Stephen
Teaching and Learning Guide
Destroying Avalon
This guide includes:
Analysis of plot, characterization, style
Full textual notes
Comprehension questions
List of further resources and links
Other activities: student briefs
Devised by: Trudi Evans & Kate McCaffrey
Study Guide
Destroying Avalon
Setting and Plot
Setting
The setting for the story is 2006, revealed through the popular culture references to TV shows: The OC, Neighbours and Missy Higgins’ song Scar and also the type of technology: text messaging, emails, blogs, chat rooms; in a coastal suburb (Sorrento is mentioned twice) in Perth. The housing is modern, middle class, suburban,
‘The houses we were looking at were new and modern, with theatre rooms and separate teenage wings. They were so different from our haphazardly planned and tacked together house in Grace Point, where every room radiated off the kitchen, a gigantic brick-floored room with an enormous old wooden butcher’s block that served as a bench.’
The Maloneys move from their country home of Grace Point (fictitious) to this coastal suburb for the start of Avalon’s Year 10. The insularity and closeness of Grace Point’s school is juxtaposed with the metropolitan school Westerly.
‘The school was modern, it couldn’t have been very old. Perfectly manicured lawns separated the buildings, with their names -- English, Maths, Social Sciences -- displayed on the portico entrances. Each building was surrounded by rose gardens, whose perfume we could smell from the car. Tall, leafy, light green trees shaded the lawns. On one side of the grounds there were netball courts and playing fields and on the other was an enormous two-storey building defined by the word Administration.
It was a far cry from my country school, which catered for pre-primary to year twelve: a single rectangular building of red brick, probably built by the first convicts, surrounded by verandahs with chipped, faded
Destroying Avalon
This guide includes:
Analysis of plot, characterization, style
Full textual notes
Comprehension questions
List of further resources and links
Other activities: student briefs
Devised by: Trudi Evans & Kate McCaffrey
Study Guide
Destroying Avalon
Setting and Plot
Setting
The setting for the story is 2006, revealed through the popular culture references to TV shows: The OC, Neighbours and Missy Higgins’ song Scar and also the type of technology: text messaging, emails, blogs, chat rooms; in a coastal suburb (Sorrento is mentioned twice) in Perth. The housing is modern, middle class, suburban,
‘The houses we were looking at were new and modern, with theatre rooms and separate teenage wings. They were so different from our haphazardly planned and tacked together house in Grace Point, where every room radiated off the kitchen, a gigantic brick-floored room with an enormous old wooden butcher’s block that served as a bench.’
The Maloneys move from their country home of Grace Point (fictitious) to this coastal suburb for the start of Avalon’s Year 10. The insularity and closeness of Grace Point’s school is juxtaposed with the metropolitan school Westerly.
‘The school was modern, it couldn’t have been very old. Perfectly manicured lawns separated the buildings, with their names -- English, Maths, Social Sciences -- displayed on the portico entrances. Each building was surrounded by rose gardens, whose perfume we could smell from the car. Tall, leafy, light green trees shaded the lawns. On one side of the grounds there were netball courts and playing fields and on the other was an enormous two-storey building defined by the word Administration.
It was a far cry from my country school, which catered for pre-primary to year twelve: a single rectangular building of red brick, probably built by the first convicts, surrounded by verandahs with chipped, faded