NCEA 2.4 Writing Portfolio Option 2: Being There

The Shed

It is that time again. The birds have not yet begun their dawn songs, nor has the sun melted through the sky to reveal the reds, oranges, golds and deep purples of the morning.
No, even the moon still hangs low in the sky, grasping on to the darkness.
Tussocks droop low to the ground, burdened by the weight of iced-over dewdrops, stars fade from the sky and you breathe out, heavy and moist against the sharp September air.

Hush. If you close your eyes and shut out your thoughts, you can hear the world sleeping, the moon still dreaming alongside the people.
The absence of sound is a blessing for your tired ears.
Instant coffee peels open your heavy eyes and you gaze out into the revealing hills, bracing yourself for another day’s work. The stoic unchanging hills provide you with a moment’s calm before the storm hits.
Shearing time. The busiest time of the year.
The timeworn corrugated iron of the shed invites you in, and the walls open their dust-caked eyes and listen in as the workday begins.
A chorus of sheep fills the decade-old yards and as the first sheep runs in, you feel the shed breathe in deeply and let out a burdened sigh, shaking the nights sleepy dust off of the corners and walls.
Inside the shed, it is a familiar scene. While the sheep run in, six men assemble and nurture their machines down the board.
Where each man stands, the rimu floorboards are weary-eyed and worn, stamped with the mark of hard work and age.
The rousies gather around the table, waiting for the fleeces to come hurtling down the board and the somewhat controlled frenzy to start.
The stereo is awakened and coaxes the silence into a submission, soaking into every musty crevice of the shed.
Thick smoke clambers it’s way deep into your lungs, sticking to your clothing and hair, filling your nose and staining the glass windows that are just hanging on to the sills that are eaten away by woodboring inhabitants.
The exhaling of burning tobacco from the smokers corner is painful as it struggles through your young clean body, yet at the same time, it is comforting. It caresses and soothes you as you sift through the different memories that it stirs up.
Overhead, hanging in the aged totara rafters, strung out spider webs dangle and float on the cool breeze that seeps in through the white paint-cracked windows.

And so it begins.

Time passes by slowly but efficiently and the men’s counters click, each man beginning his dance. He gracefully moves over and around the body of the sheep with the handpiece, making the wool slide off like silk on skin with every glide of the blade.
Each move is perfected from years of repetition, they move with precision and elegance, instinct controlling their motions letting their brains wander.
Though the air is still bitter and sharp-tongued, the men only wear raggedy holy singlets, beads of sweat already settling in their furrowed brows and highlighting their ink-painted backs.
The machines clash and clang against the music and a chaotic harmony is formed, the workers all moving in a seamless rhythm that is second nature. They move as one team to get the job done as fast as they can, using humour as a mental escape when their bodies begin to give out.
Laughter beams through the music and toothy smiles reveal cigarette stained teeth.

Dust-light chases the cold out of the shed and a trail of sun follows behind, bringing the Spring warmth with it and making the men drip with sweat. Years of hard labour etched across the mens bodies, their carved backs straining as they lean over the sheep.
In the corner, bales get stacked high to the ceiling by the unnervingly strong presser and the farmer’s children climb higher and higher, hoping they can reach the stars, but disappointingly falling short and only reaching the dusty rafters and cobwebs.
You watch from your hidden position in the wool bin, cushioned by the soft embrace of wool, as the men finish their pens and accept smoko time with open arms.

Lighters are passed around and shared as the tired men slouch in the arms of the tattered 50’s chairs in the corner, dragging heavily from cheap cigarettes.
Dark, sweet tea is poured and the men’s bodies are relieved to pause for just a moment. Fresh scones and egg sandwiches made that morning by the farmer’s wife are greedily gone within seconds.
The silence of the machines and radio makes the space in the shed feel empty, the only noise coming from the stirring world outside.
The shed lives for the chaos and is only a shell of itself when the silence rules.

The time comes when smoko is over and the men must get back to work. The mid-afternoon sun settles in your corner of the shed, where you spend most of your September days soaking up the cleansing rays.
Nestled between wool bins that are stacked to the heavens with white clouds, you open up your favourite book once more.
The preloved cover is and fading, the corners of pages creased, stained with greasy fingerprints. Withered pages hang on to the binding just like the shed windows do and your eyes move across the wrinkled words, while the sounds of the shed come back to life once more.

And so it begins again.

Brianna Curtis

2.4 Portfolio Option 2: A Place in Time

Woolshed

A single specific moment in time –
Invokes a sense of being there, of the place, people, smells etc..
imagery, alliteration, rhythm, present tense direct address.

complex sentence patterns, but also use simple sentences for effect.

You.

Progression of time.

Stop. Listen. Look. Hush. Close your eyes. etc.. other imperative words


Smells:
– heavy lingering smoke
– sheep/wool/lanolin
– sweat
– dusty



Sounds:
– loud music reverberating and rattling the rafters
– but outside, hush. The world is sleeping
– blade shearing, peaceful, soft, like a dance
– chatter
– laughing
– dogs barking in the yards
– People
– sheep
– the sound of the shearing blades being sharpened
– the slicing of the blade through wool
– the clicking of the counter



Sight:
– worn out wooden boards where the shearers stand all day
-corrugated iron
– spider webs strung out on the rafters

– fleeces being thrown in the air
– bits of wool stuck on your clothes, in your hair
– rippling back muscles, sweat beads in their hair, on their backs.
– dewy
– ‘ with each glide of the handpiece along the sheep, you are closer to the end of the day’.

– shearers are moving with grace and skill, dancing with the sheep
– rousies throwing fleeces through the sky
– dustlight/ wool pieces
– chasing the sun
– the old worn out couches leaned in the corner, where people go to have a smoke
– Early morning (6 am) before the sun has risen , ground is still frozen.
– Can see your breath
– Windows wide open to bring in air . Cool air filtering in

– dustlight floating/catching the sun. Filtering in
– naked sheep out into the cool

Feels like:
– Hard work paying off
– Long days
– Everyone drinking speights at the end and laughing
– sleepy earth still slumbering, the birds not yet rising.


– reading a book in a wool bin
– cushioned by wool
– drinking tea at smoko time
– the greasy feel of wool under your hands
– peaceful happy times
– sitting on the bales and observing the dance


Time passing could be passing of the workday from early morning to smoko











Creative Writing Analysis

It is winter, early morning in the little township, chilled and blackfrosted, the plants and bushes stiffly frozen, the football field icy, the trees carrying crystals of sharp ice up to the wet sodden air-hugging mist.

Listen.  It is morning quietly roving the main road, the moist melodic streaming mist rising over the garage and the schoolhouse.  It is grass shivering on the hillSunrise, dawn, the chorus of birds in the pine trees.

It is Sunday morning. The thin clear slants of sun echo back onto the thick mist.  In the silver windowed house, the parents sleep heavy while three blanketed children toss and turn. In the workshop of the garage, Joe is up and in his practical oil-stained overalls is working on that ute that the farmer needs today.  Back in the house, the children now sit heavy-eyed around the wooden rectangular table.

And the toast burns as the jug boils.

“Hurry up kids, we’ll be late,” Mum shouts, sharp tongued.  Washed and combed and brushed, families drive the short way to the little church on the hill.  Past the swamp where the dragonflies shimmer and hover in the morning sunlight.  Where the captured tadpoles would have grown into glazed green slippery little frogs.

Look. On the hill behind the house the pinetrees lift their heavy branches of sharp dense needles into the dwindling disappearing time-now-over mist.  Down below in the township, the little general store opens its ready-for-anything doors to sell soap to biscuits, flour, tea towels, light bulbs and milk that will arrive later in the day carried for hours on the bus.

And soon you will be sitting on hard straight-backed wooden pews with no cushions.  The tiny white wooden church echoing with the sound of morning hymns, streaming out into the frosty but now sunstreaked morning.

This piece of writing is an evocative description of one moment in time. Your task today is to create a piece of writing that describes an instant in a place you know, borrowing the following features from Dylan Thomas’ writing:

  • It must be in the Second Person Viewpoint
  • It must appeal to a range of the senses (Pay particular attention to the sections that start with the imperatives: “Listen”, or “Look”)
  • It must use some from the following list of figurative language:
    • Alliteration
    • Metaphor
    • Simile
    • Personification
    • Repetition
    • Listing
    • Simple sentences

Describing the Class atmosphere – avoiding using cliche descriptions

Draft:

12.11pm, Period 3, Monday. It is English with Mr Waugh in Rm 23.
The lull (pollution) of teenagers chatting fills the empty (stark) bland (monotonous) room. 25 separate conversations clash and clang in your ears. You wish they would shut up.
They don’t.
Instead, you put your headphones in, and continue on your own work, waiting for the clock to hit 12.20pm.
It is warm. Too warm. The air is thick opaque , and hard to swallow. It invites you into a drowsy state.
The pitter-patter of fingers on keyboards echoes in your head.

Rewritten: Nouns in bold
12.11pm, Period 3, Monday. It is English with Mr Waugh in Rm 23.
The pollution of teenagers chatting fills the stark monotonous room. 25 separate conversations clash and clang in your ears. You wish they would shut up.
They don’t.
Instead, you put your headphones in, and continue on your own work, waiting for the clock to hit 12.20pm.
It is warm. Too warm. The air is opaque, and hard to swallow. It invites you into a drowsy state.
The pitter-patter of fingers on keyboards echoes in your head.

Arrival at School -personification
The cell walls of school grasp for my defeated mind. Keeping me imprisoned for another day.

Shackled for another day.

Locking me in for another day.
Keeping me captive for another day.
Keeping me in shackles for another day
Confined for another day.














2.4 Writing Portfolio Option 1: The Book Thief – Genre Investigation


In the novel “The Book Thief” written by Markus Zusak, conventions of the genre Magical Realism, in this case symbolism; are employed to illustrate the deeper meaning of the novel. That is; knowledge is power and the power of words and the actions that humans take as a result of them have the potential to have a negative or positive impact on individuals and the world.
In the novel, words symbolise power and the significance of words and their effect on the lives of the characters involved is shown in order to inform the reader to the idea that words are powerful and have a large impact on society and individuals, and also to warn us to choose our own words carefully.


In ‘The Book Thief’, a character who went on a journey towards attaining knowledge and power was Liesel Memimger, the main protagonist of the novel.
Zusak uses the character Liesel to show the power of words through their positive effect on Liesel’s life.
In the early stages of the novel, Liesel’s lack of knowledge was established when we realised Liesel was illiterate and struggled at school.
“She was the book thief without the words” But trust me, the words were on their way”
This early depiction of Liesel allows the reader to see that although Liesel may not have the power of knowledge and words yet , she will.
Being illiterate in a society controlled by words, meant that Liesel had no power over herself and felt disconnected. Throughout her journey, as she began to learn to read and write, her character developed, she found her identity and had a way to control had express herself in a world run by words. For Liesel, words were a symbol that she had power and control over herself.
As Liesel went on her journey, she had to learn how to manage the power that accompanied her words and this is shown through her argument with Isla Herman.
When Zusak wanted to show the reader the true power of words, he used a metaphor to show the harmful impact of words and to present the negative power attached to their power.
“The injury of words, Yes, the brutality of words… Cuts had opened and series of wounds were rising to the surface of her skin, All from the words”
Zusak used a metaphor of words to show how Liesel’s words had the power to cause harm. Although they did not literally cause cuts to open, Zusak wanted to show through the metaphor that Isla was harmed by Liesel’s hurtful words. This was an important turning point in Liesel’s journey, when she saw how if she abused words, they could cause harm to others.
This symbolises the power that accompanies our words and as readers, Zusak wanted us to become more aware that although we have power, we must learn to control it and not use it for bad.
Words also represented life for Liesel, shown figuratively “to remind her that words had brought her to life” and physically when ” She was holding desperately on to the words that had saved her life”.
Figuratively, when Liesel finally had the power of words by her side, her character was “brought to life” by being able to write her own story and take control of her life. Zusak used a metaphor again when words saved her life when she was writing in the basement when bombs hit Himmel St . The words she was writing did not actually save her, the shelter did, but the words were the reason that Liesel was protected in the shelter, so in a way they did save her life.
Zusak created the character Liesel to have a complicated relationship with words. She struggled to understand them, control and manage her own words, and then she used them to create herself, but their power and significance in her life is always present and shown through the symbolism of their power. ” I have hated the words, and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right”.
At the end of Liesel’s journey, she realised too, that although she hated words and loved them, they had an irreversible positive effect on her life and she only hopes that by yearning for knowledge and power, she did it right.


Although words gave Liesel knowledge and power over herself, Zusak also used words to symbolise the things wrong in the world and to show the dark side of the power of words, when sought after to spread evil.
Nazi Germany and it’s regime was ruled by propaganda and the manipulation of words, which enabled Hitler to exploit the nations trust in him. Hitler yearned for words only so that he could control people, unlike Liesel who yearned for words to control herself.
Hitler knew the power that words could have and used them against the nation.
Through Adolf Hitler and his abuse of the power of words, Zusak could confront us again with the truth that the power of words is corruptible and can be used for bad as well as good.
Hitlers words stand as a symbol for the evil in the world and a warning to the reader to acknowledge when they themselves are abusing the power of words.
Zusak used Max’s story the Word Shaker to explore how someone could abuse the power of words. “Yes the Führer decided that he would rule the world with words, I will never fire a gun, I will not have to.” This line shows the reader how Hitler had recognized the power that words had, and realised he could rule the world with them.
He watched them grow, until eventually great forests of words had risen throughout Germany …. It was a nation of farmed thoughts.”
For Zusak to imply that German people were not in control of their own thoughts but were being manipulated by their leader and thoughts were being created by Hitler’s propaganda, Zusak shows how significant the power of words can be in society.
When we as readers look back on Liesel now, we get a better understanding on why she was so desperate for words, knowledge and power. Because she did not want her thoughts to be controlled and manipulated like the rest of society.
Zusak used the quote “Without words, the Führer was nothing”, to educated the readers to see that Hitler was just an ordinary man, who had figured out how much power words have hidden in them and used them to spread hate and corrupt a society. But Zusak really wanted to show the reader that without the words, Hitler was just like anyone else.
This brought the Nazi Germany situation close to home, because the readers were forced to think about how easy it is for someone to abuse the power of words in society, and made the reader look over their own society to see if this was something that was happening to them.
As readers, we get to see how Hitler abuses words to rally the German people, when Max dreams of fighting Hitler.
“Will you stand out there, powerless? Or”—and now he stepped one rung higher—“will you climb up into this ring with me?”.
Zusak used the boxing ring dream to show how Hitler used words to convince the German people that they had a common enemy, the Jewish people were considered a threat and Hitler unified their hatred towards the Jews. The metaphor that all of Germany could step into the ring and help Hitler defeat Max shows how Hitler could masterfully manipulate people and the power of words in order to rule Germany and start a war.
Zusak used Hitler to show the readers the dark side of the power of words, in order to present the idea that all power can be used for good or bad, and words, as they represent power in The Book Thief, can be used in the same way.


Another way that Zusak used a characters words to symbolise power was through the character Max, who experienced the hateful side of Hitlers words and labels. However, this did not stop him from recognizing that not all words were hateful, and the power of kind words could change a life.
An interesting element of Max’s relationship with words was his experience with Mein Kampf, Hitlers biography. The hateful words of Hitler’s book made it’s way into every household of Germany, in one way or another, and the book and it’s words preach the hate that Hitler wanted people to have. Mein Kampf represent the evil capabilities of mankind when we abuse the power of words.
However, Zusak masterfully used Mein Kampf to also represent power and freedom to Max, as it was the way that Max was able to find Hans Hubermann and find safety in the Nazi regime.
Mein Kampf. Of all the things to save him”. The irony that the very book that condemned Max and other Jews in Nazi Germany is the thing that brought him safety shows how Zusak wanted the readers to see how the power of words can be used for either good or bad, and that even though Hitler abused the power of words, his words still had the potential for good in someones life. Zusak also used Mein Kampf when Max used the pages of Hitlers words to write his own story on top, The Standover Man.
The Standover Man was a story for Liesel to tell her Max’s life story and strengthen their friendship, but also a way for Max to rebel against Hitler and all he stood for by creating something beautiful out of the evil. Mein Kampf means My Struggle, and Max kept the cover of the book to show how The Standover Man was a story about his own struggles in life, as a result of Hitlers words.
By writing over Hitlers Mein Kampf pages, Zusak showed the reader how hateful words can be transformed into kind words, and showed how Max was able to find a way to defy Hitlers preaching even in the smallest of ways.
Zusak also used Max to help teach Liesel about the power and importance of words through his story The Word Shaker. Max knew how important kind words were to combat the hateful words that their society was plagued with and had a drive to share that knowledge with Liesel.
In Max’s book, “The best word shakers were the ones who understood the true power of words”.
This line refers to Liesel as being a word shaker, because she could understand the true power of words. This was because of the time that she was illiterate and “knew how powerless a person could be without words.” Liesel understands the true power of words because of her own struggle to attaining them, and Max wanted her to realise through The Word Shaker what Hitler was doing with their society but also to show her how powerful words were.
The tear was made of friendship-a single word”. Here Zusak teaches the reader about the true power of words, by showing how the word friendship between Max and Liesel grew into an in destructive force that could withstand Hitler and the world.
Zusak showed us as readers the power of kind words and how they could outweigh the hateful words in a society such as Nazi Germany but also in our own societies.
Through words, Max and Liesel could reclaim their own power and independence in Nazi Germany, and create a strong friendship, and their symbol is shown in a different light, this time representing freedom, friendship and power.

In Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief” , conventions of Magical Realism; symbolism, were used to teach the readers about society and the power of words.
Words symbolised knowledge and power, and Zusak successfully presented the idea that the power of words are undeniable and are extremely important and powerful in society. He also taught the readers that words could have a significant impact on peoples lives, whether it be because of kind words, hateful words, or both.
Through the course of the book, Zusak taught the characters, as well as the readers, about the true power of words and he also presented a warning, that we as people, must acknowledge the power of our own words, because we have now seen what happens when words are abused.

2.4 Writing Portfolio Prep

QUESTION:
How did Markus Zusak employ features of the genre Magical Realism to convey his ideas about human existence in this novel The Book Thief?

POWER OF WORDS

Magical Realism feature = Symbolism
Words represent power
Markus Zusak employed symbolism, a feature of Magical realism in order to show how humans behave when given power.
– Liesel was given power through learning to read and write and could then
– Adolf Hitler was given power through words and used them to create a society capable of killing
– Max was given power through his own words and used them to survive being in the basement ??? idk


Human Existence: The purpose of the book is to show that with knowledge comes power that can be used for good or bad. Humans can choose either.

Intro: What is Magical Realism. What is the feature. What is the idea .

Paragraph 1: Liesel

Paragraph 2: Adolf Hitler

Paragraph 3: Max