It is the distinctly visual elements of the texts that help the reader understand the worlds of characters and develop the same feeling, motives and compassion as they confront the challenges of life. Rachael Perkins and Henry Lawson are two people that help prove this statement. Henry Lawson, a great Australian poet and Rachael Perkins, an indigenous film documenter/director are heavily influenced by this statement. They both have experience in making their characters and the worlds they live in very easy to understand to the reader. The two texts from Henry Lawson that help me prove these points are ‘Joe Wilsons Courtship’ and ‘The Drovers Wife’.
Henry Lawson has this uncanny talent to portray his characters with so much depth and emotion that the reader can understand every hardship they go through all through visual elements of text. In his short story ‘Joe Wilsons Courtship’, Lawson uses emotive, descriptive language to portray his characters and their worlds. Joe Wilson is a young shy, romantic, sentimental bushman as Lawson descirbes him “I was too sensitive and sentimental, and that was what the matter was.” In this story; Joe is obsessed with a lady by the name of Mary, he thinks she’s the one and is prepared to do anything to be with her, even if it involves fighting. This soft hearted cowboy overcomes obstacles as he struggles to find it in him self to even talk to the lady of his dreams. Lawson uses visual elements of text to portray Joe as this sort of wimpy, emotional, shy and poor excuse of a bushman. In one scene in the story, Joe is confronted by Mary and Lawson uses these words to show that Joe was simply hopeless when it came to women. “I was about the reddest shy fool of a bushman that ever was…”
Lawson doesn’t only use visual elements of text to give the impression of Joe being struck with nerves every time it came to Mary but he also uses very decisive & specific wording when it comes to Mary. When Lawson writes about Mary and her...