Henry Lawson Distinctively Visual Essay

Discuss how the distinctively visual conveys distinctive experiences in at least TWO of Lawson’s short stories set for study and ONE other related text of your own choosing, which must be a visual text. You must attach a deconstructed copy of your visual text.

Henry Lawson conveys distinctively visual experiences in his short stories through techniques such as imagery, tone, personal reflection, language and style. The use of language and the development of characters in Lawson’s short stories create distinctively visual images to position the reader to correctly interpret the text and shape their understanding. ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and ‘In a Dry Season’ demonstrate Lawson’s skill in clearly reflecting distinctive Australian voices and a
Lawson longs to leave the harshness of his surroundings and such negative feelings towards the bush are expressed within his short stories. Sacrifices are to be made whilst living in the outback and this is clearly demonstrated through the strong development of the character, the drover’s wife. The symbol of the ‘Young Ladies’ Journal’, represents the wife’s feministic side which she has left behind in order to brave and survive the environment. ‘Her surroundings are not favourable to the development of the “womanly” or sentimental side of nature’, helps the audience to visualise the precise character of the wife, adding to the understanding of the merciless conditions she has grown such accustom to that she would feel ‘strange away from it’. The vastness and ruthlessness of the countryside is also highlighted through the use of repetition and unequivocal language. Illustrating a baron domain in which ‘There is nothing to see... not a soul meet’, effectively focuses on the broad surroundings of the drover’s wife. To further develop the negative, distinct experience of the outback, Lawson bluntly describes the harsh environment as a ‘bush with no horizon’. This unequivocal language evokes an atmosphere of endless monotony. Negative adjectives describing the surroundings of the drover’s wife help the audience to distinctively visual image from a dry and parched location - ‘stunted,
Henry addresses and invites the audience to ‘Draw a wire fence and a few ragged gums, and add some scattered sheep running away from the train’, immediately engaging the readers through the technique of imagery and the use of the motif, capturing the vastness and negative experience of the outback. Contrasting to the true harshness of the bush, Lawson romanticises the outback by presenting an artist who ‘might make a watercolour sketch’ of the outback, which alludes to a soft and gentle distinctively visual image contradicting the verifiable reality. Both the outback and its inhabitants are inveterate and hardened by the elements. By the use of negative adjectives of the landscape, Lawson implies the true harshness of the ‘ragged’ and ‘scattered’ bush. With only brief descriptions of people, lack of names and the absence of any softening female presence, the harshness of the outback is reinforced and demonstrated. Lawson also refers to the Macquaire as a ‘narrow, muddy gutter’, establishing the scarceness of the population and alluding to the title through the use of