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Giffie | Mount Saint Joseph Milperra

Significant discoveries surprise and challenge.


How is this idea conveyed in your prescribed text and ONE other text of your
own choosing?

Introduction
Provocative texts can be highly effective in revealing common concerns between humans and
their world in a surprising and challenging way. By creating opportunities for audiences to
pause and reflect, composers of such texts shed light on the awe and wonder that encompass the
concept of change: how it is not always positive and that too much of it can arouse serious
implications. This is exhibited in Robert Grays poetry,
Flames and Dangling Wire
and
North
Coast Town
, in parallel to Andrew Niccols futuristic film
Gattaca
as they all stress how human
interference with the natural environment can manifest negative consequences, in turn
surprising and challenging conceptions held by responders.

Body paragraph 1 - Flames and Dangling Wire


While profound curiosity and necessity can motivate discovery, individuals in pursuit of truth
must be willing to face the dire ramifications which may arise as a result. As an imagist, Robert
Gray resonates with his audience by employing powerful imagery to emphasise his disdain
towards contemporary society and its associated values of greed and consumerism, which
deprive natural environments of their pure essence. This is articulated in Flames and Dangling
Wire, a didactic poem whereby the persona observes a modern-day dump site. As the first line
of the opening stanza reads, on a highway over the marshland, responders immediately detect
a sense of tension as they are confronted by a destructed and decaying dystopia. As the air
wobbles in some cheap mirror, onomatopoeia stresses the stale artificiality that now plagues
the vicinity. A place where distant buildings are stencilled in the smoke, sibilance further
accentuates the revolting atmosphere, polluted by fumes laden with toxic chemicals. Littered
with cars like skulls, Gray employs a simile to illustrate how the dump site mimics a graveyard,
where biodiversity that once thrived now suffer, buried beneath the great cuds of cloth. It is
through this challenging experience that the persona ultimately comes to a surprising, almost
shocking revelation: I realise I am in the future. A historical allusion to the Raft of Medusa - an
artwork depicting the survivors of a shipwreck who resolve to cannibalism - foreshadow the
inevitable death of humanity, as the consumerist society consumes itself. As the voices of hope
and promise from the old radio spilling its dangling wire become lost and concealed amongst
the arcs of the earth, the conclusion of the poem reminds to responders of the surprising and
challenging truth behind curiosity and necessity-driven discoveries and the dire ramifications
which can manifest.

Giffie | Mount Saint Joseph Milperra

Significant discoveries surprise and challenge.


How is this idea conveyed in your prescribed text and ONE other text of your
own choosing?

Body paragraph 2 - North Coast Town


Although often sudden and unexpected, physical discoveries can enable individuals to speculate
about future possibilities. Such experiences can be highly transformative, as one's former
perspectives are challenged in a new light. This is reflected in Robert Grays poem, North Coast
Town as the persona anticipates arrival to his former beachside community, only to discover
that it has become victim to commercial reconstruction. Instantaneously, anonymity of the title
suggests that the town has been deprived of its classic character and authenticity, now lost and
forgotten amongst neighbouring metropolitan locales. As the persona aimlessly eats a floury
apple and stand about, olfactory imagery of the wall smell of the vandals lavatory conveys
the nauseating stench of the urinals which are now tarnished by graffiti. Alliteration of the
plastic pennants communicates the rotting materialism that now consumes the town, whilst
compound words such as tile-facing and plate glass heighten the dull and monotonous
atmosphere. Hence, it is when the persona compares the RSLs refurbishment as being like a
fancy-dress Inca, responders become critical of the implications that can foster from
commercialism and Americanisation: Theyre making California. As the last line of the
concluding stanza reads, Passed an Abo, not attempting to hitch, outside town, Gray reinforces
the loss of morals and values which can occur if modern values persist surprise and challenge
age-old values.

Conclusion
Overall, it can be argued that Grays provocative texts are highly effective in revealing the
surprising and challenging nature of discovery, discussing the negative consequences of human
interference with the natural environment and hence challenging conceptions previously held
by responders.

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