Essays on Telling Story - ‘Snapshots from Planet Earth’ (2 Viewers)

[Survivor39]

“The most important influence in a story is the story teller.”
Discuss the story-teller in your prescribed text. How did it influence what you were told and how it was told?

Narratives aim to tell a story, in written, oral, and visual forms. In the prescribed text ‘Snapshots from Planet Earth’ which includes ‘Ballad’ by Gerda Mayer, ‘Faces In The Street’ by Henry Lawson, and ‘What Has Happened to Lulu’ by Charles Causley, along with the supplementary text ‘She’s Leaving Home’ by Lennon and McCartney, the composers have utilised their role as story tellers to influence what we were told and how we were told, as responders. Through discussing the use of the composer’s voices and the various techniques involved, the powerful impact of the story teller to tell the story will become evident.

In “Ballad” the composer uses third person to tell a story, indicating that the story teller is outside the narration, recounting the sequence of events. The story teller narrates a fictional tale featuring the knight and the water nymph falling in love. But the knight betrayed her by finding a new love. The story teller is able to manipulate the atmosphere through imagery. This is evident from the knight and his new love “clip-clops their train” which highlights the pleasant mood of the forthcoming wedding, while the poetic devices employed simultaneously are alliteration, metaphor, and onomatopoeia. On the other hand, the personification “sullen” and “moan” are used to justify the nymph’s furious emotions, as the knight betrays her and finds a new love instead. But more importantly, it signifies that the nymph is not human enough. Simile is utilised as the knight’s new love is compared the nymph “as gold to silver, as sun to water”. In a chronological order, the story teller, where viable, uses imagery to tell a story, and therefore influences what is being told and the way information is communicated.

Another poem titled “Faces In The Street” also reinforces the importance of the story teller in influencing what we see and how we see the story. Lawson sees the ordinary, working individuals as “faces in the street” who are being exploited by their employers. By using emotive language to reflect his deep response to the societal issue of inequality in political Australia – the rich and the poor – this was achieved effectively; for instance, “While I sorrow for the faces in the street”, and expresses his “aching heart” for those people. Furthermore, they are symbolised by a body of water or river. This is evident from examples as “drifting on”, “ebbing out” and “pallid river” and to a deeper sense, signifying that they are out of control, with no real future.
Lawson uses personal pronounce such as “Again I see the pallid stream of faces in the street” to make his poem a more personal read. At the same time, constructing a vicarious experience for the responders and mirror the issue arises in the poem. The story teller’s emotive language, plus his eloquent analogy has successfully helped him to articulate his story.

Causley in ‘What Has Happened to Lulu’ utilises the composer’s voice to tell the story. The persona is the little girl who questions her mother about the disappearance of her sibling, tells the story as the composer’s voice. She repeatedly asks “What has happened to Lulu, mother?” to emphasise her curiosity, and allows us to recognise the fact that the Lulu has left home. Along with other rhetorical questions used by the narrator in the poem, such as “Why do the tear-drops fall?”, they create a powerful effects as they force responders to contemplate where Lulu went. The clues prescribed by the story teller make us to suspect the way Lulu left home. The one shoe indicates that she left in a hurry, while the “old rag doll” symbolises Lulu has gained the strength to erase her childhood memory with her parents. The “window wide” and “curtain flapping free” illustrates Lulu’s freedom, as the world has opened up for her. The composer’s voice and rhetorical questions has effectively conveyed the narrative to responders.

‘She’s Leaving Home’ generates a comparison to the previous poem. Again, the composer uses third person to indicate the story teller is recounting the story. The reiteration of “she’s leaving home” at the end of each stanzas outline that a girl has left home. Yet making us wonder about what happens to her as the story teller did not include a resolution. Furthermore, the story teller keeps reinforcing “For so many years, bye, bye” creates a powerful impression in our mind as it arouse sympathy from the responders for the parents. Without the resolution, the poem gives us the opportunity to let our imagination run wild and therefore, we, as responders, can manipulate the outcomes according to what we desired.

In conclusion, for story tellers, defined techniques such as language, narrative structure, and imagery must be utilised in order to tell a story. Through the texts analysed, the techniques are exhibited to the extent that they have become important in influencing what information we receive, and how we receive it from the story teller.

 

[Survivor39]

This was my ESL English Assessment Task

Question: In telling stories, the composer should make use of all the elements of narrative structure.
How has the composer of “Ballad” made use of narrative structure?
Written in class, allowed 50 minutes

Narratives are short stories which are told in many diverse forms, including books, magazines, and television. They utilise narrative structure which constitutes an orientation, complication, event, resolution and comment/coda as the elements to tell the story, which made them uniquely different from novels.

The composer Gerda Mayer made full use of narrative structure by integrating those elements effectively and logically into the poem Ballad. The poem Ballad is fiction – consisted of 26 stanzas in which a tale has been told. Each stanza comprised of two lines to form a rhyming couplet.

The orientation in stanzas 1 to 6 sets up a starting point as it introduces the characters, the time, and the setting of the story. Stanza 1 presented the main characters – the knight and the water nymph, where the story took place by the river. The poem also clarified summer as the time in stanza 3. The remaining stanzas of the orientation created our sense of interest in relation to the knight and the nymph as they fall in love. Ballad uses orientation as a mechanism to ‘set the scene’ to engage the audience while subtlely leads to the complication to reflect the logical nature of narrative structure.

The complication embarked in stanzas 7 to 9 skilfully refined the responders’ attention by drawing and focusing our views into the problem. The knight left to attend other ‘important’ responsibilities while promising to come back and marry, ironically, not to the nymph, but to someone else. The complication is dense as a result of the limited time frame within a narrative. Not only it is used as a method to present the problem, the complication also enhanced the awareness and intensity to whoever is reading it.

The events unfolded rapidly in stanzas 10 to 19. Imagery was used continuously and ubiquitously to highlight the sequence of events. The plot developed and thickened as the knight found a new love who compared the water nymph “as gold to silver, as sun to water”, which reflected the use of simile. In the event, present tense was utilised to give the responders a sense of reality as if the action is unfolding right in front of our eyes. While winter arrived as an indication of a time change, “the song of the river” is frozen which created a cultural reference to sirens from Greek mythology, meaning the water nymph lost her ability to lure the knight. Again as the plot changes to May, which identified the time of spring, the knight and the bride “clip-clops their train” indicating the composer employed alliteration, metaphor and onomatopoeia simultaneously to highlight the upcoming wedding, again reflecting the application of poetic devices. The personification “sullen”, “moan”… were used to justify the negative emotions expressed by the nymph while symbolising her as a non-human. The end of stanza 19 gave us a forecast to the future that the wedding party will be “undone” – signifying catastrophe is imminent, while leading to the resolution at the same time.

The resolution is revealed in stanzas 20, 21 and 22. The conflict between the knight and the nymph ended at the expense of the bridal party turning into stone. Similes were widely used again but to describe the knight, the bride, and guests as “cold’’, “still” and “stiff” as a consequence of the nymph’s horrendous temperament. The resolution solved the conflict underlying the story, but more importantly, it acts as a tool to satisfy the structure of narrative in Ballad.

The comment encapsulated in stanzas 23 and 24 informed the responders about the regrets the nymph had on her action, as her revenge became ambiguous in that the stone next to the water ironically reminded her of the faithless knight. The narrative concluded with a coda: people come and go, completing a life cycle from births, marriages, to deaths. It is inevitable for every human being, except for water. This is deduced from stanza 26, the final stanza of the story, was this final message – “Who in their time will turn as stiff: For all, all is water beneath the cliff.”

The composer had made extensive use of narrative structure to unfold the story in Ballad. The orientation, complication, events, resolution as well as the comment and coda are presented in a logical order to achieve their purposes. And the composer has done just that to articulate a meaningful, in-depth narrative.

 

[Survivor39]

Practice Question

Analyse the ways stories are told (elements of narratives – characterisation and language)

Narratives are short stories which are told in many diverse forms, including written, visual, and oral. The set text ‘Ballad’ by Gerda Mayer, ‘Faces In The Street’ by Henry Lawson, as well as ‘What Has Happened to Lulu?’ have all utilises narrative structure to convey a story and to some extent, they reveal relationships. Furthermore, the supplementary text ‘She’s Leaving Home’ by Lennon and McCartney reinforces the ways stories are told through the use of narrative. Through analysis, we can see how this is evident.

In ‘Ballad’, Mayer made full use of narrative structure: orientation, complication, sequence of events, resolution, comment and coda to narrate a fictional tale. Through this explicit use of narrative structure, the responders are able understand how the relationship between the knight and the water nymph developed, thus lifting the intensity and awareness to whoever is read it. The plot changes rapidly as the complication was unfolded when the knight falls in love with someone else. The narrative concluded with a coda: people come and go, completing a life cycle from births, marriages, to deaths. It is inevitable for every human being, except for water. This is deduced from stanza 26, the final stanza of the story, was this final message – “Who in their time will turn as stiff: For all, all is water beneath the cliff.”

Throughout the 26 stanzas poem, in the form of rhyming couplet, poetic devices are applied continuously and ubiquitously. The bride is compared to the nymph “as gold to silver, as sun to water”, which reflects the use of simile and the knight’s ambiguous heart. The composer employed alliteration, metaphor and onomatopoeia indicated by “clip-clops their train” to highlight the upcoming wedding. On the other hand, the personification of “sullen” and “moan” were used to justify her negative emotions and signifies her as a non-human.

In “Faces in the street’, the narrator also presented the story in a chronological order in the manner of 24 hour cycle about the faces in the street. Repetition was needed for Lawson to emphasise his strong feelings about the injustice of the life of ordinary people before the negotiation of unions. His feelings are expresses as his “sorrow” and his “aching heart” for the faces in the street. He made an eloquent analogy in the form of metaphors to symbolises the faces in the street as a body of water, or a river; for instance, “drifting on”, “pallid river”, and “ebbing out”. Lawson’s language features such as the poetic devices has captured our sympathy, but more importantly, he has provoked and reignited our responses, a responders to the cruel Australian past.

In “What Has Happened to Lulu”. The character Lulu, is portrayed as a run-away girl due to the restriction of freedom from her parents. The persona is the little girl who questions her mother about the disappearance of her sibling, tells the story. She repeatedly ask “What has happened to Lulu, mother?” to emphasise her curiosity, and allows us to recognise the fact that the Lulu has left home. Along with other rhetorical questions used by the composer in the poem, such as “Why do the tear-drops fall?”, they create a powerful effects as they forces the responders to contemplate about where Lulu went. The clues prescribed by the composer make us to suspect the way Lulu left home. The one shoe indicates that she left in a hurry, while the “old rag doll” symbolises Lulu has gained the strength to erase her childhood memory with her parents. The “window wide” and “curtain flapping free” suggests Lulu’s freedom, as the world has opened up for her. With no resolution available for the responders, the poem generates a plethora of options for us to decide our own ending.

‘She’s Leaving Home’ has created an excellent comparison to the previous poem. Again a girl left home due to the lack of freedom. The composers use repetition, like the above poem, to build an emphasis that a girl has left home, such as “For so many years, bye, bye” at the end of each stanza. Furthermore, the mother’s voice comes in at one point to highlight her frustration: “How could she do this to me?”, thus giving us the impression that the mother is insensitive towards her daughter’s wellbeing.

In conclusion, the composers have created poems that are above all, engaging. By fulfilling elements of narrative to tell a story, the composers have thereby made their texts more compelling and uniquely different through characterisation and a diversity of language techniques.

 

[jessren]

telling sto can help me with "cinema paradiso"&"looking for alibrandi"i'm stuck~~~~~~

help~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

 

[yan203]

o ~~ i need help in Cinema Paradiso 2!!!