Visual Imagery In Peter Goldsworthy's 'Maestro'

Essay
Peter Goldsworthy’s novel Maestro is substantially autobiographical. Through the development of the narrator Paul Crabbe from adolescence into maturity, Peter recalls aspects of his own experiences growing up in Darwin. Goldsworthy employs a musical style throughout the novel to engage the audience with visual imagery. The style features used to create characterisation and descriptive settings are all distinctively visual and help to shape the meaning of the text. Similarly Pablo Picasso used imagery to create meaning and shock viewers through his painting Guernica. The painting is Picasso’s protest against the massacre and suffering of innocent civilians during the bombing of the small town of Guernica by the Germans during the Spanish Civil War.
Goldsworthy paints a clear image of Paul’s piano teacher, Keller through strong descriptive language. Through the images it becomes evident that Keller who is a very cultured man with his choice of apparel; a ‘suit, white linen, freshly pressed’, that he does not belong in the boisterous Darwin. Goldsworthy does this by juxtaposing the environment of the Swan hotel that ‘was packed, the drinkers and their noise spilling... into the front garden’ with Keller’s room that was populated with two huge pianos.
The
fine line between a music genus and a person who is simply technically talented is obvious throughout the text as one of its central themes as Paul struggles to achieve the ‘perfection’ that Keller has, but he is only able to become ‘technically perfect’. Need quote on how he makes this image
The theme of romance and the difference between love and lust is shown through the contrasts of Paul’s girls, Megan and Rosie.
Megan is Paul’s first love interest and it is clear to the reader that the romance is only one of lust. Megan is first introduced and arrestingly visualised and metamorphosed as a ‘haloed vision’. Rosie on the other hand isn’t described visually; instead she is described as an annoying aspect of Paul’s school day. He portrays her voice as being ‘high pitched, like an insect’. Here we are given the impression of Megan being an angel and Rosie a fly but Paul proves that he is maturing and picks Rosie over Megan who never develops but instead cultivates into the image of a sex
object.
Paul’s parents instantly dislike the climate of Darwin but Paul recalls how he ‘loved the town of booze and blow at first sight’ explains the rain during the wet season as ‘vast, distant cubes of water falling slowly, ponderously out of the sky. This metaphor coveys to the reader the physical weight of the rain and the onomatopoeic use of the letter ‘S’ reinforces this weight and paints a clear image.
To further describe the beauty of Darwin’s wet season Paul describes the wild life and plants with cartoon imagery and metaphors, comparing the colours of the butterflies to ‘bright rainbows’ and ‘coffee-book colour’ and the small insects as ‘giant clockwork creatures’. These images propose a strong visual of the environment of Darwin.
The Images created by peter Goldsworthy can be compared and contrasted with those found in Picasso’s propaganda painting of Guernica.
Picasso has painted the entire painting that measures 350x782 metres in black, white and grey. These are the colours of tragedy and the sheer mass of the painting screams to the viewer to pay attention to the work and its message.
At the bottom of the painting Picasso has placed a broken dagger in the hand of a severed arm and out of the clenched fist, right beside the dagger grows a flower, the unusual depiction of the flower growing out of a hand is similar to Goldsworthy choice of verbs and adjectives in Maestro. By placing the two contrasting images together Picasso is stressing the difference between war and hope.