Jasper Jones Study Notes free essay sample

This late, the architecture is desolate and reached of colour’’ symbolic, suggests of life having been washed out in the town-devoid of colour. †¢Ã¢â‚¬Å"She swipes the curtain back, pleased to see me. She even has sunflowers on the windowsill† – Pathetic Fallacy * Miner’s hall – The hall is full of people for the new years fireworks. â€Å"There’s an enormous bonfire in the pebbled car park of the Miners hall, a pyramid of old railway sleepers feeding the flame. Against the wall of the hall, there are crates of fireworks†. â€Å"Behind the hall they’ve shovelled coals into a long hole†. People spill out of the hall like wasps from a hive†. Pg 296. * Inside the cottage- â€Å"The inside of the cottage is dim. Its strange light the colour of egg yolk. The wallpaper is split and faded. Everything smells of dust and turpentine. On my left is a wall hanging of butterflies with pins through their bodies. They don’t look very colourful. The hall mantle is full of photographs and trinkets and doilies† pg 300 – 301. His furniture is very bad â€Å"He gestures towards to ratty coaches by the window† pg 301 * From the outside it is described as â€Å"The yard beyond is scruffy and dilapidated. Along the border closest to the river, where the bush meets the property thick thatches of blackberries press through the rusted wire fence. On the other side towards the cottage, I notice a goat tethered to a star picket and lying on its side†. Pg 300. * â€Å"He’d come in from the back, ducking through his wire fence and started snooping around. † * The wire fence was there as Jasper described himself invading Lionel’s property, symbolising that Lionel may have some secrecy or something he does not want anyone else to see. 3. * â€Å"And so Corrigan remains a town of barnacles† – Metaphor, relates to Miner’s Hall incident. The town of Corrigan is close knit; therefore they cling onto each other – relating back to barnacles. * Pete Wishart, Laura and Eliza’s father, is probably the most hypocritical character in the novel. Whenever Charlie mentions him, he almost consistently remarks that he is the â€Å"Shire President†. Mr Wishart lives in the posh part of town in a lovely home and is a man of influence. Yet he is a drunkard and an abusive, sexually violent man. He has impregnated Laura but savagely beats Jasper Jones in the confines of the jail cell as if Jasper is responsible for her disappearance. In an echo of Charlie’s mother’s misplaced guilt Jasper tells us ‘ he was sticking the boot in most of all. Pissed as a rat and twice as angry. Screamin at me, spittin. Where is she? What did you do? Stinkin of turps, worse than my old man’ (pp. 136-137) * Charlie repeats town gossip that Jasper Jones is a ‘half-caste’, which angers Charlie’s father. When it becomes clear that Charlie doesn’t understand the term his father ‘softened and explained’. (p. 6) 4. Like Jasper, Jeffrey Lu’s family are racial ‘outsiders’. They are Vietnamese Australians during the Vietnam war. Australian men, including those from Corrigan, are being drafted to fight in the war (e. g. p. 125). An – Jeffrey’s father – is an engineer who is sponsored to work on the Corrigan mine. The Lus are subjected to a casual and universal racism. Jeffrey is called ‘Cong’ by the cricket team and his ancestry mimicked ‘Ah, me so solly’. ‘Communist’ is an all purpose slur, also used by Jeffrey. Perhaps it is in an effort to demonstrate their ‘Australianness’,. * The Lus poke fun at the communists too. Their cat is named Chairman Meow and their (swearing) budgie Chairman Wow. Despite their attempts to assimilate, the Lus are blamed for the impact the war has on the town. Sue Findlay attacks Mrs Lu after her husband is killed in the war and her son drafted (p. 128. Mr Buktin’s explanation p. 130). Yet the An family are victims of the war too. Jeffrey’s uncle and aunt are killed in a bombing raid in the war (p. 114) leaving behind orphaned children that the Lus cannot remove from the country. * One of the men who destroys An’s garden has lost his job for drunkenness, yet chooses to blame the sponsored An for his unemployment. He’s involved. He’s red. He’s a red! Fucking! Rat! ’(p. 204) * Jasper says of his status ‘They reckon I’m just half an animal with half a vote’ (pp. 22-23) Indigenous people were not counted in the population census with other citizens until 1967. Instead, they were counted as part of the flora and fauna, hence Jasper’s reference to ‘half an animal’. In 1962 voting rights were extended to Indigenous people under the Commonwealth franchise but voting was not compulsory as it was for other citizens. Hence, ‘half a vote’. 5. 6. Charlie suggests that his father is also an Atticus figure though without Atticus’ courage. ‘He should have been a lawyer, like Atticus Finch. But he’d have to stand up for something then’ (p. 102). Just as Jem and Scout change their views on their father when he squares off against the rabid dog, Charlie sees his father differently when he defends An Lu from his attackers. ‘He stands up, tall and intimidating. He glares with real anger. And I can’t help but feel a blush of pride seeing it. I’ve been wrong about him’ (p. 204). The re is a marked tolerance of alcoholism in powerful figures. Mr Wishart – shire president – is an acknowledged drunk. It does not appear to occur to anyone that his alcohol intake disqualifies him from public office. Eliza says, when Laura disappears, ‘My dad is just trying to be normal, which means, you know, stinking of beer and yelling a lot’. (p. 89) ‘First he just refused to admit she’d gone missing. Now it’s as though he never had another daughter. He’s blocked it all out. He’s blocked everything out really. Which must be easy when you’re drunk all the time’. (p. 173). Wes (Charlie’s father) confirms Eliza’s view of her father’s drunkenness when he says – at the cricket match – ‘I don’t think he moved too far from the bar. He had a few under his belt’ p. 192. The head of the local constabulary, the Sarge, is puking his guts into a drain on New Year’s Eve (p. 244). 7. 8. * ‘Superman fears nothing because outside a few very specific circumstances where he might encounter some stupid rock, nothing can possibly do him in. Batman has the same vulnerabilities as the rest of us, so he has the same fears as us. That’s why he is the most courageous: because he can put those aside and fight on regardless. My point is this: the more you have to lose, the braver you are for standing up’ (p. 54) Charlie explicitly compares Jasper to Batman as they go to confront Mad Jack Lionel: ‘I watch him walk. Straight-backed, chest full of air. And I see it now, just how counterfeit his confidence is. It’s a noise, a distraction, hot air. It’s Batman’s cape, it’s my father’s combover’ (p. 228) 9. * Mentoin when Jefferey swears at his mum, and his mum dosen’t even know what it means 10. * Charlie notices that Eliza’s mode of speaking subtly changes during the course of her ideal. She adopts a slightly more British, clipped pronounciation, presumably in imitation of her idol Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. 11. * Trust works both ways in a relationship- Charlie and Jasper needs to trust each other in order to be able to work together. â€Å"But you tole me you were in for the pound Charlie and I took your word† pg 294 * â€Å"It’s up to you if you dun trust me or not† pg 294 * â€Å"What have you done† pg 353 – when Jasper sees Eliza in his secret place and he immediately questions Charlie this shows that if there is no trust the relationship can easily be broken. Alcohol is used as a form of escape- Charlie hates the current situation and the weight of everything on his shoulders and he yearns for the need to escape all this responsibility. â€Å"I want to lie back down with Eliza I want to take a small hits of whisky with jasper Jones even just to tip the bottle to me shut lips and pretend I’m suckin g down with him† pg 363 * Family needs to be nurtured with love- Charlie’s mum never received any love from his father and therefore it led to a fall down in family relations. His mother needed love so she went and cheated on her husband. You don’t understand she sobs. Your father doesn’t love me. He never has. You don’t know anything. You don’t know anything at all† * Discrimination leads people to be isolated- Mad Jack Lionel discriminated against Aborigines, â€Å".. David was dirtying the family name† He went against his son’s marriage which only led him to be isolated from his family â€Å"Jack Lionel banished his son from the house. David snatched up some belongings and left willingly† David also got isolated from people because he married an Aboriginal. â€Å"Even David’s mates turned their backs after saying their piece. Eventually they all left him alone. † 12. 13. * To Kill a Mockingbird 14. * A feature of coming of age stories is the transition from a one dimensional view of morals and ethics to a far more complex understanding of right and wrong. The world that reveals itself to Charlie is one in which apparently conflicting views and behaviours enjoy a snug fit and co-existence. poke fun at the communists too. Their cat is named Chairman Meow and their (swearing) budgie Chairman Wow. Despite their attempts to assimilate, the Lus are scapegoated for the impact the war has on the town. Sue Findlay attacks Mrs Lu after her husband is killed in the war and her son drafted (p. 128. Mr Buktin’s explanation p. 130). Yet the An family are victims of the war too. Jeffrey’s uncle and aunt are killed in a bombing raid in the war (p. 114) leaving behind orphaned children that the Lus cannot remove from the country. One of the men who destroys An’s garden has lost his job for drunkenness, yet chooses to blame the sponsored An for his unemployment. ‘He’s involved. He’s red. He’s a red! Fucking! Rat! ’(p. 204)