Michael Gow Discovery

Discovery is the observation of new phenomena, new actions, or new events and providing new reasoning to explain the knowledge gathered through such observations with previously acquired knowledge from abstract thought and everyday experiences. Discovery is also the act of detecting something new, or something “old” that had been unknown. Discovery can us to new worlds and values, stimulate new ideas, and enable us to speculate about future possibilities. Significant discoveries surprise and challenge is conveyed in a play ‘Away’ written by Michael Gow followed by a poem ‘The Way Through the Woods’ composed by Rudyard Kipling. ‘Away’ by Micheal Gow very much relates to the poem ‘The Way Through the Woods’ by Rudyard kilping as they both encompass

‘Away’ has set out a great choice of ‘Discovery’ as it is historical in the sense that it places its characters and themes within a particular society and draws on the mood and spirit of a particular era to portray a larger world. The three families are seen as a cross section of the Australian community during that time and have different life experiences, aspirations and attitudes. ‘Away’ exposes the comedy and tragedy of the lives of the characters.

Secondly, the poem ‘The Way Through the Woods’ is very much an appropriate choice for my related text of ‘Discovery’. ‘The Way Though the Woods’ focuses on three key themes explored by Kipling such as the metaphysical presences in earthly life, the power of nature over man, and how history can never entirely be obliterated. How this poem meets its standards for ‘Discovery’ is that it has strong relation of the concept of loss, the hidden, memory, and rediscovery, which are then explored in the

A play ‘Stranger on the Shore’ is then performed by characters in this scene. The MC is dressed as a hula girl as he is carrying a ukulele. As the MC carries on his unusual intro, wearing a sailor’s cap, Tom then appears before the curtain as he says his part of the act of the amateur night whilst Coral makes ship noises on a bottle. Coral disappears of the stage as Tom says “She will surely perish. But just then the god of the sea took pity on her and turned her into”, The curtain then opens to reveal Coral with her leg concealed by a towel in the appropriate shape, so then Tom continues to say “a mermaid. So she wouldn’t drown”. This goes down to how and where Coral is struggling as she says “Forever in the darkness of the sea I follow my beloved. How I yearn for the land, the sky, the grass, but to walk causes me terrible pain in my nether regions. So far from home, swimming after my ghostly lover.” The ‘darkness of the sea’ metaphorically represents Coral’s isolation in the despair of her grief. She has almost left the living to pursue her son, transformed into her ‘ghostly lover’ in the ‘play within a play’. The Stranger on the Shore scene allows the characters to act out highly emotional scenes without them seeming corny or over the top, but dramatic, convincing and genuinely representing powerful emotions. Coral