Away Michael Gow Themes

Tom, the agent for change gains sight and knowledge into the acceptance of his impending death. The opening of the play starts with the ending of A Midsummer Night’s Dream where Tom as Puck says “Gentles, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend.” This foreshadows Tom’s healing role in the play. Although Tom seems to be the character in the least need of a discovery, he still gains sight into the reality of his condition and knowledge that he needs to accept this. This is evident through reading King Lear. The scene is set outside, as instructed by

During this scene, Gwen realises how easily possessions are lost, thus readjusting her views on what is truly important in life. By using the storm as one of the main turning points for Gwen, Gow explores the power of nature in solving problems and, in this case, it as being a power to ‘wash away’ Gwen’s issues. The representation of the four campers as the pixies in A Midsummer Night’s Dream and referring the storm to the scene where the all the mayhem caused by Puck is occurring is an ingenious link to the famous Shakespearian play. The intertextuality references help the audience relate to well-known plays and receive a deeper meaning of Away. The Mendelssohn music sets the mood of the scene and gives the audience a hint of the events coming. After talking with Vic, Gwen completes her transformation and loses her difficult, aggressive personality. She becomes an understanding and compassionate mother and is reflected by her conversation with Jim, which she says ‘What do you think of me? You must hate me? Why do you still bother? I’m sorry...’ (p46). The power of Tom’s influence on Gwen is the most prominent in this scene, when Gwen talks with Vic and realises his condition. Here, Gwen opens her mind to the world and finds out that life is precious and easily lost, that people need to enjoy every moment in it. Gwen realises that she has been too selfish and

“If you are alive, there is hope for a better day and something good to happen...” (pg. 54). Throughout the course of A Long Way Gone by Ishmael Beah, we familiarize ourselves with the exceptional hardships that Ishmael has experienced as a child soldier, in Sierra Leone, and what actions he takes to overcome them. Despite the fact that Ishmael has been through these devastating hardships and that he became the fear that he himself feared, Ishmael is able to instill hope and keep the reader going through the themes of powerful memories, nature and redemption. He does this through the use of powerful memories that contrast the fear and danger of the war with the remembrance of the beauty of life. Furthermore, nature leaves the reader striving

One of the most common fears is that of death. This fear does not often stem from the process itself, but rather the question of what occurs after. Do we begin living another life? Will that life be better or worse than the one we previously led? These questions are filled with uncertainty, and the impossibility of answering them produces distress. In Hamlet, Hamlet struggles with the challenge of answering such questions himself when he laments, “To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub / For in that sleep of death what dreams may come / When we have shuffled off this mortal coil, / Must give us pause. There’s the respect / That makes calamity of so long life” (3.1.66-70). Within Shakespeare’s tragedy, the text signifies the fear of the unknown by exploring Hamlet’s uneasy contemplation of life after death.

Michael Gow's play, "Away" expresses the idea of going through changes and receiving help from people around you. The key characters of the play experiences change and renewal as a result of their relationships with others ad the summer vacation. Coral and Gwen is two characters that undergo the most changes throughout the trip. Coral manage to moved on from her's son death while Gwen changed from a snobby person to a person who is more understandable. Tom is one of the critical character that help Coral and Gwen realised their issues and surpasses it. The play showed lives of people and their own struggle during the 60s and how they overcome it.

Tom is the most important character, yet he is not a flawless figure. Tom is irritated and annoyed easily, impatient and ignorant. His anger is clearly displayed in scenes with Gwen who expresses illiterate and disrespectful comments towards Tom’s family. Tom develops to acquire his own appealing death, during the course of the play. He has been hesitant to speak about his death, as he ignores Meg’s attempt to begin a conversation on the matter: “Are you afraid? / You coming to the concert tonight?”. Gow signifies Tom’s acceptance by giving him King Lear’s lines about crawling towards death.

It is through our experiences that we can discover what is already known, but can also lead us uncover the gems life as has to offer. While discoveries can be meaningful it is through our sentimental attitudes that unlock the purpose of what is to be found or rediscovered. In Gow’s Away Gwen is portrayed to be a fairly typical of some housewives in the 1960’s, as she is made out to be seen as snobby brat that takes everything for granted without a second thought in mind, regardless of her surroundings. While she is not accepting of many things Gwen tends to poke within the cracks when she ever gets a chance to “I didn’t know you were a friend of his boy’s, Margaret” fond of a new discovery that she yet has an understanding of, continuing on

Throughout the play A Midsummer Night's Dream, Shakespeare uses both fate and free will to present his philosophy towards the nature of love. The characters struggle through confusion and conflicts to be with the one they love. Although the course of their love did not go well, love ultimately triumphs over all at the end of the play. The chaos reaches a climax causing great disruption among the lovers. However, the turmoil is eventually resolved by Puck, who fixes his mistake. The confusion then ends and the lovers are with their true love. Throughout the play Shakespeare's philosophy was displayed in various scenes, and his concept still holds true in modern society.

True love’s path is paved with every step. Through the assistance of fanciful elements as well as characters Puck and Oberon, the true message of love in William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream is revealed. The four lovers know the direction in which their hearts are inclined to turn, but when the love potion is administered, the bounds of their rectangle are thrashed without knowledge or consent. The rapid shifts in affection between the play’s “four lovers” is representative of the idea that love isn’t a conscious choice, but a cruel game in which we are the figurines, being controlled by whomever the player may be, relating the characters’ karmic fates.

Michael Gow’s “Away” is an Australian play, set in the summer of 1967-68, in a time of great social and political change. “Away” tells the story of three families, each from different social classes, living in suburban Australia, as they each embark on their own holiday, attempting to escape their underlying personal issues. Immigrants Harry and Vic love their adopted country but are constantly faced with their son, Tom’s, terminal illness, while Jim and Gwen fret over their daughter Meg’s blossoming independence and her friendship with the socially unsuitable Tom, and Roy is unable to console a grief–stricken Coral over the death of their only son during the Vietnam war. Although each family is completely dissimilar, the theme of love remains

Many kinds of love are displayed within Away, including parental love, matrimonial love and teenage infatuation. All of these kinds of love are also displayed in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Examples of each kind include: Gwen and Meg/Titania and Indian Boy displaying parental love, Coral and Roy/Hermia and Demitrius displaying matrimonial love, and an infatuation is displayed between Meg and Tom/Bottom and Titania. The use of many kinds of love allows stronger connections between kinds of characters to be made, gaining depth of understanding through the relationship between Gow’s and Shakespeare’s works. Destruction is the other outstanding common theme displaying clear intertextuality. The use of a storm in Away allows the audience to make the connection to Shakespeare’s King Lear, in which the characters face environmental adversity as well as the adversities of others. This enhances the audiences’ awareness of social tensions throughout

Many people define their lives by the relationships within their family. They are someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, or someone’s mother or father. The loss of a family member, especially due to death, creates a radical readjustment to people’s day to day lives and how they see and feel about themselves. Sometimes the process of grief can last over several years and how it is mentally processed and dealt with is different for everyone. “Mud” by Geoffrey Forsyth, shows an insightful view of a grieving man who had already lost his father and grandmother and is now just coming to terms with the loss of his wife two years prior. The entire story is written in first person point of view which allows for the reader to fully engage themselves in the grief and strife of the narrator’s life. Geoffrey’s story “Mud” begins in the home of the narrator where he encounters these dead family members and has to decide if he is ready to move on from his grief and say goodbye or stay behind and be consumed by it.

The supernatural world is rather distinct to that of the human world entrenched in societal standards and boundaries. Shakespeare’s play, ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’, explores this concept, particularly through the use of Puck. In agreement to Harold Bloom’s statement, the following essay will analyse how Puck is significant because, by being so disparate, he is able to show the limitations of the human. This will be done through, first, exploring a definition of the human in relation to the supernatural. Subsequently, the essay will use a Freudian lense to analyse the morality of Puck and, lastly, the essay will focus on Puck’s physical characteristics as well as his ability to span across boundaries in the play and the metatheatrical realm.

"Out, Out," by Robert Frost is a gruesomely graphic and emotional poem about the tragic end of a young boy's life. It is a powerful expression about the fragility of life and the fact that death can come at any time. Death is always devastating, but it is even more so when the victim is just a young boy. The fact that the boy's death came right before he could " Call it a day" (750) leads one to think the tragedy might have been avoided and there by forces the reader to think, "What if." This poem brings the question of mortality to the reader's attention and shows that death has no age limit.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Shakespeare easily blurs the lines of reality by inviting the audience into a dream. He seamlessly toys with the boundaries between fantasy and reality. Among the patterns within the play, one is controlled and ordered by a series of contrasts: the conflict of the sleeping and waking states, the interchange of reality and illusion, and the mirrored worlds of Fairy and Human. A Midsummer Night's Dream gives us insight into man's conflict with characteristics of human behavior.