VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Quiet voices, lasting change
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 97.5%: I didn't expect silence to be so loud. For twelve years, my mornings had started before the sun. I would pull…
I didn't expect silence to be so loud.
For twelve years, my mornings had started before the sun. I would pull on my steel-capped boots, make a coffee for the road and listen to the tools rattle in the back of the ute. Then Porter Davis collapsed, and almost overnight the routine disappeared. The phone stopped ringing, my tools stayed untouched, and every morning I still woke at six with nowhere to go. On the news, they called it a “market correction”, a phrase almost insulting in its neatness. A correction suggested something had been fixed; for hundreds of us left without work, everything had simply been abandoned.
When the union announced the National Day of Action, I told myself I would go. Sam had messaged our old group chat, asking who was coming. For a while I stared at the screen, wondering what difference another body in another crowd could make. Eventually, I found a piece of plywood and painted across it:
WE BUILT YOUR HOMES.
WHO STANDS UP FOR OURS?
It wasn't clever, but it said what I had spent months failing to put into words.
At the station, Sam, Kosta and Dave were waiting in worn hoodies and scuffed boots. The train arrived crowded with hi-vis: apprentices beside old-timers, bricklayers and sparkies squeezed into whatever space remained. At every station, more workers climbed aboard, carrying banners and cardboard signs. Nobody had organised us into groups, and nobody needed to. Losing my job had felt like something that had happened to me alone. Looking around that carriage, I realised how many people had been sitting at home believing exactly the same thing.
We heard the protest before we saw it. A chant rolled between the buildings and gathered force along Swanston Street. Thousands of voices answered each other as banners rose above a sea of fluorescent shirts. Glass towers loomed overhead, reflecting the crowd back at itself: banks, offices and boardrooms where decisions were made about people whose names would never be known to those making them. We marched beneath them anyway.
At first, I didn't chant. I simply held my sign and walked. Sam joined in, then Kosta and Dave. Eventually, so did I. My voice vanished beneath thousands of others, but strangely, that was what made it matter. Alone, none of us could have filled that street. Together, it was impossible not to hear us.
Near the intersection, workers had gathered around a temporary platform to tell their stories. One man had gone weeks without pay; an apprentice's company had folded before he could qualify. When someone asked whether anybody from Porter Davis wanted to speak, nobody moved.
I looked around at the faces beside me. Some were familiar, others weren't, but I still knew what they had lost.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: Family is the cause of all problems in We…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 85%: Shirley Jackson's gothic novel 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle' is fundamentally a cautionary tale about family…
Shirley Jackson's gothic novel 'We Have Always Lived in the Castle' is fundamentally a cautionary tale about family values and traits that in fact is the cause of all problems. While family is something characters through the text cherish and care deeply about, the story unveils deeper characteristics about how family can bring in destruction. Furthermore, Jackson utilizes fantasy as an effective coping mechanism to suppress problems within oneself. Ultimately, Jackson presents family being the root to problems which affects the characters who are not part of that family.
Jackson constructs family as a destructive force that causes harm to people around them. The arrival of cousin Charles exposes the vulnerability of the household, proving that family problems are significantly boosted by external figures who seek to exploit them for personal gain. Merricat's sense of "change" foreshadows the inevitable as destruction of family and pro property unfolds thereafter, which exposes problems that occur when family members are barged into a space. Jackson portrays Charles as a catalyst of problems that occur within the family, from Merricat "wishing him dead" to Uncle Julian calling him a "bastard", which exposes how wherever he is there are problems. Through Jackson's use of symbolism of patriarchal power through Charles, she constructs a character who seeks to want it all but at the end they will have nothing. Charles' actions furthermore create tension within the family dynamics through the Blackwood House, where his sole mission was to "get the safe from the study," which exposes his true intentions, implying he was in fact "one of the bad ones." Jackson poses how family coming in unexpectedty, patriarchal power, and change is a catalyst for problems within the family and how these problems can significantly affect the family itself.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: Topic; How does sunset boulevard explore…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 90%: Billy Wilder’s 1950 film noir and melodrama Sunset Boulevard exposes the fate of silent-era stars who refused to…
Billy Wilder’s 1950 film noir and melodrama Sunset Boulevard exposes the fate of silent-era stars who refused to adapt to the age of sound. Wilder presents decline and decay as destructive forces that corrupt both the individual and the system that creates them. Firstly, Wilder explores how decline distorts Norma’s identity, replacing reality with delusion. Furthermore, he shows how decay traps people within a past that no longer exists. Finally, he reveals that this decay is moral as well as physical, consuming everyone who enters Norma’s world. Thus, the film argues that when an industry discards its own, the result is not only the ruin of the forgotten but the destruction of those who feed off them.
Wilder explores how decline transforms Norma’s identity into delusion, leaving her unable to separate who she was from who she is. Norma is not simply arrogant; she is a woman who has refused to accept her own decline. When she declares, “I am big. It’s the pictures that got small,” Wilder frames her in a low-angle shot, adopting her perspective and visually reinforcing her belief that she is still a titan. This suggests that her sense of self has become so detached from reality that the film’s own camera is forced to flatter her. This is reinforced in the final staircase descent, where the subjective POV blurs the background and distorts the sound, so that the audience sees through Norma’s eyes. Wilder uses this to show that her decline has ended in psychosis, and that her fantasy is the only world she can still live in. Ultimately, Wilder exposes how decline destroys not only a star’s status but her grip on reality itself.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: The greatest obstacle the characters face…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 70%: “Rainbows End” by Jane Harrison is a play set in post war 1950’s Rural Victoria. It is about three generations of…
“Rainbows End” by Jane Harrison is a play set in post war 1950’s Rural Victoria. It is about three generations of Aboriginal women and how they come together to fight the systematic racism and discrimination prevalent at the time. In the play Harrison implies that although the family suffers from financial obstacles due to poverty, it is prejudice that acts as the biggest barrier from escaping poverty and improving their lives. Harrison conveys this through the ideas that prejudice is a major contributor of poverty, it restricts opportunities to escape poverty, and is a greater obstacle because it restricts social opportunities too. Ultimately, Harrison acknowledges poverty as an immense obstacle to overcome but presents prejudice as the main underlying factor that causes the family’s disadvantage.
Firstly, Harrison presents the idea that prejudice is a major contributor to poverty. Systematic racism and discrimination force Aboriginal families into disadvantaged and poor living conditions. The Humpy is a symbol of the financial struggles faced by the Dear family and it’s a direct result of racial inequality and white society looking down on them. This is evident through Gladys’ lack of education which is shown when Nan Dear tells Dolly she “can’t (read) in front of her”. Nan Dear doesn’t want Gladys to feel inferior or upset because she doesnt know how to read or write as a result of being taken away as a child and forced to assimilate and work for white society. Glady’s lack of basic education directly hinders her ability to gain an adequate job and support her family financially so they don’t end up in poverty. Gladys’ backstory demonstrates how prejudice is one of the main contributors that lead people into poverty.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: “Apollo—he ordained my agonies—these, my…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 85%: In an era where faith in divine authority was fading, Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King explores the collisions…
In an era where faith in divine authority was fading, Sophocles’ tragedy Oedipus the King explores the collisions between human free will and inescapable fate. Performed in 429 BCE, the play is backdropped within the city of Thebes as it follows the journey of individuals in their futile attempt to outplay their destiny. It’s through their voyage that Sophocles builds on how although humans still retain free will, all actions will eventually lead back their inevitable fate. Ultimately, Sophocles’ illustrates that no power of mortal capacity is enough to prevent their changeability in fortune because of fate.
Defying the power of the gods, Sophocles suggests that individuals are able to hold on to free will in some capacity. Repeating usage of the motif of crossroads throughout the play highlights this phenomenon, represented when Oedipus arrived at “where the three roads meet.”. Through this, Sophocles’ illustrates how even when individuals are given different choices within life, no matter what decision is made they will end up at their fate like how Oedipus, when trying to avoid his “native ground” ends up in Thebes. Thus, the Athenian audience is left to think about how their life may operate, how the decisions, whether of high importance or not, has no real depth if it means it all leads back to the same fate, a message on the futility of mankind. Furthermore, Sophocles’ intentional decision to leave out any physical representation of deities on stage reinforce this continuing idea of the fruitlessness of free will. It’s this absence that allows Sophocles to additional highlight how not just for Oedipus, but all characters are free to manoeuvre and act however they life, but at the end of the day they will all result in the same fated end that each one has been pre-ordained with. Hence, this leaves the Athenian audience to continuous lament on the saddening nature of human prowess of being insignificant in the larger picture when faced with divine authority, a continuous message by Oedipus to respect divine order. By establishing the existing but limited power of free will, the playwright focuses on the limitations that individuals have in deciding their fate.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: Hughes suggests the promise of freedom is…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 95%: Writing amid the Jim Crow era, where segregation is entrenched in society, Langston Hughes' 'Selected Poems'…
Writing amid the Jim Crow era, where segregation is entrenched in society, Langston Hughes' 'Selected Poems' explores the hypocrisy of American freedom ideals and their denial to Black Americans. Hughes interrogates the consequences of deferred dreams, and challenges white America's exclusion of Black Americans. Moreover, he rejects the assumption African Americans should wait for freedom. Ultimately Hughes exposes the hollowness of America's promises of freedom when its democratic ideals remain unfulfilled in practice.
Hughes exposes how America's failure to fulfill its promises of freedom suppresses Black American's aspirations, allowing frustration and suffering to accumulate over time. The 'wall rose slowly' in As I grew older represents a physical barrier placed by society blocking the 'sunlight' that allows the speaker to dream and hope. The wall obstructs the speaker's aspirations, forcing them into the shadow of the restrictions imposed by White America. However as the 'wall' is an obstacle, whilst 'sunlight' is an ongoing source, Hughes suggests Black Americans can overcome the hurdle and dream once again. This is amplified through the speaker’s assertion 'My hands!' representing self-agency. Harlem examines the consequences of a 'dream deferred'. The poem is almost entirely structured as an unanswered question refusing to resolve what happens to a suppressed hope. This mirrors society's inability to uphold their freedom ideals of being the land of the free. The escalating sequence of similes explores the psychological costs of suppression: 'does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?', 'fester like a sore' and 'stink like rotten meat?'. Hughes charts the progression from quiet diminishment, festering anguish to a decay that cannot be concealed any further. The poem's final line, 'or does it explode?', intensifies the preceding imagery, suggesting that suppressed aspirations may ultimately produce consequences that can no longer be contained. Hughes portrays the effects of a society failing to uphold its values, warning the delay in promise can have explosive social consequences.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: In Rainbow’s End, dignity can be…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 72.5%: Amidst ongoing systemic racism and discriminatory government policies of the 1950s, Aboriginal individuals…
Amidst ongoing systemic racism and discriminatory government policies of the 1950s, Aboriginal individuals continuously have had to fight institutionalised racism in order to preserve their self-worth as a marginalised community. The play ‘Rainbows End’ by playwright Jane Harrison explores the experiences of three generations of Aboriginal women in the 1950s, highlighting their resilience and the challenges they overcame. Through cultural identity, asserting one's voice and injustice, Harrison ultimately substantiates the idea that dignity can be maintained in the face of injustice when Aboriginal women of the 1950s embrace their identity, assert their voice and resist oppression; however, persistent discrimination can make preserving identity difficult.
Harrison initially demonstrates that for Aboriginal people in the 1950s, maintaining a strong cultural identity allows them to preserve their worth despite systemic racism and discrimination. This is evident through the characterisation of Nan Dear, as throughout the play she represented the importance of maintaining a strong connection to Aboriginal culture and country, refusing to let the white people’s paternalistic view impact her identity. By asserting that her “birth certificate says Murray River", Harrison uses Nan to demonstrate the importance of connection to country to an oppressed individual's self-identity. Furthermore, Harrison utilises this dialogue choice to emphasise how Nan Dear does not define herself using what is imposed on her by white society, but through her connection to country and culture. The recurring motif of the Murray River represents the continuity of Aboriginal identity and culture despite attempts at total assimilation. Nan’s refusal to let go of this connection becomes an act of quiet resistance, allowing her to preserve her connection to her cultural roots, which makes up her identity as an Aboriginal woman of the 50s. Harrison invites her contemporary audience to consider whether Aboriginal Australians should assimilate into white society, instead demonstrating the importance of preserving cultural identity as a means to retain one's dignity despite historical attempts at government control over Aboriginal people’s lives. The play consequently presents cultural pride as a means of resisting oppression, suggesting that although injustice can restrict an individual's opportunities, it cannot completely destroy their dignity if they choose to retain it. Thus, through Nan Dear, Harrison establishes that dignity can be maintained in the face of injustice through the preservation of cultural identity.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: How does Jackson critique traditional…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 75%: Shirley Jackson's 1962 gothic novel We Have Always Lived in a Castle explores the tyranny imposed by societal…
Shirley Jackson's 1962 gothic novel We Have Always Lived in a Castle explores the tyranny imposed by societal expectations prevalent in post-war America. She argues that social expectations breed fundamentally oppressive familial and societal institutions while maintaining how their destruction replicates new forms of misery. Jackson argues that traditional social structures stifle individual autonomy within disempowered groups that subsequently rationalise radical methods to reclaim agency. However, Jackson maintains that the inversion of traditional expectations parallels the impacts of the old society instead of liberation.
Initially, Jackson emphasises how patriarchal familial structures and societal expectations placed on women restrict autonomy and breed resentment towards the status quo. Merricat's exclamation that the "Rochester House...should have belonged to Constance", by birthright elucidates inherently inequitable gender-based marginalisation based upon patrilineal inheritance rather than equity. It serves as a form of foreshadowing as a catalyst that subsequently strips Constance's agency as an initial avenue of reconciliation, entrapping her within structures that reproduce themselves and denying her the choice to dictate otherwise. The Rochester house serves as a symbolic means for Jackson to expose the inherent contradiction within American society as the values of liberty and freedom have been distorted to create institutions that systematically create inequality towards marginalised groups through male inheritance. Furthermore, Jackson reiterates the twisted nature of familial hierarchy through Uncle Julian's recollection that "Mr Blackwood never stinted on his food, as long as we did not take too much", while he in turn "ate hugely". The food motif serves as a medium for Jackson to display how love and care has been commodified based on subservience to the house patriarch. Additionally, the allocation of food to Merricat where she was "sent to bed without dinner" elucidates how the ritual of dinner and sharing a meal has become weaponised as a punishment in the place of nurture. It is also a self-replicating system as the denial of food in itself produces weakness that reduces Merricat's ability to resist, reflecting the oppressive nature of the family hierarchy. In doing so, Jackson unveils how the nuclear family structure sustains itself by prioritising authority and power over love and care through oppressive practices, serving to physically weaken, marginalise and individualise [unclear] and enforce the patriarchy by diminishing their capacity to resist. By illustrating how coercion sustains oppressive structures, Jackson foreshadows the destructive consequences as a form of retribution to those maintaining these systems.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: Ogawa suggests that people adapt too…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 87.5%: Yoko Ogawa’s 1994 novel ‘The Memory Police’ utilises a dystopian setting to illustrate the complexities of human…
Yoko Ogawa’s 1994 novel ‘The Memory Police’ utilises a dystopian setting to illustrate the complexities of human complacency, and how quickly we can conform in the face of tyranny. Inspired by real historical events such as the Holocaust, Ogawa uses the forced disappearance of memories to paint a grave allegory of a totalitarian society. The novel serves as a political message —warning the audience as to the dangers of a corrupt, tyrannical government, and how it catalyses the erosion of identity. Through her foreboding depiction of total control and the suppression of resistance, Ogawa explores character relationships, allusions to history, and an exploration of the connection between memory and identity. Ultimately, The Memory Police exposes a fatal flaw in the human condition — in which we can surrender our autonomy almost willingly under oppressive governance.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: “Sunset boulevard demonstrates that an…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 97.5%: The past can offer individuals a comforting sense of identity and belonging, yet an excessive attachment to…
The past can offer individuals a comforting sense of identity and belonging, yet an excessive attachment to former glory may render the present intolerable. Billy Wilder's 1950 film noir Sunset Boulevard explores the destructive conflict between nostalgia and progress within a Hollywood industry that simultaneously manufactures celebrity and discards those who can no longer sustain it. Through the tragic decline of former silent-film star Norma Desmond, Wilder exposes how the idealisation of the past can imprison individuals within identities that no longer correspond to reality. However, he also suggests that Hollywood's relentless pursuit of novelty intensifies this struggle by alienating those whose identities remain rooted in a bygone era. Ultimately, through his contrasting portrayals of resistance and adaptation, Wilder contends that tragedy arises not from the inevitable passage of time, but from an inability to reconcile one's former identity with an evolving present.
An obsessive attachment to former glory can imprison individuals within idealised versions of themselves, rendering them incapable of confronting their diminished significance in the present. Wilder embodies this psychological entrapment through Norma Desmond, whose identity remains inseparable from the celebrity she once possessed. Her indignant declaration, “I am big. It's the pictures that got small,” employs antithesis to expose her distorted understanding of Hollywood's changing landscape. By attributing her declining relevance to the industry's supposed deterioration, Norma preserves an inflated self-image that protects her from acknowledging her professional obsolescence. Wilder further exposes the extent to which nostalgia has consumed her identity through her exaggerated gestures and theatrical expressions, reminiscent of silent-film acting conventions. Even in private, Norma continues to perform the role of the glamorous star, suggesting that the boundary between her cinematic persona and authentic self has collapsed. This inability to distinguish performance from identity is reinforced through her repeated screenings of her former films, during which she becomes both performer and spectator, endlessly consuming idealised images of her younger self. Through this self-perpetuating ritual, Wilder suggests that nostalgia becomes destructive when individuals cease to remember the past and instead attempt to inhabit it. The decaying grandeur of Norma's mansion similarly functions as a physical manifestation of her psychological stagnation. Its neglected interiors and antiquated furnishings preserve the remnants of a vanished Hollywood, visually reflecting Norma's refusal to acknowledge the passage of time. Most significantly, Wilder employs Norma's Salome screenplay as a symbol of her desperate attempt to resurrect her former stardom. Her intention to portray the youthful biblical heroine creates dramatic irony, as audiences recognise the disparity between Norma's imagined return to prominence and her present circumstances. Joe's dismissive reaction to the screenplay, which he considers excessively long and difficult to adapt, further exposes the gulf between Norma's grandiose ambitions and the practical realities of contemporary filmmaking. The script becomes more than a creative project; it represents Norma's attempt to impose her idealised past upon an industry that has moved beyond her. Furthermore, the biblical allusion foreshadows the destructive consequences of desire unchecked by reality, suggesting that Norma's longing to reclaim her former identity threatens to consume both herself and those around her. Thus, Wilder reveals that an inability to relinquish the past becomes destructive when individuals allow idealised memories to replace the self-knowledge necessary to embrace the present.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: Unit 2 English: Sweet As suggests that…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 85%: Set against the dusty outback of Pilbara Country, Jub Clerc’s coming of age film “Sweet As” (2022) follows a group…
Set against the dusty outback of Pilbara Country, Jub Clerc’s coming of age film “Sweet As” (2022) follows a group of four troubled teenagers as they go on both a physical and emotional journey of learning to heal and embrace their trauma. While Clerc encourages characters to move on from what happened to them earlier to heal, ultimately she celebrates the characters who can look back at themselves from before and learn from it to move forward and fully grow as a person. In essence, Clerc embraces the journey of development as not a straight path, but a complex one that needs to be done to completely heal.
Throughout the film, Clerc encourages characters that can share their stories with others as a perfect way to begin their growth process. This was depicted through the campfire scene where Elvis—a guy who acts as if everything is okay all the time—and Murra—a girl who refuses to let anyone in, afraid of being hurt again—open up and reveal the reason as to why they are there. Once they had gathered around the campfire, Murra realised she had “never asked why [Elvis] was here,” and the camera begins to focus on Elvis and his teary face, showing a piece as to who Elvis really is behind all the jokes. Clerc utilises the camera angle of Elvis to illustrate how much this has affected him as he exposes himself from before the trip. Additionally, later in the scene Murra apologises for hear behaviour from earlier at the basketball court—where she had blown up at everyone and ran away—, explaining that her and her mother’s relationship was always “on and off,” depicting a true moment of discomfort from Murra. This fragment of sensitivity seen through Murra highlights her willingness to learn and grow from herself before. Clerc illustrates the warm lighting seen through the campfire as a warm and comforting space the teens had created themselves—a stark contrast from their harsh environments back home—as perfect opportunities those characters can take to begin healing and sharing their pasts.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: ‘Maybe I didn’t look like you, but if I…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 72.5%: The episodic memoir Born a Crime, written by Trevor Noah explores his experiences growing up in a racist and…
The episodic memoir Born a Crime, written by Trevor Noah explores his experiences growing up in a racist and separated society, where race remained a factor in law enforcement even after the apartheid system had been officially dismantled. Born a Crime uses the importance of language to allow people to change how they perceived, however one’s identity comes from more than just what they speak and rather who they actually are. Language does provide power how one is seen however that can limit who they truly are, Language cannot unite the difference in education allowing further separation of races, and language creates further stereotypes which can limit one’s ability of figuring out who they are as a person.
Born a Crime establishes the power language provides individuals by being able to change what they see and allows one to fit in, in a place they are not welcome. Early on in the memoir, Noah shares his experiences being coloured in school and failing to find the place he belongs, how he was “too black” for one group but then too white for others. However, what he did figure out was, if he “spoke like” someone then he “was” them. How his language shaped how people saw him. Rather than letting the division of race shape challenges into his everyday life, he “became a chameleon” and changed how people saw him. While this gave him a chance of being welcomed by everyone else it limited his ability to figure out his own identity, being shaped of what he wishes to be seen as and not who he actually was. Although, growing up Noah “didn’t know what race was” from his parents being different races, the idea everyone was different was normal. For Noah, everyone was just a person, therefore he lost his ability to figure out who he was from him just wanting to fit in with everyone else when being taught race and language divides everyone. As Noah grew up further, the colour of his skin impacted his identity more than language could ever help, how “for all that black people have suffered” they are able to know who they are whereas coloured people like Noah do not get that chance. Something that language could never give Noah or coloured people alike, was the ability to figure out who they are as people. Language provides power in the ability to change how they are perceived however changing how one wants to be seen, does not shape who they truly are as people.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: ‘My story is ready There’s enough to…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 87.5%: This is me I still have the first roll of film i ever shot, 16 frames, half of them ruined due to my own…
This is me
I still have the first roll of film i ever shot, 16 frames, half of them ruined due to my own impatience. That roll of film taught me six steps i use behind every photograph i make: Load, expose, develop, fix, wash and print. Which i learned the summer i turned 16 in a borrowed darkroom. I did not know yet that those six steps mapped the slowest journey of my life.
Step 1: Loading. You do this step in total darkness, no light allowed or the film is ruined before its begun. I was twelve on the bus home from school, swimming carnival, when a boy from my year fell asleep against the window. The late sun slanting across his face. I studied him furitvely, until something plummeted in my stomach, which i had no words for yet. I told myself the feeling was normal, until it sounded like a lie i was rehearsing. I told noone, not for years and barely admitted the truth to myself. That afternoon i picked up a habit i still catch myself doing; scanning the room before letting my guard down. I held the secret alone, frightened by it, and embarrassed by that fear. Yet beneath both, surprisingly certain.
Step 2: Exposure. The shutter opens and light hits the film, whether the photographer is ready or not. That is the risk. Photographers call it exposure, because it is the instant an image becomes real, and therefore visible to those who care to look. The word carries two senses, the exposure one chooses. Mine was on the backsteps of my friend Athans house, both of us on the cold concrete, him still in his footy jumper, and my heart pounding so loud you could hear it in my ears. Every version of the sentence i rehearsed deserted me. We pretended to look at our phones, to avoid meeting the others eye, and then i said it. Much quieter than i had meant to: “I think i like guys.” Three seconds of silence followed, which i actually counted, before he replied so casually as if i had confessed to being left handed. “Cool, want a TimTam?” Relief flooded my body so fiercely, my eyes stung. For once the secret felt lighter than the silence around it. I had never been so grateful for a biscuit before in my life. Then there is the exposure one does not choose, the constant dread, someone may expose the photo before its ready.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: there is none this is the adaptable one
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: [EXAM TITLE] They called it disobedience. We called it resistance. Protest, I came to understand, is not…
[EXAM TITLE]
They called it disobedience. We called it resistance. Protest, I came to understand, is not merely the raising of a voice or the breaking of a law. It begins when obedience becomes an endorsement of injustice. [ADD TITLE/STIMULUS] I entered Holloway believing protest was something one did. I left knowing it was something one became.
The prison gates slammed behind me. I was ordered into a rough prison dress, marked with arrows that branded me a criminal. My mother's handkerchief had been taken with everything else. They took my name, my clothes and my freedom. They thought there was nothing left to surrender. They had forgotten that I could still refuse.
The first morning, they placed a bowl of porridge before me. Steam rose in pale, obedient spirals. Beyond the iron door, keys rattled; somewhere along the corridor, a woman was weeping.
"No breakfast?" the prison officer asked.
"No."
Such a small word. Barely enough to disturb the air. Yet it was the first decision that morning which belonged entirely to me. I had joined the hunger strike. I was frightened. But I feared becoming accustomed to their cruelty even more.
Politics, we were told, was no place for women. We could work, raise sons with rights denied to us, and obey laws we could not shape. I remember hearing Emmeline Pankhurst speak of a government that depended upon our obedience. Her words stayed with me. If they would not grant us a voice, we would make them hear it. We petitioned Parliament, marched beneath banners of purple, white and green, and demanded representation from men who mistook our exclusion for natural order. We were dismissed as hysterical, condemned as disorderly, arrested for disturbing the peace.
But what peace was there to disturb?
The tranquillity of the privileged often depends upon the silence of those they oppress. Protest becomes necessary when institutions mistake the absence of resistance for consent.
I remember the procession through London: hundreds of women, their boots striking the cobblestones in imperfect unison. Beside me marched a seamstress whose fingers bore the scars of endless labour; behind us, a mother carrying a sleeping child. Different lives, united by the same intolerable truth: our futures were governed by those who refused to hear us.
"Do you think they'll listen?" the young girl beside me whispered, her voice trembling.
I could not answer.
[ADD STIMULUS]
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: “We are going to be very happy Constance.”…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 87.5%: In ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ by Shirley Jackson, isolation is used to control and invoke emotion in an…
In ‘We Have Always Lived in the Castle’ by Shirley Jackson, isolation is used to control and invoke emotion in an individual, generally to suit their own needs. Jackson uses isolation to encourage and push people out of their shells, Jackson uses isolation to hide people from society, and Jackson uses isolation to invoke fear in people to keep them close.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: The Changing Self Stimulus 1 and 2
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 80%: The Changing Self All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling…
The Changing Self
All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling noisily, people with places to be. I had places to be too, I just wasn’t ready to face them. Instead, I was stuck somewhere between a screen and a playlist, sealed off from it all. I felt it before I saw it, a cold rush of air and diesels, the wheeze of mechanical doors closing. By the time I looked up it was already pulling away, just the taillights, indifferent, disappearing into traffic. My jaw tightened. I checked my watch, then checked it again, as if glaring at it hard enough might drag the numbers backwards. Yet as time kept on ticking regardless, I was left in the same spot, waiting anxiously. My eyes restlessly tracking every bus that glided past on the other side, willing one of them to be mine, knowing none of them were.
I noticed a strange man from the corner of my eye. He sat down without ceremony, wearing a worn black jacket with a small rip forming on the right elbow. He held a long, skinny cigarette in one hand and a rusted lighter in the other. I didn’t want to look at him for too long; there was something unkempt about him, something unresolved. It seemed almost familiar which frightened me a little, and I quietly decided that he wasn’t someone worth noticing.
I felt a light tap. The man, now standing, towered over me. His broad figure shielded me from the diesel filled air whooshing by. “Hey, you got a lighter?” he gestured to my overflowing shoulder bag. I don’t smoke, but I vividly remembered spotting a bright blue lighter at the bottom of my front pocket a few weeks ago. Keeping my gaze down, I swiftly unzipped the pocket and shuffled my hand around before finally pulling it out from the chaos that was my bag. Dimples formed on his cheeks as he thanked me with a childlike smile, the corners of his mouth almost reaching his ears. Startled from his overjoyed show of appreciation, I smiled back reluctantly.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: The Changing Self Stimulus 1 and 2
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 77.5%: The Changing Self All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling…
The Changing Self
All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling noisily, people with places to be. I had places to be too, I just wasn’t ready to face them. Instead, I was stuck somewhere between a screen and a playlist, sealed off from it all. I felt it before I saw it, a cold rush of air and diesels, the wheeze of mechanical doors closing. By the time I looked up it was already pulling away, just the taillights, indifferent, disappearing into traffic. My jaw tightened. I checked my watch, then checked it again, as if glaring at it hard enough might drag the numbers backwards. But as time kept on ticking regardless, I was left in the same spot, waiting anxiously. My eyes restlessly tracking every bus that glided past on the other side, willing one of them to be mine, knowing none of them were.
I noticed a strange man from the corner of my eye. He sat down without ceremony, wearing a worn black jacket with a small rip forming on the right elbow. He held a long, skinny cigarette in one hand and a rusted lighter in the other. I didn’t want to look at him for too long, there was something unkempt about him, something unresolved. It seemed almost familiar which frightened me a little, and I quietly decided that he wasn’t someone worth noticing.
I felt a light tap. The man, now standing, towered over me. His broad figure shielded me from the diesel filled air whooshing by. “Hey, you got a lighter?” he gestured to my overflowing shoulder bag. I don’t smoke, but I vividly remembered spotting a bright blue lighter at the bottom of my front pocket a few weeks ago. Keeping my gaze down, I swiftly unzipped the pocket and shuffled my hand around before finally pulling it out from the chaos that was my bag. Dimples formed on his cheeks as he thanked me with a childlike smile, the corners of his mouth almost reaching his ears. Startled from his overjoyed show of appreciation, I smiled back reluctantly.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: The Changing Self Stimulus 1 and 2
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 75%: The Changing Self All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling…
The Changing Self
All around me the world moved in its usual rush. Shoes scuffing on pavement, engines idling noisily, people with places to be. I had places to be too, I just wasn’t ready to face them. Instead, I was stuck somewhere between a screen and a playlist, sealed off from it all. I felt it before I saw it, a cold rush of air and diesels, the wheeze of mechanical doors closing. By the time I looked up it was already pulling away, just the taillights, indifferent, disappearing into traffic. My jaw tightened. I checked my watch, then checked it again, as if glaring at it hard enough might drag the numbers backwards. But time kept on ticking regardless, I was left in the same spot, waiting anxiously. My eyes restlessly tracking every bus that glided past on the other side, willing one of them to be mine, knowing none of them were.
I noticed a strange man from the corner of my eye. He sat down without ceremony, wearing a worn black jacket with a small rip forming on the right elbow. His hands were preoccupied with a long skinny cigarette in one and a rusted lighter in the other. I didn’t want to look at him for too long, there was something unkempt about him, something unresolved. It seemed almost familiar which frightened me a little, and I quietly decided that he wasn’t someone worth noticing.
I felt a light tap. The man, now standing, towered over me. His broad figure shielded me from the diesel filled air whooshing by. “Hey, you got a lighter?” he gestured to my overflowing shoulder bag. I don’t smoke, but I vividly remembered spotting a bright blue lighter at the bottom of my front pocket a few weeks ago. Keeping my gaze down, I swiftly unzipped the pocket and shuffled my hand around before finally pulling it out from the chaos that was my bag. Dimples formed on his cheeks as he thanked me with a childlike smile, the corners of his mouth almost reaching his ears. Startled from his overjoyed show of appreciation, I smiled back reluctantly.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: "In High Ground, violence is not merely a…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 90%: Johnson uses his film ‘High Ground’ to frame atrocities as an unavoidable degradation of morality. Travis, through…
Johnson uses his film ‘High Ground’ to frame atrocities as an unavoidable degradation of morality. Travis, through costuming, is depicted as a character that undergoes substantial transformation towards a fracturing of empathy and sense of self. As initially connected with colonial figures like Eddy and Moran, Travis is seen in pristine officer uniform, well-kept facial hair, and trimmed short haircut together illustrating his overall comfort and complacency in participation of cultural erasure. Following the twelve-year time jump, Johnson presents Travis attired with rugged clothes, visually depicting an internal dichotomy of how he is plagued with guilt and driven to abandon his past. Additionally, medium to close up shots highlight his grown out facial hair which suggests a desire to hide the part of himself that he wishes to forget. These shot choices encourage the audience to engage more meaningfully with Travis’s internal state of disillusionment. Uncombed, draping hair
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Oedipus the King: Knowledge as…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 85%: I’d like to begin with an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land—the Wurundjeri people of the…
I’d like to begin with an acknowledgment of the traditional owners of the land—the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation.
October 14th, 2023. The Referendum on a Voice to Parliament. I was fifteen, watching the television with a knot in my stomach as the map of Australia filled with red and yellow. No, yes, no, yes. Surely the acknowledged nation would recognise the voices of its First Peoples? But as the red swallowed the map, I understood something uncomfortable: the sacrificed voices of Aboriginal people had not been enough.
Back then, I believed shouting was the loudest thing a person could do. I thought you needed a megaphone, a banner, a crowd, a collective march. I marched because silence felt like complicity. I shouted because I believed volume was power. I was wrong. Because as loudly as I shouted, there were voices louder than mine, drowning mine out.
The following year, I stood in the dusty car park of a rural Victorian pioneer settlement, a place my teacher had taken us to “learn about early colonial life.” Behind a rubbish bin, a plaque read: “The Conquered Desert.” Inside, displays of white settlers hammering ingots were narrated by a guide praising the “brave pioneers” who took this land—the land labelled Terra Nullius.
Nobody’s land. A legal fiction designed to take over a land where “nobody” was there. Britain declared that Aboriginal people did not count as “someone.” Taking the land of the vulnerable, the people without a voice, Britain declared that Aboriginal people did not exist—not as people with laws, families, or ownership. You can’t steal from nobody. You can’t murder nobody. You can’t declare war on nobody. Terra Nullius wasn’t ignorance. It was an invention. A legal lie written on paper to silence them. Until 1967, Aboriginal people weren’t even counted in the Australian Constitution. They weren’t mentioned at all. Just absent. The law didn’t need to call them animals; it simply left them out. And sometimes, erasure is crueller than a title.
That noticing was my first voice. I called it protest, not resistance. I only knew something felt wrong.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Title: Small Acts, Big wins Stimulus…
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: Small Acts, Big Wins Transcript of a speech delivered at a Saigon University peace rally during the terminal…
Small Acts, Big Wins
Transcript of a speech delivered at a Saigon University peace rally during the terminal collapse of the Vietnam War by South Vietnamese ARVN infantryman Le Trung Hieu — April 1975:
Look around you today. Listen to the sound of the artillery echoing on the horizon. The North’s forces are closing in, and time is running out for us all. The men in power claim that only military conquests matter, but keeping our people alive is the only true win left.
I stand before you not as a hero, but as a man who has walked through the ashes of our homeland and seen too many young boys die for a lie.
We have endured a century of foreign boots, first the French who bled our country dry, and then the Americans who brought destruction and called it “help.” They rained down Agent Orange until our jungles became graveyards, poisoning young men who only wanted the small act of defending their homes. And when the cost rose, the Americans boarded their ships and abandoned us.
And where are our own leaders now when our people desperately need their help?
While teenage soldiers were starving in the Central Highlands without rice or clean water, President Thiệu sat in air-conditioned Saigon palaces. To the profiteers, this war was a business. Every soldier shipped to the front was money in their pockets. When the front lines crumbled, Thiệu fled to Taiwan with gold, leaving us to burn in the wreckage of his corruption.
Why are we still bleeding for a ghost regime that even its leader has deserted? Why sacrifice our brothers for their delusional idea of a big win?
They paste banners across our streets commanding us to “Exterminate the Communists” and “Defend the Outpost of Freedom.” They want us to believe this conflict is a grand crusade to change the world. But I have carried dying boys. I have seen mothers weeping with starving children. This is no longer South versus North. This is a choice between life and death.
This war has gone too far. The killing has outlasted reason and morality.
VCE · Text Response
Text Response: ‘…but I wanted her to be unhappy, dressed…
VCE Text Response essay scoring 75%: Within her gothic novel of extremes, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle presents a world of…
Within her gothic novel of extremes, Shirley Jackson’s We Have Always Lived in the Castle presents a world of undeniable, unrelenting cruelty, exploring the struggles of individuals as they navigate it. Jackson demonstrates how the tensions that arise between classes and within families leads to oppression and prejudice, thus, lamenting the destructive nature of cruelty and its effects on one’s worldview. However, Jackson asserts that in the face of cruelty, compassion and enduring relationships can offer temporary respite, yet, cruelty does indeed seem unrelenting.
Jackson depicts how the alienation between groups leads to tensions that ultimately causes extreme prejudice and cruelty to arise. In Stella’s cafe, Jim Donell operates as a microcosm of the village’s hatred, calling Merricat by her full and vaguely aristocratic title “Mary Katherine Black-wood”. The hyphenation of “Black-wood” suggests a sardonic emphasis, removing Jim Donell from Merricat as a wholesome, neighbourly figure but rather cementing his position as a proletarian oppressor. Jackson further reveals the misaligned attitudes between the two groups, as Jim Donell “can't ever tell how gossip gets around”. The Blackwoods are dehumanised as merely subjects of gossip, slighted into social obscurity. Jackson thus criticises the dangerousness of social disconnection as a catalyst for hate and cruelty. The blackwoods reciprocate this notion through their social snobbery. Merricat’s statement that “the Clarkes’ house is newer but no finer than the Blackwood house”, declares rich tradition over modernity. Jackson highlights this old-new money conflict that affirms the Blackwoods’ elitism as the driver of segregation both physically and socially. Furthermore, as Merricat asserts “Along every inch of Blackwood Road is a wire fence built by our father”, the imagery present in the extent of “every inch” conveys an almost total rejection of contact with the outside world. Jackson criticizes this hatred, one similar to the tensions generated by McCarthyism, and the cyclical nature of cruelty that gridlocks individuals into mutual and perpetual resentment.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: framework - protest
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 100%: The first thing I noticed was the flag. We were two hours into the march: hoarse, sunburned, glitter caught in…
The first thing I noticed was the flag.
We were two hours into the march: hoarse, sunburned, glitter caught in the cracks of the cobblestones, a bass line shaking the shutters of the old buildings on either side. Then the front of the crowd slowed, and the sound thinned the way a room does when someone says a name.
We all knew why we were there. There are still streets in this country where two women cannot hold hands at a bus stop without checking over their shoulders, and a march is the only argument we have that cannot be talked over: ten thousand bodies, in daylight, refusing to be anywhere else.
On the left, in a doorway, stood an old man in a pressed shirt buttoned to the collar, as though he had dressed for church. In both hands, held against his chest like a shield, he had a flag. Green and red. The national one.
I knew what that flag could mean in certain hands. I had seen it waved from car windows at the edge of other marches, draped across the shoulders of men shouting things I won’t repeat from behind a line of police. A few people lowered their signs. Someone behind me muttered, “Here we go.” Beside me, Dani tightened her grip on her pole, and I felt myself do the sum that years of small hostilities had taught me: flag, man, doorway. Danger. I felt it in my shoulders before I thought it.
Nobody spoke. The march bent around him like water around a stone. I watched his face as I passed. His jaw trembled. His knuckles had gone white on the cloth. He didn’t shout or move. He only kept standing there, looking at us the way you look at something you are trying to reach and do not know how.
That was when I saw what I had missed. He wasn’t holding the flag like a weapon. He was holding it like a question.
VCE · Creative Response
Creative Response: Listen - title
VCE Creative Response essay scoring 90%: VICTORIA POLICE — DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ORDER INCIDENT REPORT: 017-B | 17 October 2026 Location: Parliament…
VICTORIA POLICE — DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC ORDER
INCIDENT REPORT: 017-B | 17 October 2026
Location: Parliament Square | Reporting Officer: Constable Daniel Reeves, Badge 0417
Incident classification: Public assembly | Status: DRAFT — Pending review
14:02 — INITIAL OBSERVATION
OFFICIAL REPORT — DRAFT
Approximately 213 individuals participated in a peaceful gathering outside Parliament Square to protest
alleged government negligence following a factory collapse. Protesters were instructed to disperse in
accordance with public safety regulations. The crowd remained at the location.
PRIVATE RECORD — UNSUBMITTED
There were 213. I counted them because I had nothing else to do.
Most carried cardboard signs. Some held photographs. A woman in a yellow coat clutched a picture of a
boy no older than seventeen. Their chanting rose and fell against the barricades. I could hear the noise,
but not the words. Or perhaps I had not tried.
We had been instructed to observe. Not engage. Not respond. Certainly not listen.
14:17 — ESCALATION
OFFICIAL REPORT — DRAFT
Several demonstrators questioned police instructions to disperse. One female protester approached the
barricade carrying a cardboard sign. No immediate physical threat was observed.
PRIVATE RECORD — UNSUBMITTED
She could not have been older than seventeen. Her sign read: MY FATHER DESERVED TO COME
HOME.
She asked whether we had children. Nobody answered. I told her to move. She asked why. I repeated
the instruction. She repeated the question.
I had been trained for seventeen weeks to control a crowd. Nobody had taught me how to listen to one.
“Please,” she said.
I heard her. I chose not to answer.
14:32 — USE OF FORCE
OFFICIAL REPORT — DRAFT
At approximately 14:32, an officer initiated contact with a female demonstrator attempting to remain at
the barricade. The individual sustained an injury during the interaction. The injured protester was
subsequently removed from the area.
PRIVATE RECORD — UNSUBMITTED