HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: Compare how two texts of the same…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 82.5%: Texts of the same genre often explore similar ideas, however, through the skillful manipulation of…
Texts of the same genre often explore similar ideas, however, through the skillful manipulation of generic conventions, filmmakers construct different representations that reflect their contextual factors and purposes. This is the case for Mark Kelly’s 2014 investigative documentary Made in Bangladesh and Jessica Kingdon’s 2021 observational documentary Ascension. Produced in response to global outrage following the Rana Plaza collapse, Kelley’s documentary constructs an informative and persuasive critique of the fast fashion industry exposing systemic labour exploitation, and the pressures of global fast fashion demand, overtly guiding its western viewer’s interpretation. In contrast, released during a period of intensified global political tension surrounding China’s economic rise and labour practices, Kingdon’s Ascension presents an exploration of contemporary China revealing its contradictory socialist and capitalist ideologies, through the exposition of entrenched wealth disparity, encouraging viewers to questions about who benefits from these systems. Ultimately, while both documentaries represent labour exploitation, industrial capitalism and entrenched inequality as consequences of globalised systems of production and consumption, Kelley’s Made in Bangladesh uses investigative documentary conventions to construct a micro-level and emotionally confrontational representation of exploitation that condemns corporate corruption and fast-fashion consumerism, whereas Kingdon’s Ascension employs observational conventions to construct a macro-level representation of these ideas as a broader, normalised and systemic features of modern global capitalism.
Both documentaries represent labour exploitation as a consequence of industrial capitalism; however, they manipulate generic conventions to construct this idea through different representational scales. Kelly’s Made in Bangladesh, adheres to traditional investigative documentary conventions such personal testimonies, and emotive voice-over to represent workers as individual victims of the exploitative fast fashion industry in Bangladesh. This emotional representation is exemplified through Aruti’s story as Kelly’s narration reveals she “lost her mother and her leg” and was trapped “in the rubble for three days under two dead bodies.” She later reveals her childhood belief that she would “grow up, go to school, study and have a job.” The static interview framing, combined with Aruti’s subdued tone and a close up shot of downcast expression, positions her not as an anonymous labourer, but a young person no different from the western audience watching, constructing labour exploitation as intimate and human rather than distant or statistical. Contrastingly, Ascension subverts traditional documentary conventions through its observational style, presenting workers as disposable and insignificant components within a vast product industry. Within act 1 ‘The Worker Bees’ Kingdon uses drone shots and wide framing to depict towering stacks of yarn and overwhelming quantities of manufactured goods juxtaposed alongside busy workers who are reduced to minor, almost indistinguishable insect like figures. This visual deindividualisation is further reinforced through observational drone footage footage and diegetic audio of labour recruiters exclaiming ‘if you’re over the age of 38, don't even bother coming’ in a very militaristic, almost aggressive tone. Thus, while Kelley individualises exploitation to provoke moral outrage at fast fashion’s human cost, Kingdon deindividualises workers to expose their disposability and induce reflection on the wider system of global labour commodification.
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: In The Dry, Harper presents truth…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 87.5%: In Jane Harper's 2016 crime novel The Dry, the drought-stricken town of Kiewarra provides a visceral…
In Jane Harper's 2016 crime novel The Dry, the drought-stricken town of Kiewarra provides a visceral backdrop for a dual investigation into the Hadler family massacre and the unsolved twenty-year-old death of teenager Ellie Deacon, each explored by Kiewarra's returning Detective Aaron Falk. Harper utilises figurative language and narrative structure to peel back the layers of a community defined by secrets, exploring how the psychology of truth is distorted by individual and collective guilt. Through a dual-timeline structure, pathetic fallacy, and the symbolism of hidden spaces, Harper demonstrates that truth is rarely a simple revelation but a painful excavation of long-buried wounds, and that the cost of collective silence is borne not by the guilty but by the communities that choose not to look.
Harper's most effective structural tool is the dual timeline, which juxtaposes the present-day Hadler investigation with flashbacks to Falk's teenage years. The psychological driving force is established in the novel's first chapter through Gerry Hadler's letter: 'Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral.' This blunt command immediately shifts the novel from typical murder mystery to a deeper inquiry into accountability. By forcing Falk to confront 'a lie forged and agreed on twenty years ago,' Harper illustrates how unresolved guilt can fester across decades. The repeated refrain recurs throughout the narrative like a drumbeat, structurally enacting the very psychological phenomenon the novel examines: the way suppressed truth resurfaces until it can no longer be denied. The third-person limited perspective of Falk, himself an outsider haunted by past deception, ensures the reader shares his fragmented, incomplete understanding, experiencing the messy, contested nature of truth alongside him rather than as an omniscient observer.
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: In The Dry, Harper explores themes…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 87.5%: In Jane Harper's 2026 crime novel The Dry , the drought-stricken town of Kiewarra provides a visceral…
In Jane Harper's 2026 crime novel The Dry , the drought-stricken town of Kiewarra provides a visceral backdrop for a dual investigation into the Hadler family massacre and the unsolved twenty year old death of teenager Ellie Deacon, each explored by Kiewerra’s returning Detective Aaron Falk. Harper masterfully utilises figurative language and a complex narrative structure to peel back the layers of a community defined by secrets, exploring how the psychology of truth is distorted by individual and collective guilt. Through a dual-timeline structure, pathetic fallacy, metaphor, and the symbolism of hidden spaces, Harper demonstrates that truth is rarely a simple revelation but a painful excavation of long-buried wounds.
Harper's most effective structural tool is the dual timeline, which juxtaposes the present-day Hadler investigation with flashbacks to Falk's teenage years. The psychological driving force is established in the novel’s first chapter, through Gerry Hadler's letter: 'Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral.' This blunt command immediately shifts the novel from typical murder mystery to a deeper inquiry into accountability. By forcing Falk to confront 'a lie forged and agreed on twenty years ago,' Harper illustrates how unresolved guilt can fester across decades. The repeated refrain of 'Luke lied. You lied' recurs throughout the narrative like a drumbeat, structurally enacting the very psychological phenomenon the novel examines: the way suppressed truth resurfaces until it can no longer be denied. The third-person limited perspective of Falk, himself an outsider haunted by past deception, ensures the reader shares his fragmented, incomplete understanding, experiencing the messy, contested nature of truth alongside him rather than as an omniscient observer.
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: Analyse how the texts challenge or…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 80%: Literature’s fusion of contextual and intertextual influences creates a literary conversation that helps…
Literature’s fusion of contextual and intertextual influences creates a literary conversation that helps texts to transcend their respective contexts. Shakespeare’s tragicomedy, The Tempest (1611), examines the ethnic ‘Other ’and the imprisonment caused by solipsism – the illusion that one’s mind is the only thing that is certain to exist. Inspired by Montaigne’s essay, Of Cannibals, Shakespeare embraces the boundary between cultural relativism and the universal denigration of the colonised that was prevalent during the predeterministic Jacobean era. Likewise, Atwood’s contemporary pastiche, Hag-Seed (2016), condemns through a metamodernist lens the rejection of unique artistic interpretation and explores how imprisonment is an inevitable part of the hyperreal digital age. Thus by using distinctly modern concepts to modernise the ideas originally illustrated in The Tempest, Atwoods allows Shakespeare to become once again relevant for modern audiences.
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: Analyse how the texts challenge or…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 77.5%: Margaret Atwood’s postmodern pastiche Hag-Seed (2016) appropriates William Shakespeare’s The Tempest…
Margaret Atwood’s postmodern pastiche Hag-Seed (2016) appropriates William Shakespeare’s The Tempest (1611), reshaping Shakespeare’s Jacobean and Theocratic values of patriarchal authority and divine providence through a secular, contemporary lens. While Shakespeare’s Jacobean worldview is shaped by colonial expansion and patriarchal authority, Atwood’s postmodern appropriation reinterprets these concerns through a secular lens, exposing the unjust treatment of marginalised individuals. Despite contextual differences, both composers suggest that the pursuit of power often breeds moral corruption, restrictive systems imprison social outcasts, and that ultimately, forgiveness guides us towards redemption. Revealing how both texts diverge in their final messages but adhere to the enduring truths of their evolving social contexts and ideologies.
Both Shakespeare and Atwood expose how patriarchal and hierarchical systems reduce individuals into objects of control, revealing the damaging consequences of restrictive power. Shakespeare constructs Prospero as a metatheatrical orchestrator, exiled on an isolated island with his daughter Miranda. Prospero’s orchestration of the storm, as he reassures Miranda, is encapsulated through the metatheatrical motif. “I have with such provision in mine art … So safely ordered that there is no soul,” depicting him as an orchestrator manipulating reality, while “so safely ordered” supports his belief that he possesses absolute control over both nature and human lives, illustrating the Jacobean beliefs that order can be manipulated and legitimised through moral framing. Shakespeare establishes Prospero’s authority through his declaration that “the great globe itself… shall dissolve, … And, like this insubstantial pageant faded, … Leave not a rack behind.” The imagery of ephemerality underscores Prospero’s control, positioning him as an orchestrator, revealing his ordained authority as per the Great Chain of Being, as even “the great globe itself” is rendered transient under his command. Atwood extends through Felix, an isolated theatre director grieving the death of his daughter whose inability to move beyond her death, reflects how humans can become trapped within their grief. Felix realises that Miranda “must be released from her glass coffin, she must be given a life,” where the metaphor of “glass coffin” symbolises the fragile nature of his constructed reality, exposing how illusion can momentarily preserve reality but ultimately distorts and imprisons it. Atwood depicts that self-imposed psychological entrapment reflects the human vulnerability within secularism. This is highlighted as Felix reflects that “on the other side of that magical window she was still alive”, the extended metaphor of the “magical window” foregrounds the boundary between reality and illusion, underscoring his reliance on a reality he has constructed to maintain his control over Miranda’s existence. Thus, the textual dialogue reshapes the audience’s interpretation as Atwood reinforces her reframing of control and its instability by challenging Shakespeare and revealing authority as fragile and incapable of achieving true redemption.
HSC · Critical Study of Literature
Critical Study of Literature: In The Dry, Harper explores…
HSC Critical Study of Literature essay scoring 97.5%: In The Dry, Harper explores themes of guilt and responsibility. How does she use figurative…
In The Dry, Harper explores themes of guilt and responsibility. How does she use figurative language and narrative structure to explore the psychology of truth and raise broader questions about accountability?
Introduction
In Jane Harper's 2026 crime novel The Dry (2016), the drought-stricken town of Kiewarra provides a visceral backdrop for a dual investigation into the Hadler family massacre and the unsolved twenty -year -old death of teenager Ellie Deacon, each explored by the returning Detective Aaron Falk. Harper masterfully utilises figurative language and a complex narrative structure to peel back the layers of a community defined by secrets, exploring how the psychology of truth is distorted by individual and collective guilt. Through a dual-timeline structure, pathetic fallacy, metaphor, and the symbolism of hidden spaces, Harper demonstrates that truth is rarely a simple revelation but a painful excavation of long-buried wounds.
Narrative Structure and the Maze of Truth
Harper's most effective structural tool is the dual timeline, which juxtaposes the present-day Hadler investigation with flashbacks to Falk's teenage years. The psychological driving force is established in the novel’s first chapter, Chapter 1 through Gerry Hadler's letter: 'Luke lied. You lied. Be at the funeral.' This blunt command immediately shifts the novel from typical murder- mystery to a deeper inquiry into accountability. By forcing Falk to confront 'a lie forged and agreed on twenty years ago,' Harper illustrates how unresolved guilt can fester across decades. The repeated refrain of 'Luke lied. You lied.' recurs throughout the narrative like a drumbeat, structurally enacting the very psychological phenomenon the novel examines: the way suppressed truth resurfaces until it can no longer be denied. The third-person limited perspective of Falk, himself an outsider haunted by past deception, ensures the reader shares his fragmented, incomplete understanding, experiencing the messy, contested nature of truth alongside him rather than as an omniscient observer.
Figurative Language: The Landscape of Guilt
HSC · Close Study of Literature
Close Study of Literature: "The best laid plans of mice…
HSC Close Study of Literature essay scoring 85%: In his 1937 tragic realist novella ‘Of Mice and Men’, Steinbeck utilises the lives of the marginalised…
In his 1937 tragic realist novella ‘Of Mice and Men’, Steinbeck utilises the lives of the marginalised to illustrate how systemic oppression stifles meritocratic aspirations, exposing the duplicitous nature of the American Dream that will eventually produce disillusionment. Steinbeck begins by portraying the power of belonging and its fundamental roots to the human condition, omitted during The Great Depression due to self-subsistent ideologies. Steinbeck then explores the disempowerment of those cast aside by society, from the racial exclusion of Crooks, his parallel utopian vision alongside Lennie quashed by harsh realities highlighting the inevitability that TAD is unattainable for any marginalised person, to the significant disempowerment women commonly faced leading to suppressed ambition and being forced into a forgotten existence. Steinbeck's cyclical structure asserts that the universal desires to belong and believe in a better future are fundamental to the human experience, and that a society which denies these needs, inevitably destroys its people.
The oppressive social hierarchy of the ranch as a miniature model of 1930’s America to highlight the constant need for belonging undermined by independent survival. During the Depression Era and 1930’s, itinerant workers remained strictly individual and suffered from estranged loneliness, however, the starkly contrasting character foil of Lennie and George and their uncommon friendship serves as a shelter within a brutal world. Steinbeck's use of juxtaposition in George’s statement describing the value of their friendship in an oppressive society “With us it ain’t like that. We got a future. We got somebody to talk to that gives a damn about us.” contrasting the loneliness of most labourers in the depression era with Lennie and George's unique bond that underscores the loyalty in a civilisation accompanied by hardship and adversity especially for the unfortunate. During Lennie and Crooks’ discussion, Crooks ironically states; “A guy needs somebody to be near him. A guy goes nuts if he ain’t got nobody”, describing the lack of companionship can leave deep psychological impacts, common during the 1930s due to financial pressure. Additionally, truncated sentences used in Lennie’s desperate calls “He won’t do that. George won’t leave me. He’ll come back” highlight the weakness and desolation, single workers are vulnerable to daily and the strength that the uncommon friendship has offered asylum for the societally oppressed. Lack of belonging acts as a precursor for marginalised people being ensnared by the false hopes of the American dream
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: By reframing The Tempest, Atwood…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 70%: Introduction: To a great extent, Atwood powerfully reframes The Tempest by William Shakespeare (1611)…
Introduction:
To a great extent, Atwood powerfully reframes The Tempest by William Shakespeare (1611) demonstrating the enduring nature of social hierarchies through ideas and values of physical and psychological enslavement of individuals and the transformation of characters of their mindset from revenge to forgiveness by overcoming their prison of grief and loss. Simultaneously, Margret Atwood subverts away from contextual values such as humanism, Jacobean Christianity and colonialism to reimagine her novel Hagseed (2016) to align with the post-modern context in today’s society. Through this textual conversation, the reimagining of these texts highlights how the values of an era are fleeting, yet the psychological and social "prisons" we inhabit align across the centuries as a constant of the human condition.
Paragraph 1: Marginalisation and Colonialism
Shakespeare reflects the fleeting values of the Jacobean era by depicting the physical and social imprisonment of marginalised characters as a consequence of colonial hierarchy. Shakespeare engages with a Jacobean audience who viewed non-Europeans as sub-human threats to the divine order. Through the use of dehumanising language claimed throughout the play, Shakespeare reflects the values of colonialism and the Great Chain of Being by depicting Caliban’s marginalisation. Prospero humiliates Caliban with the allusion, ‘Thou poisonous slave, got by the devil himself’, which demonstrates to the audience that Shakespeare categorises Caliban as an ontological ‘other’, whose nature is inherently evil. This hierarchy is further established consistently throughout the play through the motif of zoomorphism of Caliban’s exclusion, as he cries to prospero, ‘you sty me’. The effect of the verb ‘sty’ is to reduce caliban to the status of livestock, reflecting a Jacobean context where the colonised were viewed as sub-human beasts. Furthermore, Shakespeare utilises juxtaposition when Caliban asserts, ‘This island's mine.. Which thou takest from me’, contrasting Caliban's rightful claim with Prospero's colonial theft as a resulting act of rebellion against long term physical enslavement. Caliban’s assertion collides with the traditional Jacobean ‘value’ of an individual's rule of power being secondary to the ‘civilising’ power of the Europeans during the 1600s. Therefore, Shakespeare's apparent lack of ‘care’ for caliban reflects the fleeting contextual assumption that marginisation was a necessity for stability.
Body para 2: Humanism and Modern Shadow
HSC · Imaginative Writing
Imaginative Writing: In the middle of the night, around…
HSC Imaginative Writing essay scoring 87.5%: The bird does not wake me. Four notes, spaced through the dark like an unfinished thought. At first, I…
The bird does not wake me.
Four notes, spaced through the dark like an unfinished thought. At first, I treated them as coincidence, something incidental. I lay listlessly under the heat of the blanket, turning my gaze away from the window.
But the sound returns.
Not urgently. Not insistently. Simply again.
And it is this “again” that begins to matter.
Because anticipation is not yet hope. It is only the body learning patterns before meaning arrives. I find myself beginning to expect the song before it happens, as if the night has developed a rhythm that I have unconsciously agreed to participate in. In that waiting, something subtle forms. Not comfort, but attention. The night is no longer continuous; it is divided with expectation. By the third time I listen, I am awake before it arrives.
It has been like this for a week now. Or maybe longer. Time has become unreliable in this house, it is measured less in days and more in what does or doesn’t happen. The kettle not boiling. The phone is not ringing. The empty chair at the kitchen table that no one has moved, as if shifting it might confirm something none of us are ready to say aloud.
And then there is the bird.
Four notes.
Always coming around four am, when the night's shadow has enveloped the city streets and suburban neighbourhoods. It’s not loud enough to startle you, yet too distinct to ignore. There is something deliberate in its repetition, and I lay in the dark awake, listening for something that has not yet happened.
I start to wait for it. And then, four notes. And something inside me starts to settle.
HSC · Texts & Human Experiences
Texts & Human Experiences: Analyse how composers…
HSC Texts & Human Experiences essay scoring 85%: Composers poignantly represent individual and collective human experiences in order to ignite new…
Composers poignantly represent individual and collective human experiences in order to ignite new ideas, thus broadening the audience’s understanding of the world. Arthur Miller judiciously exposes these nuances in human nature through his allegorical tragedy, ‘The Crucible’ (1953), a direct reflection of the 1950’s McCarthyism era in which authoritative figures manipulated social hysteria to control society. Miller uses the Salem Witch Trials as an intricate insight into individual rebellion against collective conformity, the detrimental impacts of theocentric legal abuse and its role in the sanctification of violence, and also the individual act of redemption against a dogmatic society. Therefore, different human experiences act as a catalyst to promote critical reflection, exposing audiences to a broader worldview of the multifaceted human condition.
Through the portrayal of both individual and collective human experiences, composers reveal how fear enforces conformity, ultimately compelling audiences to recognise its role in the corruption of society. In ‘The Crucible’, the prevalence of hysteria in Salem effectively exposes how personal conscience can weaken under intense social pressure. This is exemplified through the didactic exposition, “[Salem was] an autocracy by consent,” which ironically suggests that the townspeople willingly submit to oppression under the illusion of religious unity. Miller successfully attempts to draw parallels between Salem’s religious extremism and the fearful compliance within the McCarthy era, which silenced dissent against the establishment of HUAC, therefore igniting new ideas within the audience. Furthermore, Reverend Parris’ threat, “… either obedience, or the church will burn like Hell is burning!” deliberately evokes religious imagery to compare the church to Hell, exposing the hypocritic and destructive nature of theocracy and symbolising its strict adherence to corrupt authority. This allows Miller to successfully showcase the tendency of autocrats to silence doubt and assert moral superiority, discouraging individuals from revolting against injustice. Additionally, Mary Warren repeats, “I cannot, I cannot- they’ll turn on me-!”, to emphasise the notion that fear promotes conformity. Through the portrayal of Mary’s panic, Miller insightfully urges the audience to question societies in which fear mongering is utilised as a tool for collective oppression. Thus, Miller ultimately exposes the collective experience of fear as a catalyst for moral collapse and societal corruption.
HSC · Texts & Human Experiences
Texts & Human Experiences: Analyse how composers…
HSC Texts & Human Experiences essay scoring 72.5%: Composers poignantly represent individual and collective human experiences in order to ignite new…
Composers poignantly represent individual and collective human experiences in order to ignite new ideas, thus broadening the audience’s understanding of the world. Arthur Miller judiciously exposes these nuances in human nature through his allegorical tragedy, ‘The Crucible’ (1953), a direct reflection of the 1950’s McCarthyism era in which authoritative figures manipulated social hysteria to control society. Miller uses the Salem Witch Trials as an intricate insight into individual rebellion against collective conformity, the detrimental impacts of theocentric legal abuse and its role in the sanctification of violence, and also the individual act of redemption against a dogmatic society. Therefore, different human experiences act as a catalyst to promote critical reflection, exposing audiences to a broader worldview of the multifaceted human condition.
Through the portrayal of both individual and collective human experiences, composers reveal how fear enforces conformity, ultimately compelling audiences to recognise its role in the corruption of society. In ‘The Crucible’, the prevalence of hysteria in Salem effectively exposes how personal conscience can weaken under intense social pressure. This is exemplified through the didactic exposition, “[Salem was] an autocracy by consent,” which ironically suggests that the townspeople willingly submit to oppression under the illusion of religious unity. Miller successfully attempts to draw parallels between Salem’s religious extremism and the fearful compliance within the McCarthy era, which silenced dissent against the establishment of HUAC, therefore igniting new ideas within the audience. Furthermore, Reverend Parris’ threat, “… either obedience, or the church will burn like Hell is burning!” deliberately evokes religious imagery to compare the church to Hell, exposing the hypocritic and destructive nature of theocracy and symbolising its strict adherence to corrupt authority. This allows Miller to successfully showcases the tendency of autocrats to silence doubt and assert moral superiority, discouraging individuals from revolting against injusticeAdditionally, Mary Warren repeats, “I cannot, I cannot- they’ll turn on me-!”, to emphasise the notion that fear promotes conformity. Through the portrayal of Mary’s panic, Miller insightfully urges the audience to question societies in which fear mongering is utilised as a tool for collective oppression. Thus, Miller ultimately exposes the collective experience of fear as a catalyst for moral collapse and societal corruption.
HSC · Texts & Human Experiences
Texts & Human Experiences: Analyse how composers…
HSC Texts & Human Experiences essay scoring 72.5%: Composers poignantly represent (individual and collective human experiences) in order to (ignite new…
Composers poignantly represent (individual and collective human experiences) in order to (ignite new ideas, thus broadening the audience’s understanding of the world). Arthur Miller judiciously exposes these nuances in human nature through his allegorical tragedy, ‘The Crucible’ (1953), a direct reflection of the 1950’s McCarthyism era in which authoritative figures manipulated social hysteria to control society. Miller uses the Salem Witch Trials as an intricate insight into individual rebellion against collective conformity, the detrimental impacts of theocentric legal abuse and its role in the sanctification of violence, and also the individual act of redemption against a dogmatic society. Therefore, (different human experiences) act as a catalyst to promote critical reflection, exposing audiences to a broader worldview of the multifaceted human condition.
Through the portrayal of (both individual and collective human experiences), composers reveal how fear enforces conformity, ultimately compelling audiences to recognise its role in the corruption of society. In ‘The Crucible’, the prevalence of hysteria in Salem effectively exposes how personal conscience can weaken under intense social pressure. This is exemplified by the means of the didactic exposition, “[Salem was] an autocracy by consent,” which ironically suggests that the townspeople willingly submit to oppression under the illusion of religious unity. Miller successfully attempts to draw parallels between Salem’s religious extremism and the fearful compliance within the McCarthy era, which silenced dissent against the establishment of HUAC, (therefore igniting new ideas within the audience). Furthermore, Reverend Parris’ threat, “… either obedience, or the church will burn like Hell is burning!” deliberately evokes religious imagery to symbolise the strict adherence to authority, (representing the human experience of fear under repressive systems). Through (these experiences), Miller successfully showcases the tendency of autocrats to silence doubt and assert moral superiority, discouraging individuals from revolting against injustice. Additionally, Mary Warren repeats, “I cannot, I cannot- they’ll turn on me-!”, to emphasise the notion that fear promotes conformity. Through the portrayal of Mary’s panic, Miller insightfully urges the audience to question societies in which fear mongering is utilised as a tool for collective oppression. Thus, Miller ultimately exposes (the collective experience of fear as a catalyst) for moral collapse and societal corruption.
HSC · Critical Study of Literature
Critical Study of Literature: analysis on Shakespeare…
HSC Critical Study of Literature essay scoring 85%: Shakespeare explores trends and standards involving beauty in sonnet 130. In the end poking fun at…
Shakespeare explores trends and standards involving beauty in sonnet 130. In the end poking fun at dramatic love poetry. Sonnet 130, 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun' written by Shakespeare explores Love poetry during the romantic period. Love poetry is usually dramatized emphasising on how the muse is enchanting and mesmerising, setting standards of pale skin, light eyes, flowy hair. These stereotypes created high expectations, and the same repetitive poetry. Shakespeare writes sonnet 130 to communicate that Beauty is not what makes you truly love someone and shares his mistresses flaws to the audience. His mistress presumably the dark lady, is compared to the standards at the time, her eyes lack warmth and colour, her skin lacks life, her breath reeks and her voice does not compare to music. Yet as the poem progresses he enmities his love for her "I love to hear her speak, yet i know that music hath a far more pleasing sound" He shares that even though she may have her flaws, he still loves what she does, how she does them, how she looks. at the end of the sonnet during the rhyming couplet the sonnet shifts (volta) "and yet, by heaven, I think my love as rare as any she belied with false compare"... this creates and adds to the true meaning of love he is sharing with the audience, his love does not need to be the most beautiful nor a goddess. Love is not something material and shake spear pokes fun and shames love poetry writers that set such standards, His love is rare as a goddess. He
HSC · Imaginative Writing
Imaginative Writing: Part A: Imaginative Response (15…
HSC Imaginative Writing essay scoring 72.5%: The béké does not know this island. He has no eyes for this place. What this island remembers, no…
The béké does not know this island. He has no eyes for this place. What this island remembers, no Englishman’s forgetting can undo - not even his, who named it the false superstition of a degraded people. I have served this house long before he learn its name.
Beneath the verdure of Granbois, the Obeah stones hold what no doctrine could supplant - bearing nothing but an untold Gospel the coloniser refused to receive.
I have known my doudou since she was nothing but breath and need, before England had decided what she was worth.
My fingers press into the soil. The earth here give back what you put in.
It do not lie.
It do not dress itself in what it is not.
A beetle turn itself against a gnarled root, veining deeper into the soil. I watch it for a moment. It is drawn into something that does not welcome it - still it go.
Birdsong lifts, lacing the once steady breeze with something not right.
It come to me first. Not by sight, but in the way the vetiver turn wrong, bending where it should stand.
The ground know his step; it take his weight, with patience.
Without pardon.
I still my hands. Dark with soil.
He halts at the garden’s edge. I know before I look - the vetiver told me. The ground said so.
My eyes find him before I decide to look.
HSC · Imaginative Writing
Imaginative Writing: Part A: Imaginative Response (15…
HSC Imaginative Writing essay scoring 60%: The béké does not know this island. He has no eyes for this place. What this island remembers, no…
The béké does not know this island. He has no eyes for this place. What this island remembers, no Englishman’s forgetting can undo - not even his, who named it the false superstition of a degraded people. I have served this house long before he learn its name.
Beneath the verdure of Granbois, the Obeah stones hold what no doctrine could supplant - bearing nothing but an untold Gospel the coloniser refused to receive.
I have known my doudou since she was nothing but breath and need, before England had decided what she was worth.
My fingers press into the soil.
HSC · Imaginative Writing
Imaginative Writing: Part A: Imaginative Response (15…
HSC Imaginative Writing essay scoring 72.5%: The béké does not know this island. He has no eyes for this place. What this island remembers, no…
The béké does not know this island. He has no eyes for this place. What this island remembers, no Englishman’s forgetting can undo - not even his, who named it the forged superstition of a degraded people. I have served this house long before he learned its name.
Beneath the saturated verdure of Granbois, the Obeah stones hold what no doctrine could displace - bearing nothing but an untold Gospel the coloniser refused to receive.
I have known my doudou since she was nothing but breath and need, before England had decided what she was worth.
My fingers press into the soil.
A beetle turns itself against a gnarled root, veining deeper into the soil. I watch it for a moment. It is drawn into something that does not welcome it - yet it persists.
Birdsong lifts, lacing the once steady breeze with something unholy.
Wind surges with an untamed fury, threading through the island, infecting the air with the stench of vetiver.
HSC · Imaginative Writing
Imaginative Writing: Part A: Imaginative Response (15…
HSC Imaginative Writing essay scoring 77.5%: The beke does not know this island. Not truly. What this place holds lies stamped into what he has long…
The beke does not know this island. Not truly. What this place holds lies stamped into what he has long dismissed as forged superstition — a primordial knowing, patient and unconfirmable, persisting amongst the belittled obeah stones, bearing testament to an untold Gospel the coloniser refused to receive.
I have served this house long before he learned its name. I have known my doudou since she was nothing but breath and need, before England had decided what she was worth.
The island knows what approaches. Granbois presses close — the trees leaning inward, the air thickening, the ground holding what it knows beneath its surface. His arrival here was not a welcome. It was a confirmation from something older than his orderly God. The fire was always going to come. Not the fire of Coulibri, not yet — but what precedes it: the slow accumulation of a man who carries destruction and mistakes it for authority. A stark division between the foreign and the rooted is now forged into the woman suspended between both, surrendered to an irreversible dissolution of what was divinely decreed as hers.
The parrot stops first.
That is how I know. One moment its call threads through the upper branches — and then nothing. A held breath. The garden does not go quiet when the wind drops. It goes quiet when something moves against it.
I do not look up. I hear the grass bend in the wrong direction, the particular weight of a man who walks as though the ground has agreed in advance to receive him. The air shifts. Vetiver rises — sharp, buried-sweet — and beneath it something else entirely. Something arrived from elsewhere.
He stops.
I keep my hands in the soil.
HSC · Critical Study of Literature
Critical Study of Literature: not so much as an essay but…
HSC Critical Study of Literature essay scoring 72.5%: LITERATURE REVIEW Throughout history and literature, the internalisation of rigid masculine…
LITERATURE REVIEW
Throughout history and literature, the internalisation of rigid masculine constructs has habituated men to equate worth with control, hence fostering a pervasive saviour complex. Over time, these gendered power imbalances perpetuate and thus seek to justify the systemic oppression of women. By examining critical essays alongside Virginia Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own and Madeline Miller’s Song of Achilles, this literature review aims to expose and redress the reality of how men, driven by Freudian anxieties, project their own insecurities onto women. For example, both John Burt’s ‘Irreconcilable Habits of Thought in A Room of One’s Own and to The Lighthouse’ and Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ expose the societal pressure for men to repress their emotions, highlighting the subconscious efforts of men to subjugate their human vulnerabilities. Ultimately, this review aims to reveal the hypocritical stereotypes upheld by society, whereby it not only oppresses female autonomy but also confines men to harmful stereotypes.
Peters, R. S. (1956). Freud’s Theory. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 7(25),
4–12. http://www.jstor.org/stable/685932
To establish my understanding of Freud’s psychoanalytic theory, R S Peter’s critical essay on Freud’s theory provides a comprehensive outlook on the psychological defence mechanisms that underpin male anxieties. Historically, Freud’s theories emerged during the 1890s as a radical departure from traditional psychological interpretations. These theories, such as Repression, Projection and Equilibrium were developed in order to understand the ‘hidden’ mechanisms driving human behaviour. In doing so, Freud established key connections between the Id and Ego, highlighting the crucial role the mind plays within daily interactions. In his essay, Peters identified Equilibrium as a key mechanism that reveals how the male psyche navigates through internal conflicts by externalising it onto other factors, namely women. Through his examination of the state of equilibrium, Peter highlights the crucial role it plays in preserving psychological stability, “Human beings like other organisms tend to preserve a state of equilibrium”. Here, this notion can be exemplified in Woolf’s concept of material stability within A Room of One’s own, where she argues that women have been systematically denied material conditions such as money and the physical space to produce literature. Similarly, by examining Miller’s The Song of Achilles through Freudian lenses, the novel exposes the fragility of the heroic code; whereby Achilles is required to suppress his feminine emotions to uphold an externally validated identity. Therefore, when evaluating Peter's analysis of Freud’s theory, this process has deepened my understanding on the males’ pursuit of psychological equilibrium, which paradoxically introduces the suppression of female autonomy, thus exposing the complexities behind the saviour complex; that being, the confinement of both genders within toxic societal standards.
Burt, J. (1982). Irreconcilable Habits of Thought in A Room of One’s Own and to The Lighthouse. ELH, 49(4), 889–907. https://doi.org/10.2307/2872903
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: "Give me another horse! Bind up my…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 87.5%: The epigraph — Richard's anguished cry torn between command and collapse, between waking and dreaming —…
The epigraph — Richard's anguished cry torn between command and collapse, between waking and dreaming — crystallises the central dramatic problem both texts share: what does it mean for a character to confront themselves? Shakespeare, writing King Richard III (c. 1592) under the Tudor dynasty of Elizabeth I, employs the conventions of Renaissance tragedy, rhetorical theatre and providential theology to invite his audience to read Richard's psychological disintegration as divine justice — the inevitable unmasking of a Vice figure who dared usurp the Chain of Being. Al Pacino, in his postmodern docudrama Looking for Richard (1996), reshapes this interpretation entirely. Drawing on post-Sartrean existentialism and the Stanislavskian method acting tradition of the New York Actors Studio, Pacino recasts Richard's inner collapse not as God's punishment but as an existential void — the hollowness that follows the achievement of a self-constructed identity. Through a comparative study of these two texts, the resonances and dissonances in their characterisation of Richard illuminate how the idea of identity, conscience and the legitimacy of power is deeply contingent upon the values and contexts from which each composer speaks.
Shakespeare's construction of Richard as an Early Modern Vice figure is established from the play's very first moments through the dramatic convention of the soliloquy — a device that positions the audience as Richard's intimate conspirators. His opening admission, "Since I cannot prove a lover… I am determined to prove a villain", does far more than establish villainy; the paronomasia embedded in "determined" invites the audience to hear simultaneously the language of Calvinist predestination and Machiavellian self-fashioning. Richard mocks providential theology even as he inhabits its rhetoric, and this tension — between a man who speaks in the language of divine order while subverting it — is the engine of his character. Shakespeare deepens this characterisation through the theatrical convention of stichomythia in the wooing of Lady Anne. Richard's rapid, witty retorts — "Some dungeon" / "Your bedchamber" — demonstrate the performative agility of a man who treats language as a weapon of seduction. The contrast between Anne's earlier vitriolic denunciations, "devil… Minister of hell!", and her subsequent capitulation to marriage, functions to confirm for an Elizabethan audience both the terrifying potency and the fundamental illegitimacy of Richard's rhetorical power. He is not persuasive because he is righteous; he is persuasive because he is a consummate dissembler, the "formal Vice, Iniquity" he himself names. Shakespeare thus invites his audience to interpret Richard as a figure of thrilling but ultimately doomed transgression — a man whose genius lies in performance, and whose downfall will be orchestrated precisely because that performance has no divine sanction behind it.
HSC · Discursive Writing
Discursive Writing: Task (20 marks) “She likes to read,…
HSC Discursive Writing essay scoring 65%: Diverse texts offer some of the best sources of insight. I often find myself diving through these doorways…
Diverse texts offer some of the best sources of insight. I often find myself diving through these doorways into alternate worlds, reading until my eyes grow weary, my mind enlightened with a widening landscape of ideas and viewpoints, and a depth of understanding that keeps unfolding. Reading broadens our perspective by acting as a mirror to one’s emotions, values, and behaviours, allowing people to explore different perspectives without risk.
HSC · Language, Identity & Culture
Language, Identity & Culture: Analyse the ways that…
HSC Language, Identity & Culture essay scoring 65%: Poet Ali Cobby Eckermann Analyses cultural identity through poetry. This is evident in her anthology…
Poet Ali Cobby Eckermann Analyses cultural identity through poetry. This is evident in her anthology Inside My Mother in three poems. Leaves explores cultural identity through showing that bonds can be formed between people regardless of cultural divide. Trance communicates how all cultures experience grief through loss, illustrated through an Aboriginal perspective. Unearth teaches how connection with the older generations is essential to understanding cultural identity.
Bonds of Affection between two individuals can be formed regardless of cultural divide. In Leaves, poet Ali Cobby Eckermann illustrates her bond with her father despite cultural divide. Eckermann still bonds with her father despite being Aboriginal herself and her father being European. In "Yet he gave me leaves" Eckermann illustrates a brief meeting she had with her father. Motif 'leaves' showcases the wisdom her father has passed on. Her Indigenous values of connection to nature is the way that Eckermann percieves this knowledge. Through a metaphor and visual imagery, "the lone tree on the ridge is that my father?" showcases her connection towards her father through describing him as a tree. Eckermann expresses her bond through symbolising her father in the perspective of her cultural identity through connection to nature. In "Will the leaves turn golden and seeding grass sway to console me?" rhetorical question emphasises Eckermann's doubt on how much this knowledge will be valuable to help her understand her cultural identity. she also grieves the time she lost with her father because of the stolen Generation which has caused her generational trauma. Eckermann expresses her bond with her father through knowledge being passed on. Through wisdom being passed on, Eckermann illustrates how cultural divide does not matter. Therefore, Bonds of Affection still exist despite cultural divide.
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: Textual conversations invite…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 82.5%: Intro Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a metatheatrical romance, interrogates the ethics of artistic authority…
Intro
Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a metatheatrical romance, interrogates the ethics of artistic authority by staging illusion itself as an instrument of control, inviting audiences to question the responsibilities that accompany creative power. As a self-reflexive meditation on authorship, the play embeds its concerns within the theatrical form, constructing a world in which art governs reality and harmony is achieved only through the relinquishment of control. Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, a postmodernist pastiche, subverts this framework by fusing Shakespearean intertextuality, contemporary carceral discourse and trauma psychology. Through this subversion Atwood recontextualises the play’s metaphysical spectacle to invite modern audiences to reconsider its perspectives on power and authority. By literalising the island as a prison, transforming magic into theatre direction, and interiorising the process of forgiveness as therapeutic release, Atwood exposes the mechanics of artistic manipulation that Shakespeare renders allegorical. Consequently, Shakespeare’s play provides the structural and thematic architecture through which Atwood conducts a reparative literary dialogue, using the novel’s form, language and structure to radically reassess the ethical dimensions of authorship, confinement and renewal.
Paragraph/Idea 1 — Artistic Authority & Metatheatrical Control
Shakespeare’s metatheatrical interrogation of artistic authority in The Tempest constructs a perspective on creative power that Hag-Seed both inherits and reconsiders, as Atwood reimagines theatrical control through Felix to expose the mechanisms Shakespeare renders allegorical. In its Jacobean milieu, The Tempest reflects a humanist preoccupation with knowledge as power, situating artistic creation within a providential cosmos that legitimises Prospero’s authority. In contrast, Atwood’s postmodern context, sceptical of absolute authority, reframes artistic control as a psychological and institutional construct rather than an unquestioned moral prerogative.
Shakespeare initially reveals Prospero’s authorial manipulation through moments of metatheatrical self-awareness. Prospero’s calculated orchestration of emotional struggle is exposed through the mercantile language he uses to justify making Ferdinand’s task “uneasy,” lest “too light winning make the prize light.” This employment of dramatic irony positions Prospero less as a benevolent patriarch and more as a calculating stage director, manipulating characters to achieve a desired dramatic outcome. While this admission momentarily exposes the mechanics of dramatic construction, the play’s theatrical form ultimately encourages audiences to interpret Prospero’s intervention as benevolent guidance within a providential order. Atwood reframes this authority through Felix’s fixation on the play. Felix’s possessive diction in describing the play as “his Tempest,” something he “owned,” collapses Shakespeare’s mystical authorship into a form of psychological possession. Through this shift in narrative perspective, Atwood invites audiences to reconsider the nature of artistic authority as a form of psychological control rather than divine power.
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: Textual conversations invite…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 85%: Intro Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a metatheatrical romance, interrogates the ethics of artistic authority by…
Intro
Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a metatheatrical romance, interrogates the ethics of artistic authority by staging illusion itself as an instrument of control, inviting audiences to question the responsibilities that accompany creative power. As a self-reflexive meditation on authorship, the play embeds its concerns within the theatrical form, constructing a world in which art governs reality and harmony is achieved only through the relinquishment of control. Margaret Atwood’s Hag-Seed, a postmodernist pastiche, subverts this framework by fusing Shakespearean intertextuality, contemporary carceral discourse and trauma psychology. Through this subversion Atwood recontextualises the play’s metaphysical spectacle to invite modern audiences to reconsider its perspectives on power and authority. By literalising the island as a prison, transforming magic into theatre direction, and interiorising the process of forgiveness as therapeutic release, Atwood exposes the mechanics of artistic manipulation that Shakespeare renders allegorical. Consequently, Shakespeare’s play provides the structural and thematic architecture through which Atwood conducts a reparative literary dialogue, using the novel’s form, language and structure to radically reassess the ethical dimensions of authorship, confinement and renewal.
Paragraph/Idea 1 — Artistic Authority & Metatheatrical Control
Shakespeare’s metatheatrical interrogation of artistic authority in The Tempest constructs a perspective on creative power that Hag-Seed both inherits and reconsiders, as Atwood reimagines theatrical control through Felix to expose the mechanisms Shakespeare renders allegorical. In its Jacobean milieu, The Tempest reflects a humanist preoccupation with knowledge as power, situating artistic creation within a providential cosmos that legitimises Prospero’s authority. In contrast, Atwood’s postmodern context, sceptical of absolute authority, reframes artistic control as a psychological and institutional construct rather than an unquestioned moral prerogative.
Shakespeare initially reveals Prospero’s authorial manipulation through moments of metatheatrical self-awareness. Prospero’s calculated orchestration of emotional struggle is exposed through the mercantile language he uses to justify making Ferdinand’s task “uneasy,” lest “too light winning make the prize light.” This employment of dramatic irony positions Prospero less as a benevolent patriarch and more as a calculating stage director, manipulating characters to achieve a desired dramatic outcome. While this admission momentarily exposes the mechanics of dramatic construction, the play’s theatrical form ultimately encourages audiences to interpret Prospero’s intervention as benevolent guidance within a providential order. Atwood reframes this authority through Felix’s fixation on the play. Felix’s possessive diction in describing the play as “his Tempest,” something he “owned,” collapses Shakespeare’s mystical authorship into a form of psychological possession. Through this shift in narrative perspective, Atwood invites audiences to reconsider the nature of artistic authority as a form of psychological control rather than divine power.
HSC · Textual Conversations
Textual Conversations: Textual conversations invite…
HSC Textual Conversations essay scoring 77.5%: Paragraph/Idea 2 - Confinement, Illusion and Institutional Power Shakespeare constructs the island of The…
Paragraph/Idea 2 - Confinement, Illusion and Institutional Power
Shakespeare constructs the island of The Tempest as a fluid theatrical environment shaped by illusion and perception, moulding a perspective on confinement that is grounded in theatrical imagination rather than physical imprisonment. In her recontextualisation, Hag-Seed, Atwood transforms this metaphysical space into a literal site of incarceration, reframing the play’s exploration of freedom through the lens of contemporary institutional power. Whereas Shakespeare’s Renaissance context treats illusion as a philosophical mechanism for exploring perception and authority, Atwood situates theatrical illusion within a modern correctional system where performance becomes both an artistic practice and a tool of psychological rehabilitation.