The writer’s craft
Malouf on ‘The Book Show’, 1988: ‘The best way to write for me is to take myself away from everyday ordinary life. I don’t start with a plot – I start with a very general idea. The whole process of writing is in the very process of writing – objects turn up. Then I have to look at what I’ve done and say how are these things connected.’
Key elements of the text: plot, setting, character
In any good story all the elements of storytelling work together to support each other. Plot, setting and character support the ideas (themes) and emerge through the author’s style and the structure of the story.
Plots in short stories
For a full explanation of plot, access Plots in Short Stories (PDF, 235KB).
Setting/places
Refer to this description of two very different settings (PDF, 375KB) portrayed by Malouf – one natural, one domestic.
Settings are also an important part of identity. The relationship of the characters to their setting is an essential element in the stories. Look at how intense Angus’s relationship to his setting is in this passage (one sentence) from ‘The Valley of Lagoons’:
Extract from page 37: ‘I walked. And as I moved deeper into the solitude of the land, its expansive stillness – which was not stillness in fact but an interweaving of close but distant voices so dense that they became one, and then mere background, then scarcely there at all – I began to forget my own disruptive presence, receding as naturally into what hummed and shimmered all round me as into a dimension of my own being that it had taken my coming out here, alone, in the slumbrous hour after midday to uncover.’
Angus in ‘The Valley of Lagoons’ loves his surroundings but feels a sense of alienation, realising that he ‘too would leave’ (p. 44). This sense of alienation can be seen in other characters such as Sylvia in ‘A Change of Scene’ who sees herself as:
Extract from page 420: ‘a woman who has come sightseeing because she belongs nowhere . . . It is true I have no real place (and she surprised herself by acknowledging it), but I know what it is to have lost one. That place is gone and all its people are ghosts.’
In ‘Dream Stuff’ writer, Colin, also remembers the past when he goes back to his hometown Brisbane but becomes accidentally caught in a crime of passion and feels that he has lost touch with the place he knew: ‘The city he knew, and in one part of himself still moved in, was out there somewhere, but out of sight, underground.’
What we see in the three settings above is that place is often as much about dislocation as location, but that dislocation is very different in each story. Angus has walked into a timeless land. He feels the strongly spiritual beauty of the place but he is an intruder, a theme that Malouf returns to, acknowledging that the land holds a physical memory of an indigenous presence.
In ‘A Change of Scene’ the New and Old Worlds, as Malouf calls the places, create the disconnection. Memory of her family’s past links Sylvia to Europe but paradoxically also reminds her of a world that has been lost.
The third extract also plays on memory but in the urban Australian setting of Brisbane which becomes menacing.
Student activities
1. Responding
Read the three stories that appear in the stories above (‘The Valley of the Lagoons’, ‘A Change of Scene’ and ‘Dream Stuff’):
- What is the relationship of character to setting?
- How are ideas conveyed through setting?
- What similarities can you find in the settings?
2. Exploring other stories
- Which other stories have setting in their titles?
- Categorise these settings as: urban, rural, natural, marine, foreign, domestic, interior and consider what your expectations are of each setting.
- Annotate a passage using the above as examples.
- What does each setting convey about characters and ideas in each story?
3. Writing
Write your own setting, using an image you have found. Use verbs as much as nouns and adjectives to create powerful settings. You might copy the style of ‘The Valley of the Lagoons’ sample above, in starting with a simple and short sentence followed by an extended sentence in which images, feelings and character interact.
(ACELR017)
Characterisation
Unlike a novel, the short story should not have many characters, but like the novel our sense of the character emerges from the descriptions, thoughts, dialogue, actions and interactions offered to us. Our view of the character is also influenced by the point of view being offered. Who is observing and relaying the information to us? Can we trust the omniscient narrator any more than the character as narrator? Some characters may only be present to represent a particular attitude but even in the limited space of the short story, it is possible to build a strong character and to see some development.
A story where character is central is ‘Southern Skies’ told from the point of view of a boy whose parents are immigrants.
Extract from page 327: ‘From the beginning he was a stumbling-block, the Professor. I had always thought of him as an old man, as one thinks of one’s parents as old, but he can’t in those days have been more than fifty. Squat, powerful, with a good deal of black hair on his wrists, he was what was called “a ladies’ man” – though that must have been far in the past and in another country. What he practised now was formal courtliness, a clicking of heels and kissing of plump fingers that was the extreme form of a set of manners that our parents clung to because it belonged, along with much else, to the Old Country, and which we young people, for the same reason, found it imperative to reject. The Professor had a ‘position’ – he taught mathematics to apprentices on day-release. He was proof that a breakthrough into the New World was not only possible, it was a fact . . . We were invited to see in him both the embodiment of a noble past and a glimpse of what, with hard work and a little luck or grace, we might claim from the future.’
Interpreting the character: sample response
In this extract from the beginning of the short story ‘Southern Skies’, we see an opening statement that challenges the reader (why was he a ‘stumbling block’?), moves on to his age and suggests the importance of perspective before beginning a description of the character. The description focuses on one physical detail (‘hair on his wrists’) that leads to manners (‘formal courtliness’) and the way the character was perceived by others (‘ladies’ man’) representing the ‘Old Country’. It is here that we start to realise that the ‘stumbling block’ of the first sentence may have been the ‘Old Country’ that the young people found ‘imperative to reject’. Paradoxically, while the Professor represents the past, he is also a glimpse into the future because he has achieved a ‘position’.
What we realise from looking closely at this passage is just how many ideas can be conveyed through character descriptions. We start to realise that every character is caught in a system of relationships, so we know not just the Professor but the narrator and his family. In fact, it could be argued, that we learn more about the narrator. As an adolescent he focuses on the physical features, he identifies the older man with his parents, he seems annoyed by his parents’ insistence on a work ethic. We therefore also start to understand cultural difference and expectations of migrants through the eyes of the adolescent boy.
Student activities
1. Responding
- What are the ideas conveyed through this character description?
- How are ideas conveyed through character?
- Rewrite the character analysis describing what we find out about the narrator from the description.
2. Exploring other stories
- Which stories have character in their title?
- Look for descriptions of characters in other stories and copy one that stands out for you.
- Interpret the character using the above as a sample.
3. Writing
- Create a character for a story called: ‘Anything goes.’
(ACELR007)
Themes
In his chapter on Malouf’s short stories Don Randall focuses on two significant recurring themes: ‘Coming of Age’ and ‘Violence’. Randall traces the different kinds of violence in the stories and how these challenge the individual and the group but beyond this there is also the idea of being violated.
Violence/violation
Randall, in his critical work, identifies two main types of violence in the stories: random violence set against systemic violence. He writes: ‘While being detained by the police, Colin sees ‘drunks, derelicts, young toughs’ and ‘young Aboriginals’, all of whom the narrative voice characterizes as ‘the agents or victims or both, of a violence that was random but everywhere was on the loose’. The suggestion that violence, though ‘random’, arises among society’s marginal elements and then spills out, as it were beyond their ranks, must disturb some of the story’s interpreters.’ (p. 174)
He compares this with the more political acts of violence in stories that such as ‘Blacksoil Country’ and ‘The Last Speaker of His Tongue’ which condemn Australia’s violence against Aboriginals. Randall writes that ‘Blacksoil Country’: ‘presents violence as systemic rather than random, as the predictable expression of an unjust and divided society.’ (p. 175)
Against this we see the sensitivity of the adult couple to their son’s viewing of violence in ‘A Change of Scene’. They ‘worry insistently about what their child Jason has seen and understood of European violence, never really recognizing that their own experience of this violence is itself a harrowing initiation, a rending of the unconsciously fostered membrane of their Australian innocence . . .’ (p. 167)
Randall’s discussion on violence can be extended into other stories. Even from the earliest stories in the collection, violence is linked to the act of violation and the relationship drawn between the perpetrator and the victim. In both ‘The Prowler’ and ‘Eustace’ there is a sense of heightened excitement at the presence or thought of the violator. The media representation of the prowler captures the public imagination till the prowler ‘has become a victim of the newspaper’s hunger for events, but only for those events it has already created in its own dream-factory’ (p. 504). The involvement has become so intense for Senior Detective Pierce that, ‘What frightens him most is that he has begun to predict the crimes: the time the place, the kind of woman,’ and he becomes a suspect. The roles of violator and law enforcer become blurred and left for us to consider. The same exchange of guilt happens in ‘Eustace’ where girls in a dormitory welcome the intruder, fascinated by him and breaking the school rules and implicitly society’s rules about contact with strangers. The victims become complicit in this act of intrusion.
In a story such as ‘Out of the Stream’ the senselessness of violence turns on the self when Luke runs his finger along the edge of the dagger hanging on a hook at his grandfather’s place. He doesn’t understand the impulse, just that ‘you fell into such states, anyway, he did’. Innocence becomes lost in the violence that is part of the human state of being.
Student activity
Read the following stories and consider what Malouf is conveying about violence in society. ‘The Prowler’, ‘Eustace’, ‘Dream Stuff’, ‘Lone Pine’, ‘Blacksoil Country’, ‘The Last Speaker of His Tongue’, ‘Night Training’.
- Consider how the setting (urban, European, rural, domestic) affects the portrayal of violence.
- Categorise the acts of violence as systemic or random.
- Read the stories chronologically (from last story in book forwards) to see if Malouf is changing the way he depicts violence and what he says about violence.
Coming of age/thresholds
While Randall sees ‘coming of age’ as the significant theme across the stories, he also sees that in the collection ‘Dream Stuff’ this ‘coming of age’ is not effortless or complete: ‘the focal characters characteristically do not come of age, do not move cleanly, unambiguously into more clearly mapped, more stable and secure modes of being. They carry across the threshold at least a portion of their former confusions and ambivalences.’ (p. 164)
This uneasy transition is central to Malouf’s work where characters ‘do not manage to sort out and simplify the complexity of experience. In Malouf’s view this is not what maturation is, not how one matures. Life includes its moments of graduation, but one graduates, most typically, into new realms of difficulty and perplexity.’ (p. 166-167)
In his brief discussion on ‘Out of the Stream’ Randall shows how even the punctuation serves to show the coming of age. Extract from page 396: ‘You could let each thing happen, one thing after the next, in an order that once established would carry you right though and over into – He stood very still letting it begin.’
Randall writes: ‘The sentence’s final dash is eloquent: the boy seeks a crossover into some new mode of life his adolescent confusion does not allow him to conceive clearly.’ (p. 166)
In Malouf’s stories, coming of age is linked to a loss of innocence expressed most eloquently in the story ‘War Baby’. ‘We lose whatever innocence we might have laid claim to the moment we are drawn into that tangle of action and interaction, of gesture and consequence, where the least motion on our part, even the drawing of a breath, may so change things that another, close by or far off, will be nudged just far enough out of the line of the clear line of his life as to be permanently impaired. That, so Charlie would have written . . . was the price of living.’
Student activity: responding
1. Read the story ‘Out of the Stream’ and focus on the following quotations to discuss the way Malouf structures his story to show the developing transition. Include a discussion of the use of images of light and dark.
- ‘The boy stood at the doorway and was not yet visible.’ (p. 388)
- ‘He would step out soon – but as what?’ (p. 388)
- ‘He stepped out of the lee of the white giant, in T-shirt and jeans, his hair combed wet from the shower. The two-edged sword went swinging.’ (p. 388)
- ‘At the moment of his first stepping in across the threshold out of the acute sunlight, he had entered a state – he couldn’t have said what it was, but he felt the strangeness of it.’ (p. 396)
- ‘He felt oddly happy – for no reason, there was no reason . . . He was back in the stream again – one of the streams.’ (p. 399)
- ‘So he set the two places at the kitchen table, then stood for a moment and looked out into the dark. It seemed larger, more comprehensible, because it lay over the sea and you saw it as an ocean whose name you knew and knew the other shore of, glittering full under the early stars; though the dark was bigger than any ocean, bigger even than the sky with its scattered lights.’ (p. 399)
2. Read other stories about coming of age: ‘The Valley of Lagoons’, ‘At Schindler’s’, ‘Southern Skies’, ‘Sorrows and Secrets’, ‘Out of the Stream’, ‘The Sun in Winter’, ‘Bad Blood’, ‘A Medium’.
- Is there a defining moment that causes the ‘coming of age’?
- How does the relationship to the adult world affect the ‘coming of age’?
- After reading the stories do you agree with Randall’s statements that appear above on coming of age?
Memory
There’s a close association for me but it’s a mysterious one between the process of memory and the process of reflection and the actual music of the writing.
Malouf, ‘Memory, reflection and the music of writing’ in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature interview.
Student activity
Watch the video of David Malouf speaking about the importance of memory in his writing:
‘Memory, reflection and the music of writing’ for the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature.
Read a story or stories and discuss the way memory unfolds in them. You should also consider the way time acts with memory.
Possible stories: ‘The Valley of Lagoons’, ‘Mrs. Porter and the Rock’, ‘At Schindler’s’, ‘Dream Stuff’, ‘Jacko’s Reach’, ‘Southern Skies’, ‘The Only Speaker of His Tongue’, ‘A Change of Scene’, ‘In Trust’, ‘A Traveller’s Tale’, ‘A Medium’.
Extended writing
Write an essay comparing how a theme is developed across two or more of the stories. How effectively have the values and attitudes been conveyed through the two stories?
(ACELR011) (ACELR005)
Style
Throughout Malouf’s work language operates as a sensuous tool through which we come to understand the meaning and texture of our world.
Bernadette Brennan, ‘Singing it anew: David Malouf’s Ransom’, ASAL Special issue: Archive Madness
Just like a painter or a musician or any other creative actor, every author has his own style. This can refer to the choices of words, the sentence structure, the imagery, the story structure, the development of the point of view.
Student activity: Long sentences
One feature of Malouf’s writing is the long sentence, adding a rhythm and the cascading effect of images piling up. Consider the sentence that appears below and annotate it with arrows going to explanation boxes which say the following:
- Cliché: which suggests the barrier created by silence
- Paradox: created of silence being noise
- Pronouns: show person feels separated from others
- Colon: introduces the list of metaphors that capture the sense of silence
- Personification: of metal juxtaposed with human screams and connects the noise to the war
- Onomatopoeia: experience of war emerges through the listing of sounds
- Modal: ‘might be’ reinforces the fear that arises from uncertainty
- Antithesis: the natural and unnatural are set against each other
- Contrast: sentence begins with silence and ends with loud music.
Extract from ‘War Baby’, page 93: ‘The wall of silence he felt between himself and others, which he refused to breach, was noise of a kind they could not even begin to conceive: so dense with the scream of metal and the lower but distinguishable screams of men, with the splash of heavy objects through oil-licked swamp, and night calls out there in the stilled other world of nature that might be birds but might also be the location signals of a waiting enemy, and with heartbeats and the thump-thump of rotor blades, that not even the music he liked to listen to, and which his aunt thought unnecessarily loud, could block it out.’
In terms of structure this sentence begins with a clear statement that is immediately contrasted and followed by elaborations. The list of sounds propels the sentence to its ending, capturing the despair of Charlie Dowd as he tries to escape war memories. The inability of others to understand is reinforced by his final comment about his aunt thinking the music ‘unnecessarily loud’.
Listing and word choice
Now consider a sequence from another story (‘In Trust’) (PDF, 129KB). Like the one above it depends on listing to create the effect of an overwhelming number of objects. This time you should take part in the writing and add your own objects, images, words where spaces have been provided and appear in bracketed numbers. For (5) you should provide a phrase not just a word.
- Is the order of words in each list random or do you think it has a sense of order?
- If you changed the order of some of the words in the list would this change the effect?
Dialogue and punctuation
While the stories are mostly interior narratives, Malouf also uses dialogue to show the interactions that pass between people. The following dialogue is from ‘Southern Skies’ that is narrated from the point of view of an adolescent man.
Student activity
- Add the punctuation to the second paragraph below – this includes a pair of dashes and one exclamation mark. Think carefully about the effect you want. The punctuation adds rhythm and changes the pace. You should then read your version aloud to a partner and compare where each of you placed the punctuation. Return to the text to see where Malouf has punctuated. What effect has the different punctuation created?
- Find the sentence fragments and the complete sentences. Why do you think writers use sentence fragments?
- Find the metaphors and similes and explain their effect.
- What is the effect of the lexical chain in the words ‘large huge bigger’?
- What is the effect of repeating the personal pronoun ‘you’?
Extract from ‘Southern Skies’, page 337: ‘What do you do up there on the roof?’ I asked, my mouth full of bread and beer, feeling uneasy again now that we were sitting with nothing to fix on. I make observations, you know the sky, which looks so still, is always in motion, full of drama is you understand how to read it like looking into a pond hundreds of events happening right under your eyes, except that most of what we see is already finished by the time we see it ages ago but important just the same such large events huge bigger even than you can imagine and beautiful since they unfold you know to a kind of music to numbers of infinite dimensions like the ones you deal with in equations at school but more complex and entirely visible.’
Sentence order
The sentences that appear below are in no order. Organise them into an order that works and then check this against the text. Explain how the sentences follow each other with the idea of one sentence building into the sentence that follows.
- A change.
- The magic I’d felt when they just stood and looked, as if I was some creature like a unicorn maybe, had come from them.
- He had put us outside the rules, which all along, though he didn’t see it that way, had been their rules.
- Now it was lifted.
- That change in him had changed me as well and all of us.
- He had removed us from protection.
- I didn’t know it neither, but I felt it.
(‘Blacksoil Country’, p. 278)
Student activity: Conclusions about style
. . . Contemplative and inward: most of my writing has been that
Malouf, ‘Memory, reflection and the music of writing’ in the Macquarie PEN Anthology of Australian Literature interview.
The above activities show the use of long sentences, sentence fragments, dialogue, images, contrasts, metaphorical language, punctuation, listing and word choice in Malouf’s work. You can also see some of the repeated motifs that are part of Malouf’s work: the silence, rules, the skies, the objects.
- Locate motifs and techniques in other stories in the collection.
- Find interesting passages and see what other stylistic features you find.
- Write a paragraph with examples on what you think are the characteristics of Malouf’s style
(ACELR005)
Close studies
For additional close studies and activities refer to these sections:
- Close Study One: ‘The Sun in the Winter’ (PDF, 254KB)
- Close Study Two: ‘The Only Speaker of His Tongue’ (PDF, 207KB)
Synthesising tasks
1. Responding
Use the text annotation strategy (PDF, 188KB) to explore a story.
2. Writing
In this task students look at the beginning and ending of a story they have not studied and construct a possible story in between that reconciles the beginning and ending.
Discuss and predict
- What does the introduction suggest might follow?
- What idea does the ending suggest might be the central focus?
- What kind of person might the main character be?
- Are there any clues to place and time?
- What setting will you use?
- Now work in groups to map a story.
| Title |
Beginning |
What happens in the middle? |
Ending |
|
The day Greg Newsome turned seventeen he joined the University Air Squadron. It was 1951. |
|
But the one who was there in the dream was not there to hear it. He found himself staring into the darkness, fully awake. |
|
Driving at speed along the narrow dirt highway, Harry Picton could have given no good reason for stopping where he did. There was a pine. |
|
He made quickly now for the car and the group his family made, dark and close, beside the taller darkness of the pine. |
|
The rock is Ayres Rock Uluru. Mrs Porter’s son, Donald, has brought her out to look at it. |
|
She also knew for certainty, that she would live forever. |
Peer response
- Read all the group stories to each other and then select which one you like best and why.
- Then read the whole Malouf story and discuss whether this was expected or unexpected.
(ACELR018)
Rich assessment task one: Creating artwork from story
Visual artists respond to literature
As part of the celebrations for David Malouf’s 80th birthday the Museum of Brisbane asked artists to create an artwork that reflected one of his novels. They talk about the process in the video (artists speak from 2.23).
- Your task is to select a story and then describe the artwork you might create that captures the essence of that story – or you can select from existing art that connects with the chosen story. Use the discussions on the video as a guide to explain the motivation for the art choice. The artwork can be a collage of different art works.
- The artwork will be presented as part of a spoken presentation explaining the decisions that were made.
(ACELR017) (ACELR014)
Rich assessment task two: Maloufean style
Students should read at least five of Malouf’s stories, collect notes using the activities in this section and then respond to this essay topic:
- Whichever story we read we find that there is a distinctive Maloufean style and attitude that absorbs the reader’s mind and ear.
Write an essay about the ‘Maloufean style’ focusing on one of the stories but referring to others, showing how Malouf uses his skill as a writer to convey important values and attitudes.
(ACELR006) (ACELR009)
(6 votes, average: 4.50 out of 5)
Loading...