today we where doing a Practice question to prepare for the Unfamiliar text exam at the end of the year this is my attempt.
Compare and contrast the attitude to departure and arrival presented in each text. Give details from the texts to support your answer.Both Kassabova and Farrell talk about their arrival in New Zealand in a somber tone. However Farrell talks somberly about what is lost this can be seen in the line “That dream she knows to be corrupted by reality” when she thinks about the beach that she grew up on. Whereas Kassabova is throwing a pity party and is talking about how life sucks and all hope is lost this can be seen in the line “We have arrived in the North just as we arrived in the South before, to sleep above courtyards where immigrant children call out to their future which is our present,” this makes the audience think of little houses crowded with people that are forever moving and never finding peace. More people in the audience will be able to sympathise and understand how Farrell is feeling as we all have someplace that we would hang out as a child but no longer can due to either subdivision or pollution, however not many people will be able to understand where Kassabova is coming from as most people don’t move very often but when they do they don’t have the sense of hopelessness that Kassabova covays in their poem. Another way the two authors differ in their attitude towards arriving in New Zealand is how they talk about it. Kassabova describes the north in very dystopian terms using metaphors such as “the cemeteries lush with centuries of flesh” and similes like “The hills are packed like cement” to describe their new world these make the audience picture a place in their mind without much green and it is just buildings everywhere a City like Dubai where the City has outgrown nature. But Farrell uses the analogy of a waka in the line “...we’ve all woken up and found ourselves together in this small boat, this tippy waka, out here in the middle of a vast ocean…” when talking about Clare’s home Farell keeps nature in what she is talking about this with the line before it of the beach being threatened into subdivision and all the trees have left gives the audience the image of a place that still has some nature but is slowly becoming more city like, similar to the place that Kassabova is talking about.
Farrell talks about New Zealand in the bitter sweet way of remembering what used to be, whereas Kassabova talks about New Zealand as this place of crushed dreams and despair.
