Superman and Paula Brown's new snowsuit

The underlying theme of ‘Paula Brown’s new snowsuit’ is the transition from the innocence of childhood, which is displayed through the change in the girl’s dreams/daydreams. She starts off by having these elaborate fantasies about flying and superman, but after seeing a war movie at the cinema, whenever she closes her eyes all she can see is dead soldiers and horrible war scenes. This transition is most graphically displayed when she throws up the bright coloured cake and ice-cream after seeing the graphic war film, almost as if she is purging herself of her childhood. Another theme is finding out people aren’t always going to tell the truth, because she is blamed for ruining Paula Brown’s new snow suit, even though Paula slipped and ruined it herself. This incident also shows that people aren’t always going to believe you, as even though she is adamant to her mother and uncle that she didn’t push Paula, her mother still says that they will buy Paula a new snowsuit.

Snowdrops

A. The snowdrops represent the frailty of the children ( the narrator especially) and his teacher, as well as being a metaphor for new life as they come out at the end of winter when everything is beginning to come alive again. The gentleness of the snowdrops contrasting with the starkness of winter contrasts innocence with the harsh reality of life.

B. The narrator is, emotionally, very young. He isn’t stupid, but he can’t grasp that people’s intentions may not be as they appear at face value. For example he thinks that his teacher just wants to show them some flowers, but really she wants to see the young deceased man’s funeral procession go by. He is also very observant as he notices his teachers dress on the day of the funeral, but doesn’t come to any conclusions (or even tries to make any) as to why she is dressed that way. He gets intense joy from the bacon in his sandwich, which is not how an older person or child would react to having a bacon sandwich, so he is still young enough to enjoy the very simple things in life. Edmund, however, is much less naive and is not as excited as the narrator by such simplicities. He is more of a trouble maker than the narrator, as he plays a trick on his class mate and plays up in class, he is not fascinated by the snow drops, makes jokes that the narrator has not heard before and is aware of the funeral.

C. Miss Webster was ‘friendly’ with the Meredith boy, but she obviously knew him quite well and had serious feelings for him as she stops mid-way through telling her class a story to make sure that they can go into the yard ( under the guise that they are going to look at the snowdrops) and she can watch the funeral from there. She isn’t a part of the actual funeral and has her own private mourning session, dressed in black, behind the bars of the schoolyard fence

D. The adult world in snow drops seems somber and depressing, with nothing particularly nice happening, everyone is dressed in grey or black and there is a funeral. The adult world has many layers and conflicts, whereas the child’s world seems one dimensional, the children eat and go to school and draw pictures, with no major climax or drama.

E. Overall, the story seemed really dry to me and although there were many layers and metaphors etc, nothing grabbed my attention.

Reading history

1. Brer Rabbit - Enid Blyton
2. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
3. The 9 lives of Chloe King - Celia Thomson
4. The Hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy - Douglas Adams
5. Chuck Palahniuk novels
6. Kingdom of Fear (Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child In the Final Days of the American Century) - Hunter S Thompson
7. Into the Wild - Jon Krakauer

odour of chrysanthemums

1.
The author likes to describe things that are not human with human qualities, for example 'flames like red sores licking it's ashy sides' or 'a large bony vine clutched at the house, as if to claw down the tiled roof'. These said qualities are altogether undesirable and create a stricken landscape. The atmosphere sounds desolate and uninspired, like a grey winter. He makes everything sound decaying and old, and uses words like stagnant, insignificant and pitiful which makes me feel as though the story is set in a stale, pathetic and depressing area.
2.
The people in the extract seem to be pretty fed up with each other and also quite irritable. The mother only berates her son and there is no obvious signs of love displayed between them, and the description given of her is 'a tall woman of imperious mien, handsome, with definite black eyebrows' so i suppose she would be quite a hard faced, matronly and conservative woman. Judging by Lawrence's description of the son, John, (that he has a sulky voice and that he moves resentfully and slowly) as well as the fact that it's brought to our attention that he's playing somewhere he shouldn't be, i would assume that he is a misbehaving and bothersome child. His mannerisms are more like a frustrated 40 year old man than a five year old, probably due to the lifeless environment he is being brought up in.
3.
The message of the text is that people can be trapped by their own lives, and your actions are often indicative of your surroundings. In the story it is shown that these people have taken on the characteristics of the land around them (dull, cold, dejected and unloving).
4.
The story is set just after Queen Victoria died but before world war one. England was in a good place economically, and was exerting it's power through out the world, but the inhabitants of England itself were poor. The cargo and goods being exported by England seemed more important than the population. Many people were miners in lowly conditions and there were a number of strikes. This period was called the great unrest, as industrialization, factories, trains and machines were being introduced and replacing people, thus creating unemployment. 

Walkabout

Nicholas Roeg's walkabout is essentially a film about the confines of life and expands into the efforts gone to to stay sane when life has turned out differently to what you wanted and you no longer feel anything but undying rage for those around you.As well as this it explores what happens when you are thrown from the things you a accustomed to. The use of brick walls symbolizes the struggle to break through the artificial layers we impose on our selves through life. In the film, the man has obviously done well for himself as his children go to seemingly expensive schools, his wife is aesthetically pleasing and his house is large. But we see him walking alone through a stark city, sitting alone at lunch on the roof of a grey, generic building with cement beams looming overhead. His life is full of things, but he is empty. There's no communication or real expressions of love between characters and it probably shouldn't have been such a shock when the father goes postal and tries to kill his children and fails, but succeeds in killing himself.