English Extension 2

ETA Webinar
Reflection Statement

https://www.queensu.ca/artsci_online/courses/creative-writing-i
 What does NESA and the syllabus
documents say about the Reflection
Statement?
From the syllabus:

The Reflection Statement is composed at the end of the composition process and is a personal,
critical reflection on the process involved in completing the Major Work and on the completed
product. The Statement will have a maximum limit of 1500 words.

The Reflection Statement:

 summarises the intention of the Major Work and the relationship it has with the
extensive independent investigation
 includes an outline of the intended audience for the Major Work and the purpose for
which it was composed
 supports the Major Work, explaining the relationships of concept, structure, technical
and language features and conventions
 explains the relationship the Major Work has to the English Advanced and Extension
coursework – this can include the work undertaken in Year 11
 explains the development of concepts during the process of composition, making clear
the links between independent investigation and the development of the finished
product
 indicates how the student realised the concepts in the final product
 may be written in either a formal or an informal register
 may be submitted as a separate document or attached to the Major Work.

The Reflection Statement is an incredibly important part of your Major Work submission. Your
marker will always read it after your work. While you want that work to stand on its own, the
Reflection Statement can act to fill in any gaps or point out to the marker some of the clever
decisions you have made. It is worth 10 marks and is marked using separate guidelines which

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can be found on the NESA website - http://educationstandards.nsw.edu.au/wps/portal/nesa/11-
12/stage-6-learning-areas/stage-6-english/english-extension-2017/marking-guidelines

The summary of the guidelines on the site states:

Reflection Statement Marking Criteria

 Explanation of the intended purpose and audience of the Major Work
 Explanation of the impact of the extensive independent investigation
 Explanation of the relationship of the Major Work to the knowledge, skills and
understanding developed in English (Advanced) and Extension courses.
 Evaluation of the relationships of concept, structure, technical and language features
and conventions

You quite simply need to work your way through the dot points with a confident, personal voice.
It’s good to be sophisticated, but don’t simply write an essay style response or hand in your
Critique. As the second last dot point states, you can use a formal or informal register.

A few don’ts before we get onto the do’s!

Don’t give the marker your Major Work journey – we don’t want to hear every aspect of the
whole process – especially what you didn’t end up doing. Don’t tell us you started making a
film, but it didn’t work out so you wrote a story on the weekend before it was due instead. Don’t
tell us you have never made a film before and you know it’s awful, but you have fulfilled all
your dreams. Just focus on what you did accomplish. Don’t tell us about Mum or Grandma or
what your teacher thought. The Reflection Statement just isn’t the place for this information. We
want you to reflect on the English focus of your work – the links, the research, the technical
construction of your work.

 summarises the intention of the Major Work and the relationship it has with the
extensive independent investigation

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The simplest way to make sure you are on track with the first dot point is to include ‘my intent’
or ‘the intention of my Major Work’ in the first sentence. Again, this should be related to how
you wanted to extend the field, experiment stylistically and explore content and form. Discuss
this in broad, clear terms in your introduction. Then you need to show how your investigation
helped in terms of fulfilling that intent and your purpose, but this can be explained a little later.

 includes an outline of the intended audience for the Major Work and the purpose for
which it was composed

I advise referencing your purpose and audience in the introduction as well – that way they don’t
get forgotten which occurs so often. There’s not an enormous difference between intent and
purpose, hence I suggest using both those words to delineate these ideas. I tend to think of intent
as big picture while purpose is a little more focused. In terms of audience try to be specific and
authentic. Telling me your story is best pitched to men aged 20-40 and I’m a 50 year old woman,
becomes an immediate problem! Try to find a publication, but be authentic in this. You’re not
realistically going to be published in Southerly or Shakespeare Studies so find a place for new
writers – probably somewhere online and explain why your work is best pitched to that audience.
See the intro below to show how you might put this together.

The intention of my Major Work was to create a whimsical metaphor to explore

the essential literary value of key canonical texts. Increasingly aware that the
tastes and interests of literary critics are notoriously fickle, I decided to centre my
story on a quest to account for the enduring power of great art. Furthermore,
aware that feminism has driven the strongest re-evaluation of literary value, my
purpose was to challenge the gendered nature of the canon in particular. I chose
female canonical characters as my protagonists to effectively tease out the value
I have found in their texts. I hope to engage the young adult readers of one of
several emerging online literary anthologies, such as Kill Your Darlings. The
highly intertextual nature of my short story will be best appreciated by the
audience of a publication “committed to feisty new writing unafraid of pulling

punches.” I hope the literary minded who frequent the site might recognise
within my story something of their own literary studies, attempts to understand
theorists and resolutions in valuing texts.

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  supports the Major Work, explaining the relationships of concept, structure, technical
and language features and conventions
 explains the development of concepts during the process of composition, making clear
the links between independent investigation and the development of the finished
product
 indicates how the student realised the concepts in the final product

I have put these three dot points together because I think a better Reflection Statement will
weave the three ideas together. You need to show how your concept developed as well as its
final realisation. So, this basically becomes an evaluation of your research into content and form.
In each instance, you want to say ‘I read x’ (quote it) and this is how I used it in my Major Work
(and quote it)! These dot points should be evident across a large portion of the Reflection
Statement. It’s important to focus on the word ‘relationships’ as you make sure you comment on
your concept, how you have structured your piece, the technical and language features and the
conventions of your form.

Take a look at the paragraph below to show you how to proceed. Start with big ideas first to
show how your ideas developed as your piece was refined. (Your details from the Critique
should prove helpful here).

Primarily inspired by historical novels such as Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin I
wished to write a short story which was driven by a character’s desire for creative and physical
freedom despite the suppression of their own history; an idea I explored in both parts of the
dual narrative. Short stories, like Ambrose Bierce’s chilling Chickamauga were exceptionally
useful in my bid to establish a plot which was both historically accurate and unsettling in its
blasé approach to the brutality of the American Civil War; “The greater part of the forehead
was torn away, and from the jagged hole the brain protruded.” Furthermore, the plot of George
Orwell’s Shooting an Elephant revolves around a paradox whereby his narrator relies on the
very institution by which he is endangered; “stuck between my hatred of the empire I served
and the rage against the … little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. Therefore, I
centred my story around a paradox, where “if Charles ever had a moment of lucidity long
enough to realise the ruse, Imani was a dead man.” I hoped this would create a catalytic sense
of tension between freedom and historical restraint and draw the audience’s focus to the
complexity of the past

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Note a few things here – the student starts with reference to novels and short stories that inspired
her concept, but there’s also a reference to her language features woven into this paragraph.

Attention is then turned to more fine-tuned research into content, conventions of the short story
form, conscious of her purpose throughout:

My readings of The Red Commissar and Hasek’s other short stories like The Emperor Franz
Joseph’s Portrait as well as stories outside of the Hasek canon, such as Jackson’s The Lottery,
have all come to influence the structure, mood and overarching importance of authenticity that
permeate my short story. I was highly engaged by Jackson’s ability to subvert expectations and
provide glimmers that foreground and strengthen the shocking ending. This proved
instrumental in my desire to incorporate elements that foreshadowed Svejk’s construction;
“Who are you talking to?” and “The generals at Totskoye couldn’t find any trace of this ‘Svejk’”.
Whilst this became integral to my story, nothing enlightened me to the poignant and comical
abilities of metafiction more than Hasek’s short story, How I Met the Author of my Obituary.
The dry and didactic tone used to convey this comically macabre tale as in, “When I returned
home to Czechoslovakia I found I had been hanged three times, shot twice, and quartered
once,” worked wonderfully with the distinctive voice I wanted to adopt in my short story. It led
me to add moments of disassociated humour as in, “the authority to order an execution
devolved lower and lower such that soon a corporal could order the hanging of a 12-year-old
boy for suspiciously cooking a potato peel.” Thus, I found that I was able to incorporate the
authentic voice and engaging aspects of Hasek’s wit without enveloping the entire tale in an
unsustainable comedy.

The student then turns her attention to technical features in terms of characterisation and the
structure of her work. Throughout, she shows the work she researched, the quotation that was the
most helpful and how this translated to her own work.

In structuring my story, I chose John Gray as a pop-psychologist to present his

essentialist views with a residual liberal humanist way of thinking. Woody Allen’s
reliance on the emasculated schlemiel character in films such as Play it Again,

Sam and Take the Money and Run was instrumental in my development of the
self-centred narrator-cum-protagonist typical of Allen’s schlemiel hero. As my
protagonist evolved I held true to Lara Balac’s assertion, “These popular
schlemiels have (a) penchant for catastrophe and their ability to survive it. They

are all comic anti-heroes, with wisdom and endurance.” In this vein, I stripped

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 John Gray of his familiar rugged Texan masculinity as my story opened, “I wake
up curled beneath an upside-down shag pile rug”. Yet the increasing allure of the
schlemiel character lies in the reader’s ability to relate to his ineptitude, cheering
as he, in the words of Pinsker, has “a way of turning (his) defeats into real

victories.” Such it became for John Gray as he recognised his “poetic sensibility ...
that from the most timeworn tragedy or myth can come centuries of
understanding.”

Students are often good at explaining their concept, but less willing to comment on the research
they have done into form. Hopefully the work undertaken for the Literature Review will help you
to give more focus to this. In the following, take note of both ‘How to’ books and quotations
from works which inspired this Major Work.

In creating my fantastical short story world, Carmel Bird in Dear Writer...revisited

offered significant advice, “Fiction writers are in the business of inventing other

worlds, and in doing this ... they weave matter into new patterns.” Thus I created
my tropical isle, “A street dripping in beach motel ‘chic.’” To capture the unique
voices of my characters, I incorporated quotations where appropriate, such as
Ariel’s “Ride on the curl’d clouds”, and Catherine’s “Oh God you stupid
reprobate”. Furthermore, Scofield’s suggestion, “(make) notes of little character

quirks” proved crucial in delineating between my characters, such as the whiny

Ophelia, “Even the shameful Gertrude had more stage time than me” and the
self-assured Plath, “I am Lazarus, Greenwood, a feverish mother, a bitter lover”
who find voice in alluding to their works. Finally, in developing my characters, I
clung to Bradbury’s proposition, “It is our capacity to turn words into people, give
them a life, a density...to sharpen their quirks and characteristics, that will make

them memorable” and hopefully I affected this in my schlemiel narrator, John

Gray, “Maybe I’m still dangling in the craft cupboard ... having a glue-gun-and-
scented-paper-induced hallucination.”

Take a few moments to fill out the following:

What is your concept?

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How have you structured your work?

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What are the technical features in your work?

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What are the language features in your work?

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What conventions of the form have you incorporated in your work?

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The final point that needs some attention:

 explains the relationship the Major Work has to the English Advanced and Extension
coursework – this can include the work undertaken in Year 11

First of all, you need to notice that this says Advanced and Extension and you may be inspired
by something you studied in those courses in Yr 11 or Yr 12. It is crucial that you try to find
genuine links – because you have hopefully been inspired by genuine links! Remember your
Major Work is an extension of the English you have studied, but it doesn’t have to simply be a
plot or theme that inspired you. It may be a character, the life of the author, a setting, a writing
style, a genre, a literary period or theory, a concept like appropriation or something as simple as
the use of symbols. Just don’t say you studied ‘human experiences’ so you wrote about human
experiences! Your marker wants to see something deeper and more inspiring than that. See an
example over the page.

In Senior English I was increasingly fascinated by the way in which the power of
literature was unlocked as particular attention was paid to the value of texts by
yoking them to liberating ideas experienced in the classroom. Studying the post-

colonialism of Michael Ondaatje’s In the Skin of a Lion in the Advanced course

and the feminism of Sylvia Plath’s poetry in the Extension 1 course highlighted
the way in which theories offer new ways of understanding texts. Yet in each

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 instance the prism of the postmodern, gendered world seemed less instrumental
in determining why some texts remain classics than what seemed to be
intrinsically irreducible about the quality of their writing. Additionally, in creating
after lives for my characters, I hoped to create a world in which literary history
did not exist, time frames were malleable and I could structure my work
episodically as Ondaatje had done.

Most importantly, make sure there is no gap between the claims of your Major Work and your
Reflection Statement. By this I mean that your Reflection Statement must not state that things are
occurring in your Major Work that your marker cannot see. If your initial intent has not been
realised in the final work, reconsider your purpose so it is aligned with the work your marker has
just finished reading.

Finally, be sure to give yourself enough time to write the Reflection Statement. Many schools
have their Trial Examinations during the two weeks before the Major Work is due. If you leave
the Reflection Statement until the last week after the Trials, you will not have the opportunity to
write several drafts as you should. Try to have at least one draft ready to discuss with your
teacher after you return from the July school holidays.

I hope you can look back and say that English Extension 2 was the best subject you did at school.
It is a lot of work, but experimenting with your creativity and exploring literature should lead to
great rewards. And it’s worth remembering that so many of the skills you are developing in this
course, will be applicable as you reflect in the Extension One Common Module: Literary Worlds
and in Advanced, Module C: Craft of Writing.

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 https://www.officeworks.com.au/campaigns/

Exemplar Reflection Statements

The intent of Locomotif is to offer a whimsical, metafictive tour of Russian history through the
literary eyes of three of its most famous writers: Tolstoy, Dostoevsky and Chekhov. In
fictionalised discussion with poet and novelist, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, the purpose is to explore
how well realism can represent the modern reality of its people. My short story ironically shows
that realism can be cast through a postmodern form where all literary tools are available in
representing an era that seems increasingly unrepresentable. Thus, I believe my work would
appeal to readers of the online international literary journal, Quiddity. Its website explains,
“The arts have an exquisite capacity to engender moments of keen understanding—moments
that can happen across time, culture, and distance, coalescing these into a distillate spark of
acute discernment” and I believe my work, set across moments of Russian literary history,
would fit these parameters perfectly.1
My initial inspiration came from my love of the works of Anton Chekhov – especially his short
stories; notably ‘Ionych’, ‘The Lady with the Dog’ and ‘Man in a Case’. 2 Fascinated by the realist
literary depiction of moments in late Nineteenth Century Russia, I was keen to explore other
Russian writers and turned my attention to Dostoevsky and Tolstoy. Focusing on
Representation in Module C in Advanced English, my study of Brave New World3 was
instrumental in showing me how a writer’s means of representation can lead to the
construction of real or fictitious histories. Furthermore, in appreciating the way versions of
‘reality’ differ according to subtle variations in representation, I endeavoured to represent the
nuanced differences by which three realist writers would capture history. Additionally, in
exploring the existentialist authenticity sought by writers such as Samuel Beckett in Waiting for
Godot4 and Milan Kundera in The Unbearable Lightness of Being5 in the Extension 1 elective,
After the Bomb, I hoped to not only capture something of their experimental postmodern
styles, but also reflect characters who make authentic choices in the face of politically
oppressive environments.
Ommundsen’s Metafictions? introduced the idea that “the realist novel developed a disguise
which blurred the difference between fact and fiction, presenting as history, (a) fabricated
illusion”.6 This led me to focus on the way definitions of realism shift as representations of
history evolve. Boulter’s comments were particularly instructive in understanding the genre;
“Realism … portray(ed) ordinary people doing ordinary things … in ordinary language … writers
in the nineteenth century saw Realism as a discovery.”7 I endeavoured to portray this
throughout, such as Tolstoy marvelling at the potential the October Revolution would have
offered a Realist writer, “What greater challenge than a political narrative as grand as this?”
1
Quiddity (2016) accessed April 19th, 2017. http://www.quidditylit.com
2
A. Chekhov (2002) ’Ionych’, ‘The Lady with the Little Dog’ and ‘Man in a Case’ in The Lady with the Little Dog
and Other Stories, 1896-1904 (London: Penguin Books) p.114, p.223, p.61.
3
A. Huxley (2015) Brave New World (London: Vintage Classics).
4
S. Beckett (2006) Waiting for Godot (London: Faber and Faber).
5
M. Kundera (1984) The Unbearable Lightness of Being (London: Faber and Faber).
6
W. Ommundsen (1993) Metafictions? (Melbourne: Melbourne University Press) p.50.
7
A. Boulter (2007) Writing Fiction (London: Palgrave Macmillan) p.80.

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Morris’ Realism also proved helpful in tracing the history of literary realism. Her suggestion,
“Thematically and formally, realism is defined by an imperative to bear witness to all the
consequences, comic and tragic, of our … existence”8 was pertinent advice in my construction
of Yevtushenko’s conundrum.
Intensive research into Russian history9 facilitated my representation of it through literary eyes.
Several articles were highly informative in my bid to convey the unrepresentable nature of the
current era. Nathans describes, “(Putin) has presided over ‘managed democracy’… all Potemkin
democracies draped over authoritarian structures of power”10 reflected as Yevgeny explains,
“We are assured we live in a ‘managed democracy’, but I tell you those words go together like
chair and electric!” Meanwhile, Western journalist, Anne Garrels offered enormous insight to
the complexity of living under Putin; “They are sick of their country being seen as … a mafia-
ridden kleptocracy”11 so I referenced her in my work, “Now it is a ‘mafia-ridden kleptocracy,’
with lashings of hypocrisy.”12
I delved into the canonical texts and biographies of the aforementioned novelists 13 while
reading critics writing specifically on their short stories. 14 By juxtaposing the artistic credo of
each writer, I hoped to shine light on different representations of ‘reality’. 15 As example,
Tolstoy’s A Calendar of Wisdom offered insight into his pacifist leanings and prolific adages,
included in my work, “Do not be afraid of ignorance, but be afraid of false knowledge.” 16
Furthermore, I used the writers’ works to expand on this. So, Chekhov’s symbol of continuity

8
P. Morris (2003) Realism (New York: Routledge) p.44.
9
J. Haslam (2015) Near and Distant Neighbours (Oxford: Oxford University Press); S.S. Montefiori (2014) Stalin
The Court of the Red Tsar (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson); S.S. Montefiori (2016) The Romanovs 1613-1918
(London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson); A. Pasternak (2016) Lara (London: William Collins Books).
10
B. Nathans (2016) ‘The Real Power of Putin’ The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/09/29/real-power-vladimir-putin/ accesssed June 23rd, 2017.
11
A. Garrels (2016) Putin Country (New York: Picador) p.27.
12
Several other articles were particularly instructive on the current state of affairs in Russia including K. Gessen
(2004) ‘Subversive Activities’ The New York Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2004/12/16/subversive-activities-5/ accessed June 21st, 2017; S. Holmes (2012)
‘Fragments of a Defunct State’ London Review of Books https://www.lrb.co.uk/v34/n01/stephen-holmes/fragments-
of-a-defunct-state accessed June 21st, 2017; P. Pomerantsev (2011) ‘Diary’ London Review of Books
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n03/peter-pomerantsev/diary accessed June 21st , 2017 and P. Pomerantsev (2011)
‘Putin’s Rasputin’ London Review of Books https://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n20/peter-pomerantsev/putins-rasputin
accessed June 21st, 2017.
13
These included Fyodor Dostoevsky’s (2003) Crime and Punishment (London: Penguin group); Leo Tolstoy’s
(1992) War and Peace (New York: Random House); Anton Chekhov’s (2002) Plays
(London: Penguin Group), R. Bartlett, (2004) Chekhov Scenes From a Life (London: Simon and Schuster) and J.
Frank (2010) Dostoevsky (New Jersey: Princeton University Press).
14
R. Fueloep-Miller, (1956) ‘The Posthumous Life of Dostoevsky’ The Russian Review, Vol.15, 4, pp.259-265; S.
Bullivant, (2008) A House Divided Against Itself: Dostoevsky and the Psychology on the Unbelief’ Literature and
Theology, Vol. 22, 1, pp.16-31; H. Schefski, (1985) ‘Chekhov and Tolstoyan philosophy’ New Zealand Slavonic
Journal, pp.81-88; N. Moravcevich, (1971) ‘Chekhov and Naturalism: From Affinity to Divergence’ Comparative
Drama, Vol 4, 4, pp.219-240.
15
Particularly helpful was C.E. May’s (1993) ‘Reality in the Modern Short Story’ in Style, Vol. 27, 3, pp.369-379.
16
L. Tolstoy, (2015) A Calendar of Wisdom trans. Roger Cockrell (Surrey: CPI Group Ltd) p.105.

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amidst change in The Seagull17 became my own symbol in Yevgeny’s climactic reflection, “The
seagulls of Taganrog squawked as they perched on the docks of the Sea of Azov”.
I chose novelist and poet, Yevgeny Yevtushenko, in light of his recent death, to lend a
postmodern view to my work. I crafted his entry into literary afterlife as a whimsical interplay
between a writer, who was well-versed in the Realist masters, yet an unconfident writer as
described by Brodsky, “He constantly questions his own talent and mission, thus continuing the
Russian tradition of meta-poetry.”18 The construction of self-reflexive conversation further
served my purpose in ascertaining the extent to which literature can reflect reality; “I was using
the nation’s capital metonymically for the government”. I incorporated Yevtushenko’s post-
structuralist focus on dialogism as coined by Bakhtin, to expose my audience at Quiddity to the
breadth of the Russian canon in the 20th Century.19 An idea initially raised by my study of TS
Eliot in Advanced, “the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed
by the past”20 inspired Bakhtin’s dialogism whereby narratives are informed by ‘dialoguing’
texts and authors. While incorporating this idea in conversation, “Then there’s Bakhtin’s
dialogic – works talking to each other – just as you did in Crime and Punishment”, I hoped to
raise metafictional cognisance to the purpose of my work as writers conversed with each other
to redefine realism.
Enthused by the parodic novel on Russian writers, And Quiet Flows the Vodka21, I hoped to
emulate its overt intertextuality and metafiction. Chudo’s notion of crafting a narrative
comprised entirely of fictitious documents inspired me to do likewise with the contents of
Yevtushenko’s scrapbook. Additionally, Atwood’s insight, “how much more compelling we find
(stories) if we think they’re based on … real events that have happened to the writer” 22 led to
my hybrid construction with Yevgeny’s green annotations. Maria Galina’s short story
‘Underground Sea’ set in Moscow, was helpful in its representation of metaphorical tram
journeys as “secret little holidays, a moment to catch breath”23 hence I included comments such
as, “This (train) is nothing but a metaphor for the passage of time”. Moreover, Okri’s ‘Don
Quixote and the Ambiguity of Reading’ offered insight into the way characters could walk into
their own re-versioned stories, “When I was satisfied Don Quixote would not have ink smudges
on his face, I let him have what we had been printing”.24 In this way I gave the Russian masters
whimsical entry to my story, “The Count Lev Tolstoy writes characters into being, not the other
way round!” Taking the advice of Colum McCann, “We take well-known characters in history
and shape them in new ways”25 I used the short stories of my protagonists as instruction
17
A. Chekhov, (2002) The Seagull in Plays (London: Penguin Group).
18
P.P.Brodsky, (1992) Review of ‘The Collected Poems 1952-1990 by Yevgeny Yevtushenko’ World Literature
Today, Vol. 66, 1, p.157.
19
See L. Parts’ (2005) ‘Down the Intertextual Lane: Petrushevskaia, Chekhov, Tolstoy’ The Russian Review, Vol.
64, 1, pp.77-89.
20
T.S. Eliot, (2015) The Sacred Wood ‘Tradition and the Individual Talent’ http://www.bartleby.com/200/sw4.html
accessed April 29th, 2017.
21
A. Chudo, (2000) And Quiet Flows the Vodka (Illinois: Northwestern University Press).
22
M. Atwood, (2015) On Writers and Writing (London: Virago Press) p.105.
23
M. Galina, (2010) ‘Underground Sea’ in Moscow Tales (Oxford: Oxford University Press) p.336.
24
B. Okri (2016) ‘Don Quixote and the Ambiguity of Reading’ in Lunatics, Lovers and Poets eds D. Hahn and M.
Valencia (High Wycombe: Hay Festival of Literature Ltd) p.17.
25
C. McCann (2017) Letters to a Young Writer (London: Bloomsbury) p.26.

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manuals, offering the nuanced perspective of each writer. Chekhov’s ‘Disturbing the Balance’,
much of which takes place on a train platform, highlighted his propensity to develop characters
through highly specific detail; “He recalled his long whiskers, his kind and quite intelligent face
… his habit of rubbing his hands”.26 Therefore I tried to do likewise in my representation of
Chekhov’s observations of Dostoevsky, “He had rather youthful eyes, yet the surrounding
sockets were as pitted and corrugated as quilting.”
In constructing my version of 21st Century realism, Cohen’s discussion of Tolstoy’s “disembodied
narrative voice” in contrast to Dostoevsky’s “narration from the point of view of the author” 27
was significant advice in creating authorial intrusions as well as the writers’ individual voices;
“Can we just get on with the narrative, please?” Furthermore, Beer’s perceptive discussion on
the building of the Siberian Railway gave great insight to Dostoevsky’s time in exile; “The men
with whom he shared his captivity offered compelling psychological studies for the thieves and
murderers who filled the pages of his post-Siberian novels”.28 Throughout much of my research
into both Russian history and literature, the frequent appearance of trains and the railway 29 led
me to incorporate a train motif as central to my work, “The train of time once more hurtled
toward them.” As such, the technologically evolving train acted as the means to travel between
historical moments, yet also represented the relentless march of history, and while much of
that was tragic, it gave meaning and direction to the best literature of Russia.
At times, my journey through Russian literature and history felt as manageable as Putin’s
occupation of Crimea, but it has been tremendously rewarding nonetheless. In the 21 st Century,
which seems increasingly elusive in its defiance of postmodernism’s challenge to grand
narratives, I hope my audience at Quiddity might reflect on the potential of re-versioning
realism when metafiction no longer acts to simply draw attention to “the artifice of the text”,
but rather signals the real elements of the representation and the way in which narratives still
function authentically to tell the stories of history.30

26
A. Chekhov (2002) ‘Disturbing the Balance’ in The Lady with the Little Dog and Other Stories, 1896-1904
(London: Penguin Books) p.290.
27
R. Cohen, (2016) How to Write Like Tolstoy (London: Oneworld Publications) pp.100-1.
28
D. Beer, (2016) The House of the Dead: Siberian Exile Under the Tsars (London: Penguin Random House) p.183.
29
Such as C. Merridale (2016) Lenin on the Train (London: Random House); D. Greene (2014) Midnight in
Siberia: A Train Journey into the Heart of Russia (New York: Norton and Company); M. Hughes Aten (2010) Last
Train Over Rostov Bridge (London: Ashgrove Publishing Ltd.).
30
A. Gibbons (2017) TLS Online ‘Postmodernism is dead. What comes next?’
http://tls.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx accessed July 7, 2017.

14
The intention of my Major Work is to utilise an ecofeminist lens to critically explore Alexis
Wright’s The Swan Book31 as an important new story for our Anthropocene era; a hybrid
dystopic novel whose provision of agency to the ‘non-human other’, exposes and ‘de-
naturalises’ the dualistic construction of humanity against nature. In doing so, my purpose is to
demonstrate how Wright’s resurrection of ‘Country’ from the androcentricity of Terra Nullius,
expands the boundaries of Australian literature, and places Indigenous storytelling as vital to
our shared future. Subsequently, I believe my essay would be most appreciated by readers of
the international e-Journal, Landscapes, who are interested in critical pieces which, “through an
ecocritical approach”, meditate upon the “interrelationship between landscape and
language.”32

The conceptual and structural genesis of my Major Work is traceable to both the Preliminary
and HSC courses of English. My Preliminary Extension study of Heart of Darkness precipitated
an interest in colonial narratives and perspectives, which influenced my original choice to
examine The Swan Book. My subsequent exploration of the meaning created by the interaction
between the frame story and moments of overt magical realism (such as the cannibalistic
island) in Lee’s postmodern film Life of Pi, illuminated the power of metafiction. Considering
Wright’s deliberate subversion of traditional Western narratives – enforced by her eclectic
pastiche of Indigenous ontology, foreign language and swan poetry, it became clear that this
essay needed to address ‘whiteness’ ecocritically. Hence, upon reading Jean Skeat’s thesis,
‘Other Horizons Exist’33, which was heavily informed by Ravenscroft 34 and Hoy35, I was
enlightened to the idea that Wright’s difficult rhetoric creates an “irreducible difference” 36,
which “extends beyond the function of props and setting to create a strong environmental
message”37, to metafictively “disrupt anthropocentric discourses of self and other.” Ultimately,
engaging with the personas’ search for gendered authority in Plath’s poems, Lady Lazarus and
Fever 103, I was compelled to seek greater authenticity by applying a hitherto unapplied
ecocritical framework – ecofeminism, to The Swan Book.

31
Wright, Alexis. 2013. The Swan Book. Sydney: Giramondo Publishing Company.
32
Landscapes: The Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language. 2001. Accessed May 5, 2018.
http://ro.ecu.edu.au/landscapes/.
33
Skeat, Jean Hilary Jasper. 2017. “Other Horizons Exist”: irreducible difference and ethical reading in Alexis
Wright’s The Swan Book. MPhil Thesis. Brisbane, QLD, June 2. p.1.
34
Ravenscroft, Alison. 2012. The Postcolonial Eye: White Australian Desire and the Visual Field of Race. Ashgate.
35
Hoy, Helen. 2001. How Should I Read These?: Native Women Writers in Canada. University of Toronto Press.
36
Wright’s distribution of agency to reflect Indigenous epistemology unsettles Western conceptualisations
37
Skeat, Jean. 2016. " Political Poetics and the Power of Things: Nonhuman Agency and Climate Change in Alexis
Wright’s The Swan Book." TRANSFORMATIONS Journal of Media & Culture. p.1.

15
Early inspiration for my thesis derived from Val Plumwood’s Decolonising Relationships with
Nature, which suggested ecological crisis derives from a Eurocentric capitalist patriarchal
culture simultaneously constructed on the “domination of Women ‘as nature’ and the
domination of Nature ‘as feminine.’”38 Originally, I too agreed with Gleeson-White’s contention
that The Swan Book merely “put the longevity of hope into doubt”.39 However, deeper
investigation into Plumwood revealed that Wright’s dystopic juxtaposition of Oblivia and
Warren aligns with the notion that oppressive dualistic dynamics can be transcended by
interrogating the “category of human itself, and the ways in which we construct ourselves
against, and privilege ourselves over, nature.”40

Recognising that compelling and credible arguments “begins not with an act of assertion but an
act of listening … to those who think (similarly) or differently from us” 41, it was crucial to
rigorously engage with the existing, albeit limited, ecocritical scholarship on The Swan Book.
Particularly influential in shaping my essay was Barras’ The Law of Storytelling, which
illuminated “the importance of (Indigenous) narratives in shaping identity and providing
agency”42, and Gleeson-White’s Country and Climate Change, which highlighted “Country
contains Aboriginal knowledge systems.”43 Compounded by my reading of Carol Adam’s The
Sexual Politics of Meat44, I was compelled to focus on the interconnectedness of gendered
oppression, story and ‘Country’, “Oblivia writes ‘the sacred text, the first text of the tree (51)”,
which resonated with my ecofeminist intention of showing that meaning is created by “the
interweaving of stories and experience.” 45 In light of this, Greta Gaard’s suggestion in
‘Ecofeminism: Toward Global Justics and Planetary Health’ that language which ‘naturalises’
women in a context of environmental degradation and ‘feminises’ nature in a context of
gendered oppression reinforces, reflects and perpetuates unjustified patriarchal domination,
led me to a closer examination of Bella Donna and her role in enforcing Terra Nullius.

38
Plumwood, Val. 2003. "Decolonising Relationships with Nature." In Decolonising Nature: Strategies for
Conservation in a Post Colonial Era, by William H Adams and Martin Mulligan, London: Earthscan. p.4.
39
Gleeson-White, Jane. 2017. "Country and Climate Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book." AJE: Australasian
Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. p.1.
40
Plumwood, Val. 2003. "Decolonising Relationships with Nature." In Decolonising Nature: Strategies for
Conservation in a Post Colonial Era, by William H Adams and Martin Mulligan, London: Earthscan. p.34.
41
Birkenstein, Cathy, and Gerald Graff. 2010. They Say I Say. New York : W.W.Norton & Company. p.xiii.
42
Barras, Arnaud. 2015. "The Law of Storytelling: The Hermeneutics of Relationality in Alexis Wright’s The Swan
Book." Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. p.9.
43
Gleeson-White, Jane. 2017. "Country and Climate Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book." AJE: Australasian
Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. p.1.
44
Adams, Carol. 1990. The Sexual Politics of Meat: A Feminist-vegetarian Critical Theory. New York City:
Continuum.
45
Barras, Arnaud. 2015. "Ecopoetic Encounters: Amnesia and Nostalgia in Alexis Wright's Environmental Fiction."
Australian Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. p.6.

16
Importantly, Gleeson-White’s focus on the “agency of place” 46 and Oblivia’s feminine
“heterodiegetic narration”47 clarified how to structure an ecofeminist evaluation of an
Indigenous text without imposing ‘Western rationality.’ Spurred on by Deborah Rose, “Country
is a living entity with a yesterday, today and tomorrow” 48, and aware that it has been
“irrevocably altered by climate-change” 49 I convey how Wright’s rhetoric of “unknowability and
undecidability”50 – “complete with moments of black satire and untranslated (foreign)
passages”, reflects the challenges the “irredeemable hybridity of modern dreaming” wrought
by Bella Donna’s swan stories poses to resolving ecological crisis. Appreciating that
metacommentary such as, “But most importantly”, can be used to “draw out important
implications”51, I however suggest that if “language can perpetuate the polarity between ‘self’
and ‘other’, it can also propel the shift to a less dualistic trajectory.” Inspired by Barras’
allegorical reading of Bella Donna’s white swans and black swans, I proposed Wright’s
“irresolvable equivocality in language and form”52 self-reflexively questions the “coherence of
androcentric doctrines such as Terra Nullius, thus creating an interpretative matrix for how we
should engage with the non-human other.”

To demonstrate the “performativity” of Indigenous stories, it was imperative to use close

textual reference detailing the agential powers of the ‘non-human other.’ After listening to
Wright speak at the 2018 Sydney University Writers’ festival, I recognised the need to avoid
“pseudo-arguments”53 characterised by a lack of “internal growth”54. Therefore, I incorporated
a three-tiered approach to Wright’s “re-conceptualisation of the other.” Firstly, I explored
Wright’s manipulation of anthropomorphism, such as the “lonely crow that chuckles its secrets
into Warren’s ear”; secondly, the “inexplicable actions of swans” after Bella Donna’s death,
which grant them a “brutal materiality … that resists Western synthesis”, and finally, the
apocalyptic persona of “Mother Nature”, which, after reading Skeat’s ‘Political Poetics and the
46
Gleeson-White, Jane. 2017. "Country and Climate Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book." AJE: Australasian
Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. p.30.
47
Gleeson-White, Jane. 2017. "Country and Climate Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book." AJE: Australasian
Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. p.32.
48
Rose, Deborah Bird. 1996. Nourishing terrains : Australian Aboriginal views of landscape and wilderness.
Canberra : Australian Hertiage Commission. p.4
49
Gleeson-White, Jane. 2017. "Country and Climate Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book." AJE: Australasian
Journal of Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology. p.29.
50
Ravenscroft, Alison. 2012. The Postcolonial Eye: White Australian Desire and the Visual Field of Race. Burlington:
Ashgate Publishing. p.77.
51
Birkenstein, Cathy, and Gerald Graff. 2010. They Say I Say. New York: W.W.Norton & Company. p.132.
52
Ravenscroft, Alison. 2012. The Postcolonial Eye: White Australian Desire and the Visual Field of Race. Burlington:
Ashgate Publishing. p.70.
53
Ramage, John D, John C Bean, and June Johnson. 1989. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric With Readings. London:
Longman. p.76.
54
Ramage, John D, John C Bean, and June Johnson. 1989. Writing Arguments: A Rhetoric With Readings. London:
Longman. p.76.

17
Power of Things’, I interpreted as the most effective provision of agency because it is not
contingent on human, or even animal, subjectivity. Ultimately, my focus on non-human agency
arose in response to Huggan and Tiffin’s proposition in Postcolonial Ecocriticism that the West’s
moral justification for invasion and colonisation rests on the presence of the ‘non-human
other’, that is, the non-agent, who are seen as “spaces, unused, underused or empty” 55. By de-
stabilising dualistic ontology, I claim that Wright is thus capable of “reinscribing the untold
future with Indigenous writers as an integral aspect of Australia’s political, social, and ecological
landscape.”

To further expose my Landscapes audience to the performativity of The Swan Book, I

investigated how Wright’s environmental apocalypse acts as an “empowering tool”56 because
her “revelation of new perspectives and hidden truths” 57 positions her in a position of superior
knowledge, legitimising her bid to demolish the “dualistic dynamic” of the status quo. Aiming to
enhance my “complexity, subtly and originality (by articulating) where (I) stand relative to any
cited ideas”58I engaged dialogically with contemporary ecocrtitics.59 Though I acknowledge Rob
Nixon’s suggestion that imaginatively portraying the ‘reality’ of climate change is ‘difficult’ 60, by
maintaining that Wright’s “Aboriginal ontology…fractures (traditional) temporal and geographic
frameworks”61, I propose she is able to reveal the ‘invisibility’ and ‘global scale’ of its violence,
and thus viscerally condemn the narratives of progress and development inherent to
“Eurocentric capitalist patriarchal culture.”

Drawn to the depth and fluidity of Maria Takolander’s essay Theorising irony and trauma in
magical realism62, I endeavoured to emulate its relatively extensive paragraphing and its
sophisticated rhetoric, “Wright’s infraction of ontological levels is crystallised and emphasised
through the onomatopoeic exclamation, ‘Plop!’” Appreciating Takolander’s seamless

55
Huggan, Graham, and Helen Tiffin . 2015. Postcolonial Ecocritcism — Literature, Animals, Environment. Oxon:
Routledge. p.5.
56
Ferrier, Carole. 2016. "Resistance and sovereignty in some recent Australian Indigenous women's novels." Ilha
do Desterro. p.27.
57
Ferrier, Carole. 2016. "Resistance and sovereignty in some recent Australian Indigenous women's novels." Ilha
do Desterro. p.27.
58
Birkenstein, Cathy, and Gerald Graff. 2010. They Say I Say. New York : W.W.Norton & Company. p.67.
59
Buell, Laurence. 1995. The Environmental Imagination: Thoreau, Nature Writing and the Formation of American
Culture. London: Princeton University Press; Apocalypse “is the most powerful master metaphor that the
contemporary environmental imagination has at its disposal”(285).
60
Nixon, Rob. 2011. Slow Violence and the Environmentalism of the Poor. London: Harvard University Press. p.27.
61
“This might be the same story about some important person carrying a swan centuries ago, and it might be the
same story in centuries to come” (44).
62
Takolander, Mario. 2016 . "Theorising irony and trauma in magical realism: Junot Díaz’s the brief wondrous life
of Oscar Wao and Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book." Ariel: a review of international english literature 95-122.

18
integration of ‘they say I say’, and realising that “writing is a social act” 63, I decided to abandon
the traditional third person ‘voice’ to emphasise what ‘we’ can learn from ‘my’ discussion of
The Swan Book. Guided by Strategies for Student Writers, to further ground readers (who have
likely not read The Swan Book), within my essay, it was important to “elaborate on key
concepts” 64, for example the logic of domination – “superiority (racial and gendered) justifies
domination.” Additionally, ‘Helping Writers Think Rhetorically’ persuaded me to alter the
structure of my essay to recognise the “naive audience” 65 requires introductions which “fill in
needed background.”66 Thus, it was also important to emulate the brief plot summary provided
by numerous articles67 and commence the essay with a comprehensive explanation of
ecofeminism, which would enrich and sustain the engagement of my Landscape audience.
Ultimately, Polishing Your Prose68 was instrumental in sanitising my verbosity, whilst Gerard
Windsor, a commentator for The Australian, emphasised the value of economically using and
integrating secondary sources into my line of reasoning. Striving for an engaging conclusion, I
self-reflexively vary my tone to implore non-Indigenous readers to “appreciate the
entanglement of story and experience” so as to prevent this powerful novel from becoming a
“swan-song of Country.”

Retrospectively, writing this essay has been enriching. With guidance from my teachers, I have
come to identify and capitalise upon the strengths of my writing and improve weaker aspects of
it. Ultimately, because The Swan Book is undoubtedly the most difficult novel I have read, the
independent completion of this ecofeminist response has imbued me with pride and provided
me with a far greater understanding of Indigenous literature.

63
Eco, Umberto. 1977. How to Write a Thesis. London: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. p.155.
64
Peters, Pam. 1985. Strategies for Student Writers. Hong Kong: John Wiley & Sons. p.46.
65
Bean, John C. 2011. "Helping Writers Think Rhetorically ." In Engaging Ideas, by John C Bean. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass and Sons Incorporation. p.42.
66
Bean, John C. 2011. "Helping Writers Think Rhetorically ." In Engaging Ideas, by John C Bean. San Francisco:
Jossey-Bass and Sons Incorporation. p.42.
67
These included Barras, Arnaud. 2015. "The Law of Storytelling: The Hermeneutics of Relationality in Alexis
Wright’s The Swan Book." Journal of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature. 1-12; Gleeson-White,
Jane. 2017. "Country and Climate Change in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book." AJE: Australasian Journal of
Ecocriticism and Cultural Ecology 29-38; Skeat, Jean Hilary Jasper. 2017. “Other Horizons Exist”: irreducible
difference and ethical reading in Alexis Wright’s The Swan Book. MPhil Thesis. Brisbane, QLD, June 2.
68
Cahn, Steven M, and Victor L Cahn. 2013. Polishing Your Prose: How to turn first drafts into finished works. New
York: Columbia University Press.

19