Analysis Of ' Rainbow 's End ' A Play By Jane Harrison And The Children 's Book ' The Rabbits

Discovery Essay by Timothy Harfield, y12
Composers show how confronting and meaningful discoveries can be through how their characters and settings of their works are depicted. I agree with this statement, because the discoveries made within a text by the audience are there to piece together the picture of which is the texts underlying motive. Examples of this can be seen in the texts ‘Rainbow’s End’ a play by Jane Harrison and the children’s book ‘The Rabbits’ by John Marsden and Shaun Tan. ‘Rainbow’s End’ follows a family of three Aboriginal Australian females; Gladys - single mother trying to support her daughter and help her succeed in life, Nan Dear – Gladys’s mother and Dolly – Gladys’s teenage daughter, showing the struggles that they as an Aboriginal family face in a Anglo-dominant, 1950’s Australian society. ‘The Rabbits’ is an allegory, or retelling, of the British colonisation of Australia, with the British being represented by rabbits and the Indigenous Australians being represented by numbats, an endangered Australian native animal. Both of these texts display themes of discrimination and assimilation towards aboriginals, giving us the chance to discover and understand their struggles.
Discoveries can be both confronting and meaningful. This can be seen through the depiction of discrimination, the act of putting another group or person down due to their differences, within the texts, an example of which can be seen in ‘Rainbow’s End’ by Jane Harrison. On page 127, Gladys returns home after travelling to the nearby city of Shepparton, in hopes of glimpsing the arriving British monarchs. She states how her trip was to no avail, as her view was blocked by large hessian fences that were erected by the government to hide t...

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...ry graphic insight, but it helps us to see our past mistakes, to make for a better future.
Throughout both ‘Rainbow’s End’ and ‘The Rabbits’, the audience discovers the plights that the Aboriginal Australians faced, due to discrimination and assimilation, in intensely confronting, yet intensely meaningful ways. We see how the discrimination and forced assimilation of cultures was common in the lead up to modern times because of composers like Harrison, Marsden and Tan reminding us of these events, allowing us to discover and rediscover our past wrongs through their works, in order to pave the way for a brighter, harmonious future. Without these documentations and retellings of events such as these, history would repeat itself, conflicts would be more apparent and we as a species would not be able to thrive and prosper due to our prejudices and superiority complexes.