Essay On Past The Shallows

Resource Description

PAST THE SHALLOWS

Representations of individual human experiences of grief and loss through literature unveils the complexity of human responses to our collective ennui. Favel Parret’s bildungsroman novel Past the Shallows (PTS) subverts dichotomous qualities of perseverance and hopelessness to encourage audiences to personally reflect on one’s ability to overcome experiences of trauma. Hence LINK TO Q

The human experience of loss can fuel violence and moral dissolution but when one succumbs to these emotions they can become trapped in hopelessness. PTS epitomizes the pain evoked from death in its micro narrative of one family’s cycle of trauma. Parrett mindfully constructs cultural Australian concerns of alcoholism into her understanding of reactions to loss in the unnamed ‘Dad’, whereby his objectification transforms him into a catalyst of despondency. Parrett maintains the complex and cruel characteristics of the father through embellishing her narrative landscape to reflect his characterisation, with the cumulative listing in “Battered cliffs, broken rocky beachers, caves well worn into the rock”, creating a sense of escalating dilemmas that ensures readers grasp the scale of the paternal toxicity. The extended metaphor of water in the anadiplosis “Water that was always there. It would be there always, right inside him,” essentializes Miles’ reflection that his Dad’s attributes are concurrently embedded within himself. However, Parrett challenges the audience’s assumptions by eradicating the Australian masculine notion that Miles will echo his father’s violent response to pain, whereby he paradoxically perseveres with the symbolic; “The water rushes past… and no one can touch you,” exposing the inherent complexity of human nature. In a dark scene of domestic violence the antithetical anaphora ‘Yelling at them. Yelling at no one,” denounces the Dad’s moral dissolution through communicating the uselessness in his abusive coping mechanisms.