King Bantam is T.A.G Hungerford’s autobiography, which was published in 1983. This autobiography is written as a short story and it is about his childhood and the mischievous innocence that it contains. The text conveys the idea that children don’t purposefully do bad things because they are too innocent to know what’s right and wrong. Another idea presented is that motherly love usually foreshadows the mistakes of their children. Hungerford presents these ideas through the use of written conventions such as setting, P.O.V, language and characterization to receive a positive response from the readers.
The setting plays a main role to convey the main ideas. The text is set in south Perth, around 1924 and around then, there wasn’t any high security. This made it easy for young Hungerford to “take” the Bantam. Tom says “I stood with my chin on the middle wire of the fence around the buffaloes yard, considering the situation.” This implies that there was only a wired fence standing between Tom and the bantams. Young Tom was innocent but adroit. He waited until near dark to steal a Bantam. Us as readers are positioned to respond supportively towards Tom because he was innocent and what he was stealing was not something major.
Without the P.O.V, the readers would’ve have read the text in a different perspective and would’ve given a negative response towards young Hungerford. The text is written in 1st person. This helps the readers understand why Tom stole the bantam and that his innocence played a big part in it. For example “I had so longed for a bantam that I had even prayed for it”. “Please god, let me have a bantam”. This confirms that Tom didn’t steal the Bantam because he thought it was a good idea, but because he so longed for it, he even prayed to god for one. Through the use of P.O.V we can understand where young Tom is coming from and this helps the readers respond approvingly towards the text.
The language of the text plays an