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English Essay
‘Is year of wonders primarily a study of grief and loss, or does it offer the reader an uplifting, optimistic message?
‘Is year of wonders primarily a study of grief and loss, or does it offer the reader an inspiring, positive message?

Geraldine Brooks, depicts a community caught in extraordinary times in her historical novel Year of Wonders, which is set in the ‘plague town’ Eyam in 1666–1667. It was known as the ‘hardest season’ of Eyam where loss and grief was rousing. The plague that had risen to Eyam, had caused many losses of lives, however plague had individuals find direction and purpose and act as a rebirth to life. Although characters experience weaknesses, they are able to conquer their weaknesses and fears. Even when Eyam was then called ‘the season of death’ it was also a lesson to the society and how individuals persevere and become resilience in crisis.
As entire families were wiped out, Anna frith had suffered an extreme trauma throughout the novel of Geraldine Brooks. We observe Anna’s thoughts about the mine ‘I had been afraid of mines long before’ due to at the start of the novel, Anna loses her loved husband whilst he was working in the mine. Even though her husband’s death was not a result of the plague, it still had depicted he weakness of Anna Frith. Due to the result of the extreme trauma plague had unleashed upon characters, the whole village was slowly getting wiped out, like the death of her both sons Jamie and Tom along with her lodger George Viccars and her role models in the Gowdies along side with others in the village. Anna Frith was known to be a young lady who was ‘a woman who faced more terrors than many warriors’.
Anna Frith who had confronted more fears and uncertainties then other characters; she intends to be able to self-develop herself through her love of knowledge. Anna, a young lady who had lost her husband and two sons, was to be able to wipe away her fears and develop herself throughout Brooks’ novel. Anna

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