The Napalm Girl Distinctively Visual Essay

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The Distinctively Visual’s fundamental purpose lies in its ability to forge a link between ideas and image, prompting members to challenge perceptions of their world and enhance perspectives of humanity. Henry Lawson’s “The Drover’s Wife” and “In A Dry Season” embody the distinctively visual as a way to vividly recreate life within the Australian Outback and embody notions of survival, isolation and suffering. Perceptively, Nick Ut’s photograph “The Napalm Girl” visualises the brutality of bloodshed in order to prompt audience members into critiquing the construct of war. These texts recreate aspects of their contextual era, offering a variety of perspectives on the world that drive their respective audience members to respond and ultimately …show more content…

Lawson characterises this aspect within the emotive lexicons of “loneliness and solitude” while enduring “pain and suffering” in order to overcome the obstacles to survive in the harsh Australian environment. Thus, the Drover’s Wife acts as a symbolic analogy of the landscape, presenting the uniqueness of the harsh landscape through her hardships and persistent survival. Alliteration within “No undergrowth, nothing to relieve the eye… nineteen miles to the nearest… civilisation” characteristically emphasises the isolation of their location, alienating the Drover’s Wife from the rest of civilisation. This consequently exposes the responder to a story about the mother’s hardships, which instantly provokes a sympathetic response to the plight of the individual. In addition, the experience of the drover’s wife reflects the harsh and the infertile nature of the bush. Due to the fact that living in the bush has stifled and thwarted her development as she has bluntly “no time to show” her children love. Furthermore, the use of descriptive …show more content…

Their train ride becomes symbolic of their journey of maturation, as Lawson captures their eventual disillusionment with the harsh Australian outback, capturing the eccentricity of the landscape and the unique essence of Australian bush culture. Subsequently, the figurative language within “draw a wire fence, and a few ragged gums and add some scattered sheep running away from the train” captures Lawson perspective of the harsh reality of the outback existence, portraying it as a dull environment in comparison to the Drover’s Wife. Lawson engages the reader as he forces the reader to visualise the atmosphere they are in, which is further reinforced through the high modality in “ragged”, allowing the responder to clearly visualise the isolation of the Bathurst community. This provides the reader with an insight into the Australian outback through his train ride by capturing the true nature of Australia. In addition, Lawson further implicates this point through the use of descriptive language in “there is sometimes a small, oblong weatherboard buildings unpainted”. This allows the reader to visualise the unique landscape of the outback as old and rusty, enabling them to gain a better understanding of what Lawson sees from his perspective. This is further depicted when Lawson writes of the

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