Archetypes In Catcher In The Rye

Jill Ker Conway uses narrative in The Road from Coorain as a reflective expository prose. This memoir most significantly includes detailed descriptions of the land in the Australian outback. For Conway, the land is a character in itself as it builds the foundation of her consciousness, which is later revealed during travel. Her experience and association with the geography helps redress the historical record previously imposed by British imperial perspective, reveals the true self. This essay will discuss how redressing the historical record and giving a true objective voice to Australia’s geography in turn helped Jill Ker Conway reveal her real self. It is through recognizing the non-British imperial experience that Conway is able to let the

In many instances, life in the outback is described in detail as a hostile exposition to harsh elements and isolation from civilization. This archetype has been influenced and imposed by the imperial perspective that has come with being a British colony. Conway set out to address this issue of perspective and rewrites Australian history so others like her could identify with it. She uses an important seven pages describing the “tapestry of delicate life” that “hugs the earth firmly” (3). The detail in explaining the physicality of the “waxy succulents…spreading like splashes of paint”, recreates a landscape from new eyes (3). The eyes of an Australian who lived and prospered off of this area; who understood that this particular landscape was monumental in defining who she was. Throughout the novel the landscape is described in so many ways that it becomes an influential character helping to define Conway. Even in the end of the novel Conway is found to be describing her landscape as “brilliant in color [sic]”, “majestic in its scale” and covered in “shimmering light” (198). She finds it imperative to rewrite this piece of geographical history to show evidence of a completely different world seen through her. She reveals the landscape that the aboriginals experienced by page 6 when she describes the uniqueness of the kookaburra with its “ribald laughter” (6). She concludes that “it is hard to imagine the kookaburra feeding St. Jerome… [he] belongs to a physical and spiritual landscape which is outside the imagination of the Christian West” (6). This serves as the first of many separations between the British colonial experience and the true Australian experience. On the other hand, it is still important for Conway to describe the isolated feeling of living on Coorain, because the isolation is what defines women in many