STUDY
BUDDY
1
Module A –Distinctive Voices
Essay Question: Compare the ways distinctive voices are created in ‘The Life and
Crimes of Harry Lavender’ and in ONE other related text of your own choosing.
As language lies at the core of communication, composers are given the opportunity to use and manipulate written language through the vehicle of distinctive voicesshaping meaning and understanding of the wider world and people within a text. A great range of language techniques are used in my prescribed text, the novel ‘The
Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender’ by Marele Day and my related text the ‘Sorry
Address’ by Kevin Rudd, with each composer using similar forms of language in order to create distinctive voices relating to genre, character and contextual setting.
However, the language structures and features used in both texts do differ in some respects as each composer’s manipulation of language differs greatly from another in an attempt to convey their moral values, represent different ideas, attitudes and values in relation to people and the wider world within texts, to challenge society’s expectations and mould audience interpretations and perceptions of particular contexts. Marele Day’s crime novel, ‘The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender’ manipulates language within text in innovative ways in order for the composer’s authorial voice in relation to relationships and the wider world to be expressed and communicated through different narrative voices. Using two prominent differentiating narrative voices, Day uses the character and voice of the protagonist, Claudia Valentine, and the antagonist, the crime overlord Harry Lavender, to not only juxtapose the nature of the protagonist and antagonist but also to express her realistic concerns about the moral decay of Sydney, to challenge the notion of stereotypes and to question the notion of appearance versus reality.
Opposing the stereotypical ‘hard-boiled’ private investigator through the distinctive voice of a