The audience is able to sympathise with the adults in the text in a number of situations. Take A lesson on a Tortoise: The teacher has gone to the trouble to set up a nice lesson ‘I felt pleased with myself knowing that the boys would be delighted with the lesson.’ And it backfires on him when the boys ask for rubbers. ‘I could not keep my stock, I could not detect the thief among them.’ The teacher relents and indulges the belief that he is not good at his job. ‘Like a bad teacher I went back on my word.’ He also seems to be clutching at straws desperately when he asks Rawson, Maddock, Newling, and wood to write down the name of the perpitrator or the crime. The audience is able to sense the teachers Turmoil. ‘I ask wood to write…. I promise not to divulge. He would not. I ask the boys he had named, all of them. … – I appealed to them.’
In ‘Growing up’ we are drawn to sympathise with Robert Quick when his daughters attack him. ‘They tore at the man and suddenly he was frightened’ Ironically Snort also joins in the affray. ‘Snort suddenly recovering confidence… seized this new victim.’ Later we see quick realising that his daughters had changed. ‘It seemed to him that something new had … his old simply and happy relationship with his daughters.’ Towards the end of the text Quick resigns himself to the fact that his place as the only man in their lives would soon be coming to an end. ‘In a year or two I shan’t count at all. Young men will come prowling like the dogs after Snort’.
The writers use of language enables the audience to visualise young men acting in this manner.
2006-11-13
08:37:02
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