfactorily than condescending the colonist scene and existence, as had the migrant generation as “relocated Englishmen”20, the endeavor was sort out throughout the 1890s to institute a exclusively Australian national identity, demonstrating Australian qualities without turning in a “servile imitation of England”21. Contradictory action to the national recoil earlier, the originators were mainly authors and illustrators aware of their place in the crusade. Their philosophical anxieties distorted into props of an Australian spirit: patriotism and race predisposition. Evidently resulting from the working-class and distinctive understandings of the Australian wilderness, this macho fabricated character of fairness, collectivism, and mateship offered the bushman as the perfect character signifying Australia and its morals, which categorically comprised a ‘White Australia’.…

    • 1859 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Satire Assessment Task

    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages

    “Satire is moral outrage transformed into art.” How do the novel you read and another satirical text support this statement?…

    • 985 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    A subtle but recognizable visual representation of the theme ‘subduing of a culture lost’ is on a section of the novel where there’s a photo of a young horse being ‘choked down’ a method of subduing wild horses as part of the breaking in process. Numerous references throughout the book to the tethering and subduing of wild animals are metaphorical for the perspective of the European invaders of Australia to its indigenous culture and people. One of them was the seeking of the bull as being allegorical for the elimination of Aboriginal culture which was brought into focus with a graphic sequence along the bottom of the page 64. In the boy’s hallucination, the bull’s hump becomes the aboriginal child. That visual representation along with the woman’s quote ‘some…

    • 1198 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Requiem for a Beast Essay

    • 1229 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Images can have a powerful effect on the way a person perceives a story. It can be the line that connects two dots together and adds a visual emotion to just a plain text. Matt Ottley’s multimodal text, Requiem for a Beast, uses illustrations, music, text and changes in point of view to highlight the major themes that develop throughout the text. Themes such as reconciliation and the Stolen Generation are explored and the hardships that the Aboriginal people endured are present as well. The Stolen Generation is interpreted as a time when Aboriginal children were forcibly removed from their homes and then taken under custody of the Australian Government.…

    • 1229 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest provides a satirical view of the Victorian era, primarily focusing on Victorian standards of marriage and social expectations. Wilde builds his critique of Victorian morality through his humor and wit between the character’s banter, the hypocritical Victorian view of honesty.…

    • 672 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Candide Satire Analysis

    • 121 Words
    • 1 Page

    In Candide, a satire, the author Voltaire comments on the idea that all people will either suffer from the lethargy of boredom, or the restlessness of anxiety. He questions whether it is worse to live a safe yet dull life, or a dangerous and exotic one. This is displayed throughout the book, specifically when Candide and his travelling companion Cacambo come across Eldorado. There they are safe and everyone is happy, yet they soon grow bored of this easy life and risk their lives by leaving the far off city of riches. Having chosen the dangerous route, they go on to experience the harsh world that surrounds them. After encountering both afflictions, they whether they would rather be lethargic or…

    • 121 Words
    • 1 Page
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the article, “The Science of Sarcasm? Yeah, Right”, Richard Chin points out the fact that Sarcasm detector is the very useful creation and people should master the skill about sarcasm. Additionally, he emphasizes why people consider the sarcasm should be their lives. First of all, it could help people do the brain exercise because people need to know and understand what is sarcasm and how to use it. In another way, it could make your smart if you practice sarcasm. Then, it brings funny to your lives. Richard also mentions about that people like to use sarcasm with their friends than enemies. In my opinion, because they are your friends, they know you well, and they do not care about the joy would hurt them or not. And in this way, it could…

    • 346 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    First off, before we get any further into this argument and things are stated, I must make it very clear – I’m a 100% against trying to put any type of force against our right by the Constitution to bear arms. The biggest question I have that pertains to this subject is always “Do people seriously think gun control is going to make any type of positive affect on this country?”…

    • 482 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Many Aboriginal stories contain important themes. The short stories “Yellow Woman” by Leslie Marmon Silko, “Soul Catcher” by Louis Owens, and “From Love Medicine” by Louise Erdrich all incorporate one theme. The theme in these stories is the tension between myths and reality in a modern day society. The authors placed this theme in their stories to let people know that it is important to find a good balance of personal and cultural beliefs in life. In “Yellow Woman”, the protagonist questions if the man she meets is a character from a story she heard as a child. Again, in “Soul Catcher”, the boy does not believe the old man when he says that the panther is not a mere animal. In “From Love Medicine”, Lipsha’s attitude toward the “magic” in his life changes throughout the story. This theme of myth versus reality is consistent…

    • 886 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ultimately, TROGE aims to challenge “...the implicit teleology and destructive constructions of progress in Western epistemologies” and remind viewers that the European perspective is not the only truth (Lingard, 2014). By layering Western concepts (geometric shapes and architectural depictions) upon the Australian landscape, Bennett reflects how European ideas have been forced upon Indigenous heritage. Furthermore, he relates to the Western perspective as an illusion, just like how Western art often sees the illusion of three-dimensional space made by the perspective lines (ngv, n/a). This illusion is heightened by the landscape and sky being painted in a style reflective of European Romantic art, where dramatically realistic portrayals of beauty and emotion are presented (ngv, n/a). Bennett disrupts this illusion metaphorically and physically by adding disparate diagrams, symbols and images (e.g. black footprints representing indigenous presence on the land), showing that many different mediums and forms, or perspectives, coexist. The impact European culture has had on indigenous people is showcased by each figure depicted: for example, in Requiem, the solemn face belongs to Trugannini (c.1812 - 1876), a Tasmanian Palawa woman, who is thought to be ‘the last…

    • 878 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Satire ineffectively creates social change, because people do not take it seriously, thus rendering it impossible to make any positive impact. It leads to outrageous consequences that all people should try to avoid whenever possible.…

    • 329 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Rabbit Proof Fence has been published both as a book and as a movie. Being a reader or a viewer entirely changes our point of view on the story. As a reader, we get descriptive insight on the situations and emotions of the characters. We are then able to re-create these visually using our imagination and have endless freedom doing so. As a viewer, our creativity is somewhat restricted. We do not imagine the characters’ physical appearance, the locations or the overall situations in the same way as in a book. These elements are already given to us. Throughout this essay I will be exploring how the music and the filming creates a contrast between reading the book with elaborate descriptions.…

    • 1354 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays