Stylistic Devices in 'Sorry' by Joanna Gardiner

''All at once, the sound was like the noise of St Pancras Station - echoing and inhuman, hugely threatening' (83).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:29:58 UTC

Jones uses personification to make Pancras station and the sound of the cyclone's rain sound like they're alive and that it's a creature that's sheer size and noise is bearing down on them. The magnitude of the rain falling from the sky being almost like an attack and symbolises the oppression that they face from Nicholas where he is beast-like and threatening. The rain washing away everything around them could symbolise the washing away of the mind fog and Perdita starting to realse how much Nicholas is like the rain pushing them down.

'But no apology was offered. Nothing was said' (79).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:33:28 UTC

Jones's simple declarative sentences eloquently capture Perdita's shock at witnessing her father strike her mother.

Within this simple quotation, it captures so much more than the simple shock Perdita experienced. It represents the broader scheme of the Australian conflict between the Indigenous Australians and the white people coming to Australia, and their refusal or failure to apologize for the suffer they have caused.

'Perdita felt once again the sting of her own cowardice, the way she had become a mute witness, a child whose limits defined her. On the floor before her, Stella was lying still, curled inwards, her nose a bloody mess, the Spanish shawl ... cast off' (79).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:35:06 UTC

Jones uses parataxis sentences evoking sense of urgency and emphasis on the statement. Jones emphasises Perdita's flow of thought the 'sting of her own cowardice' to being a mute witness and letting her childness be an excuse to stand up against wrong-doing. Additionally, imagery of the motif of a coil, relates to Stella's defeated body referencing her special Spanish shawl being chucked and disregarded.

'She spoke in a quieter voice and her skin had the quality of a porous fossil, sallow, chalky, more contracted to the bone, more like the old woman she had prematurely become' (74').

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:38:13 UTC

Jones metaphor of Stella's appearance following her return from the hospital highlights how Stella has not only been traumatised but has become a dead inside, a skeleton of the person she was.

'I wondered for the first time if I would become my mother, if I would be this kind of unhappy woman, coiled around emptiness, falling hopelessly silent like a pearl shell at the bottom of the ocean' (76).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:40:24 UTC

By using the metaphor of ‘a pearl shell’ Jones shows Stella's capacity to be as beautiful as she is inwardly; however, this is impossible for Stella as she is controlled by her battles with her mental health. These struggles lead her to be 'coiled around emptiness', insinuating that she is on the brink of curling up and disappearing, likely in a fetal position, signifying Stella's need for protection against her emotional and psychological trauma.

'The day unveils itself in partial scenes and stages, as if a memory-camera is fixed, and cannot swing around to envision the entire room or every one of the players' (91).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:42:31 UTC

This quotation emphasises how fragmented memories and staging of traumatic events can create different interpretations and perspectives of a specific situation. In Nicholas' death scene, Jones focuses on specific items and characters in isolation which creates ambiguity surrounding the truth. It also reflects the inability for the audience to gather a complete understanding of the event through the unreliable perspective of Perdita and her splintered recollection of the death.

'Perdita wondered where Mary was, whether she was in gaol... She imagined Mary's head bent, like a saint, and her dark face prayerful' (97).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:47:48 UTC

This quote reinforces the Biblical motifs explored throughout the novel, and Perdita's strong connection to her 'sister' Mary. Mary's favourite book 'The Lives of the Saints', which she shares with Perdita, creates a strong bond between the two and shows the power of books in bringing people together. Even when the two girls are separated, Perdita still thinks of Mary, and in dealing with a sense of guilt and sorrow for her sister, hopes that Mary's suffering has meaning like the saints in the book. Similarly, to how Mary found comfort in the book in imagining her mother's suffering had meaning too.

'We feared him, waiting as one waits for the arrival of a cyclone, cringing and cautious, to see what destruction it will leave' (88).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:49:13 UTC

Here, the analogy of a cyclone, an identifiable symbol of the trauma Perdita, Mary and Stella just endured, emphasises the anxiety Nicholas brings to their home. By comparing him to the anticipatory fear of experiencing a natural disaster, Jones foreshadows Nicholas' further exploitation of his power and the subsequent destruction in the Keene household.

'[Mary and Perdita] sat quietly together reading, their heads flared open like parasols, open and inclining with sisterly ease' (67).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:55:39 UTC

Jones uses the simile of parasols to communicate how both Mary and Perdita are connecting through reading of the shack's books. Parasols are typically a feminine accessory which English upper-class women used to protect themselves from the sun to maintain their pale skin. By using this simile of parasols Jones shows how Mary and Perdita are forming a connection and friendship through imperial influence, a stark contrast to indigenous Australian culture.

'Stella] remembered the scene in which Iago stabs Emilia (his wife), trying to silence her. Emilia protests: 'Twill out, 'twill out. I peace. / No, I will speak as liberal as the north' (78).

0025 — 2023-09-07 10:57:18 UTC

'Mary stands in her hydrangea-blue dress, stained purple and lurid with Nicholas's blood' (91).

0025 — 2023-09-07 11:01:50 UTC

This confronting description symbolises a loss of Mary's childhood and peace. A young girl who had been abused and violated, standing in a blue dress, which represents calmness and serenity, which is stained -- a word with tainted connotations --

'No-one to talk to in this incredible, newly warped voice, this juddery, hunchbacked, troublesome voice' (97).

0025 — 2023-09-07 11:05:16 UTC

'The map on the wall, corpulent Europe, became covered with Stella's tiny drawings of swastikas. At a distance, they looked like spiders, swarming across the paper' (100).

0025 — 2023-09-07 11:07:52 UTC

Through Jones' personification of Europe as "corpulent", readers are invited to consider not only the colonial greed of European powers over themselves during WWII, but their greed to colonise Australia, and finally the space Nicholas' obsession with this war forcefully takes in Stella and Perdita's lives. Nicholas' desire for control is mirrored by his obsession over European power, which creates a suffocating environment in the Keene household, and manifests itself most obviously when he rapes Mary. As spiders "swarm" across the paper, this imagery of disgusting and gluttonous consumption is emphasized, but as this scene follows Nicholas' death, it suggests that the spiders had begun to take over Europe and that Nicholas's reign, or Europe's reign, was coming to a close. However, given that these spiders were used to represent Nazism, this further creates moral unease and tension following Perdita's murder.

In the air is a criminal stench of blood. They breathe it in. They fill themselves (92)

2023-09-14 01:04:29 UTC

'I wanted a 'last glimpse' memory so that I could seal the shack, and the death, and my life with Mary, into an immured and sequestered past' (117)

2023-09-14 01:09:44 UTC

'Mary stands in her hydrangea-blue dress, stained purple and lurid with Nicholas's blood" (91)

2023-09-14 01:10:24 UTC

'In the air is a criminal stench of blood. They breathe it in. They fill themselves. (92)

2023-09-14 01:17:24 UTC

'The mother-of-pearl particularly attracted her. It had beauty she mostly associated with light: the lustre of moon-lit clouds' (130)

2023-09-14 01:19:18 UTC

As Perdita admires a mother-of-pearl shell to steal for Mary from the sorting shed in Broome, Jones uses imagery associated with light and iridescence, evoking a sense of solace, beauty and tranquility which, even in the chaos and metaphorical darkness of the Keene household, Perdita was able to experience through her relationship with Mary. Despite this, Jones further uses this imagery to contrast the brutal bombing of the Dutch refugees only moments later, showing the fleeting nature of beauty in a world filled by loss.

Perdita was 'furled, inward. She thought of herself as an ammonite' (146)

2023-09-14 01:20:17 UTC

Jones describes Perdita as an ammonite, a coiled extinct marine animal, to explain how her father's death has caused her to collapse into herself. Perdita has become mute and has developed her psychogenic stutter which Jones describes by comparing her to an ammonite, an extinct, distant, coiled creature.

Stella 'banged down her tea cup, staining the tablecloth, and repeated the line: 'What's done cannot be undone' (202)

2023-09-14 01:20:40 UTC

Perdita comes to Dr Oblov to "claim her guilt" in order for Mary to be released from the gaol. Her and Dr Oblov explain to Stella how she would need to testify against her own daughter in order to rectify Mary's sentence. Stella then quotes Macbeth "What's done cannot be undone" before slamming the door shut. This sudden outburst reflects her stubbornness to bring justice to Mary. Furthermore, Jones signifies that her silence is in order to protect Perdita, her own daughter.

In the air is a criminal stench of blood. They breathe it in. They fill themselves. (92)

2023-09-14 01:23:57 UTC

Jones uses olfactory imagery to convey the graphic scene of Nicholas' death. The overwhelming and shocking sight of his dead body is captured in the association between blood and air. The word 'stench' connotes rottenness, adding to the visceral impact of this scene.

2023-09-14 01:26:34 UTC

'Perdita felt once again the sting of her own cowardice, the way she had become a mute witness, a child whose limits defined her. On the floor before her, Stella was lying still, curled inwards, her nose a bloody mess, the Spanish shawl... Cast off' (79)

'By the time I was old enough to answer her, she was not interested in replying, and had begun, in any case, to enter the honeycomb of dementia, the looped craters under-arching what might have been a memory, the brownish corridor to nowhere...' (75).

2025-09-03 23:41:19 UTC

Jones metaphor and olfactory imagery to depict the memories stuck and the deep honey-coated fog within Stella's head of honeycomb struggling to move amongst the stickiness depicting the struggle to recall memories with dementia. Further description of the 'looped craters' and 'brownish corridor' further evokes imagery and a physical depiction of dementia.

'Mary stands in her hydrangea-blue dress, stained purple and lurid with Nicholas's blood' (91)

2025-09-03 23:42:57 UTC

Hydrangeas symbolise everlasting love and hope, similarly blue Hydrangeas are associated with apology. Here the blood-stained dress smothering the vibrant blue captures the gruesome death of Nicholas. The blood covering her dress also symbolises her how Nicholas, even in death, is able to corrupt her childhood innocence.