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My Experience

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Steve Anderson

I believe the scene near the end when the pumps and engine stop working and the boys’ father and Geoff both are enraged by this and become violent. I find this most powerful as it confirms the horrifying truth the novel eluded to on every chapter, the boys’ father was dangerous, furious, and held no mercy. Strength and resilience arose for the remaining boys as they had to forget and move on from the event. Although it doesn’t say I believe the father felt remorse, and felt pain anguish, as it could’ve been a spur of the moment thing. For the reader it brings sadness, and pain. Though these feelings are real I don’t feel I look at life differently, but more so aware of the very real instances of violence and heartache in home environments. My assumption of this novel was it would be about moving past common life events, I didn’t know it would be about such taboo topics like domestic violence, alcoholism, affairs and mental health. So yes I believe my assumptions were challenged. No new ideas arose for me after reading this novel, which I thought it would have due to challenging to my first assumptions, but yet nothing arose for me. I have reflected, something personal to me is that my brother and sisters moved away to live with their mum, instead of with their dad who lives with me. I didn’t lose my siblings but it felt as though I had being as close as we were, and this novel provoked my emotions on this. I don’t think it allowed me to understand the act of storytelling but more so to understand how to compose an idea, or concept using a storyline with character representations to play out these ideas.

Part 2

My chosen related material is an interview called ‘wife basher’ conducted by 60 minutes. this interview looks into the life of a domestic violence offender, I chose this to be related as it is an example of the physical and psychological abuse the three brothers endured from their father in the novel ‘past the shallows’. One of the victims in this interview Sharon Schmidt, says “I was hurting, but he only seen it as a weakness, I tried to get away, but he would always act like it would be okay if I stayed.” this relates to the scene where the boys had just got back home after escaping their father, and it seemed as though it would all be okay and back to normal, the father portrayed this by buying fish and chips for the boys upon their arrival, this act was seen as a normal action.  The common thing keeping both the boys and Sharon Schmidt from leaving is their love for family, and their doubt of life after leaving. In both instances death occurred harry was seen to be killed by his father at the end of the novel, and Sharon Schmidt best friend was also killed by their partner both occurred due to common related action of domestic violence. this was my analysis of a common related material compared to the prescribed text, the novel ‘past the shallows’.

the composer of my related material is 60 minutes, it’s a televised interview published on the 15/11/15. this interview looks into the secretive, dangerous act of domestic violence from both the victim, and aggressors point of view. https://www.9now.com.au/60-minutes/2015/clip-cimh6ogms000u0hkjvy9rhqxu. this text relates heavily to the human experience shown in the novel ‘past the shallows’. it explores emotions, actions, and conclusions involved with domestic violence. being such a taboo topic it is hard to speak of the experiences each party felt, in reality, but with both articles, having such insightful perspectives it is clear to see the fear, anguish, pain, and scarring left by the act of domestic violence for example in the novel ‘past the shallows’ shows the quote “I know what happened to mum” “I know she crashed her car on purpose. I know she wanted to die” this eludes to the idea that the abuse may have occurred earlier with the boys mother, and that she didn’t want to live because she knew, she couldn’t leave. this example of fear is similar to the feelings felt by Sharon Smidt from the interview titled ‘wife beater’ an example of this fear felt is backed up by the quote “most days I would wake up, I would open my eyes and dread the events coming from that day”. this text relates to human experiences involving pain, anguish and fear, the same as the human experience in the novel ‘past the shallows’.