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Fly Away Peter Identity

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Fly Away Peter Identity
Australia is a relatively young country compared to the rest of the world and places such as Europe. Before the First World War Australia struggled to give itself a lasting identity, the war united the Australian people together for the first time as a nation, and created the ‘ANZAC legacy' and the Australian way we know today. The years surrounding World War One helped build our identity, and David Malouf expresses this issue in the novella Fly Away Peter.

In 1914 Australia was just a newly federated country, only 13 years into it's nationhood. Australians in this time had no identity of their own and were dependent on their ‘mother country', they saw themselves as British people in a new land, and their loyalties were very strong to
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War is something Australia has not yet experienced, and most of the Australians were "filled with excitement" and the streets were "filled with an odd electricity". They had "entered a different day," Australia was going to become a part of the bigger picture, and Jim felt that it "made him bold", ready to try and experience new …show more content…
There are many stories of amazing things ANZACs have done, such as Simpson and his donkey, and the extreme lengths mates would go to for each other, which show the true ‘ANZAC spirit'. Mateship was a fundamental part of the ANZAC attitude, even Jim who was very quite, made a very close bond with Clancy "Jim would never have done any of it alone; but with Clancy it seemed like an adventure". The people at home had heard of how appalling the conditions were at war, but felt this same spirit, and the need to volunteer themselves as well, so they could give their mates a hand. Jim's father shares this same view, "I'd go meself … To be with them lads" but Jim has his own reasons for going, he realized that he couldn't miss out on being a part of something that would change his life for ever, "If he didn't go … he would never understand, when it was over, why his life and everything he had known were so changed, and nobody would be able to tell

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