English Advanced- Past the Shallows (1 Viewer)

[Farhanthestudent005]

We are doing past the shallows for our first Year 12 assessment. The question we have to answer is 'how does
Past The Shallows present the idea that an unresolved past is often an intrusion on the present?'

Will appreciate it if someone at least helped me with what key points I should add in my essay

Thanks

 

[jimmysmith560]

Perhaps change could be one of the main themes to be covered in your essay in response to this question:

Circumstantial changes are thrust upon the characters. The death of the mother in the Curren family changes everything. The father is now left to move on alone and support the family, however, he seems incapable of doing so or of coming to terms with the past. He is stuck at the night of the accident. He is enraged by the betrayal of his wife and expels that fury on his children. Concealing a secret that he was at the scene of the accident, he starts a downward spiral of destruction taking him and his children with him.

Some quotes relevant to change include:

• "And if you didn’t know better, you’d think that no one lived here anymore. That all these places were abandoned. But people were in there somewhere, hidden and burrowed in. They were there." Chapter 7
• "Out past the shallows, past the sandy-bottomed bays, comes the dark water—black and cold and roaring. Rolling out an invisible path, a new line for them to follow.
  To somewhere warm.
  To somewhere new." (Chapter 43)

I hope this helps!