Comparing The Drover's Wife 'And Pupils'

Composers use elements of distinctively visual to draw the audience into the vivid and memorable images through texts and films. The concept of distinctive images is demonstrated in the short stories of ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘In a Dry Season’ written by Henry Lawson and short film ‘Pupils’ directed by Nick Ward. These forms of texts impact the view of the reader and convey their point of two different worlds of hardships and survival.

Henry Lawson has used vivid and memorable images as distinctively visual to bring to life particular experiences through ‘The Drover’s Wife’. It allows the audience to explore these experiences through visuals. An example of a life experience is the negative aspects of the bush and its effects on the wife.
This is demonstrated in a pessimistic tone during his monotonous train journey. Lawson’s ‘In a Dry Season’ provokes a visual image in the reader’s mind of the western environment and the hardships the people face to survive. He opens the introduction with an imperative statement in ‘draw a wire fence and a few ragged gums…’ This creates a visual sense of dullness within a different insight of an isolated harsh environment. His use of literary techniques reinforces the idea of a stereotypical society of the bush and its people. Moreover, Lawson provides the audience with a distinctive image of the inhabitants as ‘the first sundowner... dressed in a tailcoat turned yellow, a print shirt and a pair of moleskin trousers…and his old straw’ the use of descriptive language here further emphasises the characteristics of the people. Lawson allows us to have a deeper understanding of the outback lifestyle and landscape. In addition, he implies a visual juxtaposition in ‘death is about the only cheerful thing in the bush/jolly red face beneath it..’ as sarcasm to juxtapose death and happiness and to reinforce the visual of the bush. It highlights the dark elements of the negative environment portraying the experiences of the careless
He explores the elements of bullying as a negative experience and its survival within the surreal environment of the blind. The title of the short film causes the audience to visualise a powerful imagery where the title centres the idea of blindness and the perception of bullying within the society. An example of a distinctive image is the scenes of silence where it represents how fragments of bullying is often ignored by bystanders within the environment. This allows the audience to change their renewed perspectives of others around them. Further in the film, a panning shot is used to present the bullies in the room however the blindfolds show the hidden innocence and denial of bullying. This type of shot further provides a strong link to how reports of bullying is passed often, but no change usually takes place in the school or society. Furthermore, Ward employs a final close up in the end of the student being blindfolded to subvert the audience and their visual perceptions of bullying to change due to the surreal environment of the school and its negative aspects. Therefore, Nick Ward’s ‘Pupils’ present several distinctive images to convert the idea of bringing the vivid and memorable images to life