Romeo and Juliet activity: Year 9

ASSESSMENT 2: Selected Scenes

With your allocated scene you are to:

1) Introduce the scene and give a basic overview. Then reenact the scene. This can be done in class with costumes, or an iMovie previously recorded. This must be done in Shakespearean prose and also Modern Day language.... Therefore two separate representations.

2) Give the class an explanation of your scene. Explain what has happened and what the implications of this scene are to the audience. Discuss any key ideas or speeches. Address any issues presented.

3) Set the class the questions on Schoology for your scene. You will discuss the answers with them.


Act 2, scene 3: Johnny and Harry

Act 2, scene 4: Alex Tyler Gus Nick Lachie

Act 2, scene 5: Charlotte and Harriet

Act 2 ,scene 6: Tina Savannah Blake

Act 3, scene 1: Teaghan, Emma, Sarah, Liam, Charlie

Act 3, scene 2: Beau and Liv

Act 3 , scene 3and 4: Amelia Matisse Mitch Vicky

Have fun! :)

Checklist for writing Maestro essay: Year 11

It's time to develop your sense of critical thought. Looking over your practice essay, use the following 10 questions to see how well you have prepared.

Checklist for your Maestro essay:

 Have you:

1)      Contextualised in your intro?

2)      Signposted your three main points?

3)      Stated your overall contention?

4)      Have you integrated a quote into your intro?

5)      Developed three strong and direct topic sentences?

6)      Integrated at least 3 quotes per paragraph?

7)      Have these quotes been 3-8 words long?

8)      Have you concluded strongly showing your findings?

9)      Have you integrated a quote into your conclusion?

10)   Is your overall essay an accurate and intelligent response to the question?

Practice essay topics : year 11 Maestro

Hi Year 11... Choose one of the following question to do as your practice essay today (Thursday).

Essay topics – Maestro

1 ‘You’ve been like a father to me. Taught me everything I know.’ Is everything that Paul learns a consequence of knowing Herr Keller?

2 How does Paul grow through the course of the novel Maestro?

3 How does setting affect the characters inMaestro?

4 We can never really leave the past behind us. To what extent doesMaestro prove this to be true?

5 ‘I remember you often used to say: silence is the purest music.’ How do silences convey meaning in Maestro ?

6 Paul says that Keller was ‘the worst possible teacher’. Do you agree?

7 ‘Never again would there be so much to be discovered, to be touched and tasted for the first time.’

How does Goldsworthy evoke the ‘foolish, innocent world’ of childhood in Maestro ?

8 Maestro explores how difficult yet important it is to forgive. Discuss.

9 The adult world is just as interesting as the child’s world in Paul’s memoir. Do you agree?

10 Maestro demonstrates that the truth can hurt. Discuss.

11 ‘I was to be allowed no dreams, it seemed.’ Does Herr Keller destroy Paul’s dreams?

12 Does Paul only have music lessons from Herr Keller?

13 Maestro suggests that it is impossible to suppress emotions. Discuss.

14 This story would not have worked in a different setting. Do you agree?

15 Paul Crabbe’s adolescent years consist of one betrayal after another. Do you agree?

Style and Structure Notes Maestro: Year 11

 

Structure and style

 

Typical of a memoir, the text is told in the past tense from the first person narrative perspective, as a middle-aged man recounts his time with Eduard Keller. The title itself points to the centrality of the man in Paul’s conception of his adult self. The fact that Paul goes to such lengths to disparage his early teenage behaviour indicates the extent to which he has matured and grown, and there is a consistent and rueful tone permeating the narrative. Labelling himself as ‘smug, insufferable’ and ‘invulnerable, immensely content’, Paul aims to redress his neglect of Keller through admissions of his flaws as a middle-aged man. Through his confessional voice, we learn that the young Paul is ‘self-satisfied’, ‘a show off’, and that he knows ‘so much for [his] age…and so little’. The unrelenting self-deprecation continues to the last page where Paul admits to his own ignorance; he berates himself for creating in his head ‘a foolish, innocent world, a world of delusion and feeling and ridiculous dreams’. Still, the reader should commend the adult Paul for having the gumption to admit these faults; the book itself becomes the testament to how sorry he really is.

 

Opposites abound in the novel and this structural device is used to expose the shifts that occur to the main character. Paul’s parents fail to fit into Darwin society because their social life consists only of mixing with other families who play music and act. Disparaging Darwin as ‘the arsehole of the earth’, both Paul’s mother and father contrast diametrically from the ‘drunken whistles’ that characterise The Swan’s clientele. Similarly, Adelaide’s predictability, epitomised by ‘rotary clothes hoists and rose beds and apricot trees’ is the antithesis to Darwin’s ‘cartoon world’ with its ‘giant, clockwork insects’. This setting is ripe for Paul’s growth and maturity, a place suitable for expansion of his limited ideas and influences. Rough Stuff, with its leather jackets, rock music and beer-swilling members is the opposite of Paul’s ambition as a concert pianist, but this testing of the boundaries also strikes the reader as an important and necessary part of learning where one belongs during adolescence. In this way, Maestro highlights the debate ‘between the world of the sense and the world of the intellectual’ (as Goldsworthy says of the text in his Introduction). Even Keller himself is a mass of contradictions and opposing forces. While he is a sublime pianist who works unflaggingly to improve his and Paul’s standards, he is also an alcoholic who cannot make sense of the past. Emotion is juxtaposed against intellect in a never-ending battle of motivators that drive human behaviour – an opposition we all have in ourselves, and one that we have to tame.

 

The chapter divisions are also an intentional strategy by Goldsworthy to showcase the changes in Paul, and especially his developing maturity. In “Darwin 1967”, Paul begins as a child who has to be pushed forward to meet Keller. After his initial unusual lesson with the Maestro, Paul wants to stay home and not attend classes again. He is similarly reticent at Darwin High to interact with others, using the Music Room as his ‘lunchtime sanctuary’. Still, his inability to remain quiet leads to Jimmy Papas’ beating of him, and it is this, paradoxically, that teaches him how to manoeuvre in society. The length of this first section of the text suggests the significance of its effect on his adult personality. As the text progresses, the sections become shorter – indicating that Paul is trying to latch onto a past that is quickly disappearing for him.

 

Utilising musical terms, “Intermezzo” is the awakening of his sexual maturity. When Paul realises that the old city of Adelaide has ceased to hold the same attractions he embarks on a treasure hunt to find Keller’s past. While researching in Adelaide University Library, he witnesses a young couple having sex and this ignites his own fantasies.

 

The next section “1968” is largely concerned with his growth sexually and socially. Although Paul utilises Keller’s trademark teaching methods with others, he became ‘increasingly impervious to his criticism’. It is in this section of the text that Paul becomes truly independent, not always with positive results.

 

Only in “Adelaide” can Paul recognise Keller’s selflessness and hidden pain – and it is here that the reader notices Paul’s maturity in recognising others’ troubles.

 

In “Vienna 1975”, Paul meets with Henisch, an old colleague of Keller’s and he hears of how Keller was ‘an artist who had suffered more than any man had a right to suffer’. This small section of the text shows Paul that he had been deluded to believe that he could compete on the world stage; his arrogance and self-satisfaction in Darwin have prevented him from putting in enough effort to reach his goals.

 

The last section also shows how Paul is regretting his poor decisions. Alone, he maintains a vigil by Keller’s bed as he dies; only after this does he suddenly recognise the old man’s worth. Even though he blames Keller for ‘teaching [him] self-criticism that would never allow [him] to forget his limits’, he also becomes a loving husband and father. The ambivalent tone that pervades the end of the text proves Keller’s earlier dogma to Paul, one that we all need to heed to avoid life’s pitfalls: ‘Beauty simplifies…The best music is neither beautiful nor ugly. Like the world [and us], it is infinitely complex’.

 

 

General comments

• A fiction yet written in the style of a memoir. The experiences of young Paul in Darwin

and Vienna are written by adult Paul, who becomes the narrative voice. His comments

often begin and end each short episode and are also woven throughout the narrative.

His comments routinely condemn the attitudes and behaviour of his younger self as

well as guide the reader reaction to events and characters, for example after describing

Keller and his first bizarre music lesson adult Paul says, ‘I find it hard to understand

how much I came to love the man, to depend on him’ (p. 13).

At the start, the comments of adult Paul firmly establishes the memoir style and

conveys a sense of immediacy for the reader, that the writing is being constructed

almost at the same time as we read it. ‘Sitting here, setting down these first memories

of Keller.‘ (p.13)

The voice of adult Paul also comments on the conventions of writing itself. For

example, ‘To describe the world is always to simplify its textures, to coarsen the weave:

to lose the particular in the general. But as I sit here writing the events of my childhood

seem to fall neatly into patterns.’ (p. 15)

• A Bildungsroman, a novelistic form which concentrates on the spiritual, moral,

psychological, or social development and growth of the protagonist usually from

childhood to maturity. (Wikipaedia reference)

• The epigram. The epigram is meant to focus reader attention to the central idea of the

narrative. The relationship between Paul and Keller indicates that the epigram is meant

to be read ironically. There are in fact many similarities between Austria in the 1930s

and Australia in the 1960s.

• The narrative is built like a piece of music. The narrative is episodic with different

movements akin to an extended piece of music. Each short episode is ended by a

diamond and line denoting a change of scene, time or central idea. This compliments

the symbolism of music that runs through the novel and the use of musical analogy to

represent relationships and the significance of events and themes.

Setting

• Vivid images: The Swan Hotel (p. 3), weather imagery to describe drinkers in the front

bar, the religious imagery used to describe their drinking, Darwin (pp. 9-10, p. 46).

• Character’s opinions: Father’s opinion; ‘Darwin was the terminus. A town populated by

men who had run as far as they could flee. From here there was only one further

escape’ (p. 17). Paul’s mother’s clichéd references to Vienna (p. 45) and Keller’s

cynical painful references (p. 45).

• Comparisons: Darwin is compared to a detention centre.

•

The use of capitalised tags. This device renders the phrases into a definition rather

than a description. Vienna is ‘The Ballroom of Europe’, ‘The Experimental laboratory

for the End of the World’.

Potential Oral Topics : Outcome 3

I know this is thinking ahead a little bit, however you need to start formulating what your speech will be about.

Here are some possible topics:

Schapelle Corby- should criminals benefit from selling their stories?

Climate change induced weather events- fires, floods etc…

Reality TV shows- The Biggest Loser- educative or exploitative?

Reality TV shows- our obsession with cooking shows

Australian sporting heroes behaving badly- cricketers sledging and tweeting

A-League soccer fans behave badly

Australian economy affected by industry shutdowns- Toyota, SPC etc…

Pageant kids... Honey Boo Boo has her own show- what next??

There is no original music any more.

That this generation's literacy will be adversely affected by YOLO, LOL,etc…

The VCE is a system that stifles free thought

Melbourne needs CCTV to combat violence

Hugh Jackman speaks out against Australian adoption laws- is celebrity activism the only way to promote causes?

Whaling

Shark culling in WA and SA

The Sochi Olympics in Russia are not in keeping with the Olympic spirit- corruption, racism, homophobia, removal of homeless

That products using Palm Oil should be outlawed

Australia’s asylum seeker laws

The sexualisation of advertising

Syringe supplies for drug addicts- Needle vending machines

Abbott's criticism of the ABC for not providing balanced news

Dredging of barrier reef

Phone tapping of Indonesia

EastLink tunnel protesters

Bikie laws in Queensland

Cutting foreign aid budget

Asylum seeker conditions in detention centres

Treatment of asylum seekers 

Processing of asylum seekers

‘One punch law’

Street violence in Melbourne

Should mathematics be compulsory in schools?

​

The end of car manufacturing in Australia

Sex education and homosexuality

Work-for-the-dole scheme

East-West tunnel

Cory Bernadi’s book – The Conservative Revolution (Abortion)

Should we smack our children?

The Indigenous employment/ education gap

Tecoma McDonalds

Sexism in the media

Animal cruelty

Treatment of fare evaders

Wearing the hijab in schools

Carbon tax

The government funding of private schools

The distribution of inappropriate Christian publications in State Schools

Religion classes compulsory in schools

An overview of key ideas : Stasiland Year 12

Stasiland by Anna Funder

In Stasiland, Anna Funder recounts the horrors faced by the East German citizens under the control of the German Stasi. In order to understand the extent of the personal damage and despair suffered by people on a daily basis, Funder interviews a range of East German citizens, including ordinary people, unwilling informers and the Stasi operators obsessed with power and control.  The use of the first-hand narrative enables her to capture the effects of the excessive surveillance employed by the Stasi as well as other psychological tactics that enabled them to skilfully prey on people’s vulnerabilities. As she personally sits in the torture rack, develops relationships with her interviewees, and organises “secret” meetings with former Stasi operators, Funder invites readers into their world to share their despair and triumph.

Power of the state

When Hagen Koch, General Honecker’s personal cartographer, sketched the outline of the Berlin Wall in 1961, he was “redrawing the limits of the free world”.  Eventually as Funder shows, each and every one, whether victim or perpetrator, were in the end defined by the physical and psychological restraints of the wall (234/256).  In other words, the Berlin Wall becomes a physical and symbolic representation of power.

The purpose of the wall was to divide the communist east from the free west. After World War two, the Potsdam agreement relegated the administration of Germany to the United States, France, the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union. After two years, it gradually disintegrated as the Soviets took action to separate the East from the West. The Berlin Wall, erected in 1961, controlled by vicious guards and equally vicious dogs, reminded East German citizens of the brutality of the Stasi regime and the price of communism.

Reminiscent of George Orwell’s fictional “Big Brother”,  Funder explores the pervasive nature of state control and the effect of ubiquitous surveillance on the lives of ordinary citizens.  In fact, the power of the state is so intrusive, and surveillance mechanisms so widespread, that the files the Stasi kept on their countrymen and women if laid “upright and end to end” would “form a  line 180 kilometres long.”  The records on each suspect’s actions and transgressions are so extensive that Funder evaluates that it would take 40 puzzle women 375 years to reconstruct the documents. The motto of communist leaders is particularly insidious. As Mielke comments, “hang on to power at all costs. Without it you are nothing.” As the end approaches, even Herr Bohnsack is forced to recognise that “it’s them (the people) or us”.  (238-9) From the inception of the GDR after the end of World War II, power, to the communist leaders, becomes an important end in itself which captures and motivates its 20,000 party members.

The Stasi turn surveillance into an artform and penetrate every aspect of a person’s life.

The variety of surveillance measures includes:

• telephone tapping;
• mobilisation of informers;  post and parcel interception
• use of investigative forces and technical forces including installation of technology.
• a large number of people were informers: 1 to every 60.  (199)

One of the most powerful analogies used by Funder to describe the pervasive extent and ideological significance of state power, is her comparison of the Stasi with the Catholic church. Koch states that members were “chosen” to belong to the elite group (156) to which exclusion exacted a high cost. Just as omnipotent as God, the Stasi also created its own system of heaven and hell on earth. It meted out punishment and rejection; people were punished for “lack of belief” or even more insidiously “suspected lack of belief”. Likewise, Funder compares the “leap of faith” one must make to that of Catholicism; someone is constantly looking inside the people to evaluate whether their faith was strong enough.  “The Stasi could see inside your life too, only they had a lot more sons on earth to help.” Ironically, Funder draws attention to the fact that the East Germans so easily absolved themselves of any traits of Nazism and yet there became many of the “chosen”;   “this sleight of history must rank as one of the most extraordinary innocence manoeuvres of the century” (161)

Just as the infamous torture Room 101 becomes the site of Winston’s capitulation at the hands of O’Brien in 1984, so too, do the instruments of torture loom large in Room 118 in one of the Stasi’s most infamous prisons, Hohenschonhausen. Using the primitive technique referred to euphemistically these days as waterboarding, the barefoot prisoner is “yoked into position” and water drips onto his head. It causes such pain that the prisoner would lose consciousness and his “head would slump”. He would either revive from the water or drown (226).

Not surprisingly, this is the place of Frau Paul’s worst nightmares: the place that broke her spirit.  Funder returns with Frau Paul to the site of torture. Funder notes, “it was in offices that the Stasi truly came into their own: as innovators, story-makers, and Faustian bargain-hunters. That room was where a deal was offered and refused, and a soul buckled out of shape, forever.” (226)  In Frau Paul’s case, witnesses the prisoners being tortured, knowing that you could suffer a similar fate, almost breaks her spirit.  Funder also notes that none of the torturers had been brought to justice.

Funder attempts to experience first-hand the psychological terror that many victims endured in order to give readers a more accurate, dramatic and horrifying picture of the fear that would have gripped many prisoners as they sat in the room, disoriented and in a state of shock. Funder climbs into one of the very “tiny cells’ and Frau Paul asks her to imagine that “someone is sitting there with a machine gun”. Although Funder states that there are places she anxiously avoids, she is in awe of Frau Paul’s brave and resilient stance in revisiting the place that “broke her”

Miriam, who was kept in solitary confinement for her assumed role in an escape organisation suffers from sleep deprivation.  As Funder comments: “Sleep deprivation can mimic the symptoms of starvation, particularly in children – victims become disorientated and cold. They lose their sense of time, becoming locked in an interminable present. Sleep deprivation also causes a number of neurological dysfunctions, which become more extreme the longer it continues.” (25)

After some time, the party stopped direct action such as arrest, incarceration and torture against its people. It opted instead for subtler methods. Julia relates, “the typical thing that could happen to you in my day in the GDR – that your career was broken before it was begun- that had already happened to me! (108). Likewise, Hagen Koch’s father was sentenced to seven years as a prisoner of war for being in the armed forces. He is released and allowed to go home on the condition that he quits the Liberal Democratic Party and joins the Socialist Unity party. Heinz Koch was forced to teach his son (Hagen Koch) socialist values, or he would be deported back to the POW camp.  Typically, separating families, Hagen Koch was prevented from attending his father’s funeral as people from the west were attending.

Funder draws attention to the fact that constant intrusive nature of state control and the lack of freedom of speech resulted in almost a permanent psychological state of almost schizophrenic compartmentalisation.  As Julia states, from the time “we woke up… they were aware of what “could be said outside the home (very little) and what could be discussed in it (most things)” (95)

The informers

For some who choose to become informers, it is simply the power of “having one up on someone”; for others, it is a necessary survival tactic in a regime that pits informers against enemies. Whilst informers and party members renounce their independence, their honour and in many cases their heart and soul, Funder points to practical reasons as to why people would become informers; one joins not only the “group in the know” but becomes one of the “unmolested” who have the chance to enjoy a “peaceful life” and a “satisfying career”. Whilst there is officially “no unemployment in the GDR”, those who resist the powerful masters often have their careers “broken before they had begun”. For Julia, it is not just her career. She suspects that her life has been “broken” at every turn: “the boarding school, the headmaster’s visit, the constant street searches, the failed exam, the friend’s warning, the cruising Lada, the extraordinary unemployment.” (108)

The Stasi does not only make life difficult – practically impossible. They also target the individual’s most vulnerable trait and exploit their weaknesses, such as romantic or family failings. People are often placed in compromising situations and then encouraged to inform to redeem the situation.  Psychologically, the informers are trained in the art of convincing someone to do things “against their own self interest” (202). The Stasi operators were skilled at finding personal weaknesses, things they could “use as leverage” (198).

The enemies

Funder deliberately focuses on “ordinary people” to reinforce her point that mostly innocent people are forced into very difficult situations; they do not begin with an obvious anti-government stance.  They often become “enemies of the state” despite themselves, often because they have simply refused to inform on their neighbour or family member.   For example, the Behrends “weren’t dissidents; we weren’t in church groups or environmental groups or anything life that… We were an ordinary family.”   (95) Frau Paul was “not your classic resistance fighter”. She did not even belong to a political opposition.  (200)

Once an investigation was launched, people were labelled and treated as enemies. According to the Stasi’s “dictator logic” or mentality, “we investigate you, therefore you are an enemy” (199). The problem was that the definition of “enemy” becomes increasingly wider and soon encompasses most daily life activities.  Minor transgressions and shortcomings, or the most insignificant foibles turn citizens into enemies. For example, if one’s antenna is tuned into western television or one fails to hang the red flag on May Day or one tells an “off colour” joke about Honecker, then one becomes an enemy and a target of suspicion and surveillance. (157) The state searches for enemies in factories, in the state apparatus, in the church, in the schools. As Herr  Bock explains (197) the church was a chief bastion of “oppositional thought” and therefore a prime target for infiltration, so theology students were recruited. So successful were the recruitment methods, that up to 65 per cent of the church leaders were informers and the rest were under surveillance. Ironically, the informers swelled the ranks of the church, inflated numbers at demonstrations so that it appeared there may have been greater opposition than there actually was.

As a 16 year old school girl, Miriam and Ursula instinctively knew that there was something unjust about Stasi police “dousing people with fire hoses”, “roughing people up” and bringing in the horses during the demonstration sparked by the demolition  of the OId University Church in Leipzig in 1968. Thus began a personal rebellion that demanded a great deal of courage.  From erecting posters, Miriam seeks to stage an escape and, within a few metres from liberty. She decided to go over the wall on New Year’s Eve in 1968 rather than await the trial resulting from her “crime of sedition” (circulating leaflets).  She is caught and thus begins a series of imprisonment, interrogation sessions. Kafkaesque, she searches for answers, especially about her lost husband, Charlie, and does not find the answers. He is possibly one of the victims of Southern General Cemetary, for whom the cremator leaves the oven open “so that the Stasi could do their business” (74.) she presumes more likely he was being uncooperative and was “roughed up in the cell, leading to a fatal fall” (279).

Miriam also suffers from the constant intrusion, to an extent that Funder realises they circulated leaflets – it was a “crime of sedition” – all the classmates were questioned.  – girls placed in solitary confinement for a month. They broke them down, separating and dividing the two girls. Miriam decided to go over the Wall on New Year’s Eve 1968 – did not want to await the trial and possibly return to prison.  She made it to within four steps of the wall – but fell on some trip wire. (23) “She came so close.”

Victims: short and long term impacts

Funder depicts people in ordinary situations caught up in extraordinary times so that readers can understand the extent of their human dilemmas, problems, foibles, fears and phobias.  They are grappling with ordinary concerns revolving around a secure career and a secure lifestyle. Just a minor infraction leads to the label of enemy. As Miriam states, once you do something against the will of the Stasi, they will hate you for life and pursue you forever.

The citizens were generally under a permanent state of surveillance which becomes very stressful for those who disagree or seek to resist the tyranny of the state.  As mentioned previously,  the definition of an “enemy” is very broad and many people either knowingly or inadvertently become suspicious targets of the state. Eventually, the physical and psychological intrusion takes a severe toll on many individuals; they sanity buckles under the strain.

Physical consequences

• People suffered a great deal both physically and psychologically. Many made difficult decisions that affected their loved ones, which continue to haunt them. Miriam is obsessed with the loss and probably death of her husband, Charlie, whose remains she never finds. She will never know the truth about his death. She can only imagine the worst. 
• Frau Paul lives with a sense of regret that she was not able to provide her son, Torsten Ruhrdanz, with a decent home and loving parents. He comes home a stranger. (To her chagrin, her son is transferred from, Charite, a hospital in the East, to Westend Hospital in West Berlin, the fateful night of the erection of the Berlin Wall (12-13 August 1961). Through unfortunate circumstances, she now must seek permission (and numerous passes) to visit him.) She wonders whether it would have been different if she had made the decision to visit him on that vital day when she was asked to betray Michael Hinze.  Her pain is that she decides “against my son”. Whilst she was able to maintain a clear conscience, she is forever haunted by the fact that she gave up the chance to see him and became forever imprisoned by her choices.
• Herr Koch lives with a sense of regret and anger at the State which broke his marriage. He was imprisoned and blackmailed about the evil influence of his wife and the abandonment of his son. Funder uncovers the extent of his pain in an interview at the fact that he questioned his wife’s loyalty and rejected her. Funder states, “it clearly upsets him to be telling me” (175). When Frank was five they were divorced. However, fortuitously Frank reveals to Herr Koch that the state officers had blackmailed his wife and threatened to take her son.   (176)

Psychological problems
 

• “Shell-like” internal migration: Funder draws attention to the constant intrusive nature of state control and the lack of freedom of speech, which resulted in a psychological state of compartmentalisation. For example, the author metaphorically refers to Julia’s outer crust or shell as an example of “internal migration” (96)  This shell or façade is necessary for those who wish to keep a secret inner life safe from state intrusion. It is perhaps the only way that “enemies” can maintain some dignity, but even this will exact a price. As Julia states, from the time “we woke up… they were aware of what “could be said outside the home (very little) and what could be discussed in it (most things)” (95)   Julia describes her father, Dieter,  as one who is defeated by this constant intrusion. He is depressed and needs constant medication.  “Living for so long in a relation of unspoken hostility but outward compliance to the state had broken him”  (96)  Accordingly, Funder is aware of the need to be sensitive in her relationship with the “victims” because they often withdraw unpredictably. Julia is like a “hermit crab”, ready to “whisk back into its shell at the slightest sign of contact” (90)
• The constant violation leads to an irrevocable loss of dignity: Julia finds that there is not even a kernel of self she can keep intact. In fact the violation is so thorough, the intrusion so deep, that she soon realises that she has no “private sphere left at all” (113)   In Room 118 Major N. interrogates Julia about her love letters to her Italian boyfriend. They have all been tampered with.  Not only do they know more information about the Italian boyfriend than Julia did (110) but they also want Julia to continue her relationship with him in order to extract information. Not only do they inveigle her into acts of deception and betrayal against her boyfriend, but they threaten her to conceal the interrogation process itself. She felt incredibly separated from everyone; disappointed in the “good father state” and experiences an acute sense of danger “without me having done anything at all”. She refused to become an informer and courageously entertains plans of writing to Mr Erich Honecker. As she recalls, “it was the loss of everything until I had disappeared too.” (115)
• Many of the “enemies” or victims display symptoms of phobia and anxiety. Julia also feels suffocated.  After she is raped, she reacts “extremely” to men and the constant “invasion of my intimate sphere” (113)  This situation is ironically exacerbated after the fall of the security state because criminals were hastily released during the amnesties of 1990.
• Julia cannot open the box of letters from her boyfriend.  The past is “never really, over” she states as there are always things she can’t look at, but can’t leave either.  (117)
• Miriam continues to suffer from the constant intrusion, to such an extent that the writer realises that she will never secure a commitment from Miriam. She had been under surveillance for so long that she was forever reluctant to “tie herself down” (p. 278)
•  The people – either victims or oppressors – were brainwashed to such an extent that the fall of the wall and the fall of the dictator state, did not ease their anxiety and conditioned behaviour. Owing to the depth of the intrusion and the reach of the surveillance mechanisms, the victims forever remain under a permanent state of siege. Funder’s depiction and her first-hand relationships suggest that that the “victims” are forever damaged.

The Stasi-operators: When Funder sets up meetings with ex-Stasi operators, they are still implementing their spy tactics.  Herr Winz sets up the meeting as he would have at the height of the Stasi regime – he is still playing “spy games” seven years after the fall of the wall (81).   Likewise, many of the generals still run their meetings like divisional meetings as they did during the Stasi regime (242)

Some appear to escape unscathed:

For example, during her interview with Herr Christian, Funder not only presents a rather human side to the Stasi officer who takes her on a “tour” as if he is proud or obsessed with his former role, but he still appears caught up in the spying games. The fact that he is grinning and “leaning on the bonnet of the biggest, blackest BMW I have ever seen” suggests that he has not been affected or damaged, or hindered by his involvement. Funder highlights the fact that he is still trying to find similar work as a “private detective” and sets him up for ridicule with the confession that there were even aspects of his job that he enjoyed such as disguising himself as the “blind man”, giving Funder a “mock punch” as if she should also enjoy the joke.

Small triumphs

Despite the fact that Funder shows the overwhelming negative effect of surveillance and the psychological disruptions, she also shows people who have survived and who have made significant choices in their lives; some even have scored “internal victories” (193) They are the ones who refuse to be bought. As Funder states, even thought there was “internal emigration”  there was also “internal victory” (192.

She names Klaus, the musician, in particular because he tried to protect himself and refused to be compromised. He concludes, “I didn’t let them get to me”.  Perhaps he was naïve, but in a way, it is a form of “naivety” that was “nurtured and maintained” as a form of protection. (192)

• Michael Hinze describes Frau Paul as an incredibly brave woman because she refused to reveal his identity; she also refused to be “bought” like so many of the GDR citizens. She knows that if she betrayed him she would be “theirs forever; a stool pigeon and a tame little rat”(220) and so clings to a shred of dignity owing to her private rebellion.
• Against orders, Julia told her family about Room 118 (114). Despite the threats — that there were will be “serious repercussions for her, and possibly for her family, from this break of undertaking of silence” (116) — she does score a victory. They threatened to send a letter to Erick Honeger and so called the Major’s bluff. “We had never really known where the battle was … but we knew we’d won”.  It was one of the rare occasions when the “bluff” had been called and she had won, despite herself.  Eventually, Julia gains a job as a receptionist at a hotel. (117)
• Miriam who remains loyal to the memory of Charlie, and who is obsessed with discovering his fate.
• Klaus, perhaps thanks to his brand of naivety, was able to protect his integrity. He states that he does not carry the past around like a wound; he scored an “internal victory”, maintaining a clear conscience.

Herr Koch refuses to hand over his precious plate to the Stasi operators. The plate (172) was an award for cultural work undertaken by Herr Koch’s unit (third place) when he was working with the Ministry for State Security. It was not a personal award but he decided to claim it at a time when he was frustrated that he was so easily replaced and had sacrificed so much for the State. (It was sheer coincidence that they did not break his marriage.)  Specifically, Herr Koch refused to take the plate down during an interview, as the photographer was annoyed that it was shining in his lens.  A court order was sent in the mail reminding of Herr Koch that all possessions were the property of the Federal Republic of Germany.  He is charged with perjury because he swore an affidavit to the Ministry that he did not know where the plate was.  The plate becomes a powerful symbol of state control; for Herr Koch the plate symbolises his defiance and his small triumph affords him a “moment of glory”. The fact that the Stasi set up a “Working Group on Plate Re-Procurement” highlights the lengths the Stasi party employ to subjugate and crush individuals. Although trivial (the plate is only worth 16 eastern marks); it is a powerful symbol of state control. (180)  He is one of the untold heroes; those who could not be bought (266)

Discussion of Victims : Stasiland Year 12

Hi All,

I really enjoyed our discussion across the two classes on the ideas of Victims within the text on Friday.

On reflection, what came out of it was the following:

1) The Stasi, on a superficial level, can be seen purely as perpetrators.

2) However, on deeper analysis, they can be seen as victims of their own regime.

3) Mill’s point was perhaps they were neither victims nor perpetrators as they were responding to the insular situation of the Physical wall and their indoctrination by the Regime means they were simply behaving within the context of the situation. And even though they are utilising oppressive and despotic means, they can’t be blamed.

4) The *whacky* interpretation of the day was that perhaps the Stasi were the real victims and that Miriam, Frau Paul and Julia were the perpetrators because they refused to comply to the Regime. Their resistance was defiance to the GDR therefore they can be seen as trying to undermine and sabotage their own country. The Stasi were merely trying to protect East Germany from the abhorrent Capitalists in the West and individuals like FP, Miriam and Julia were devious dissidents.

5) Many of you saw that the victims were Funder’s three prominent voices of FP, Julia and Miriam and the perpetrators were the Stasi….however it’s always advantageous (just for you Ruby and Julz) to look beyond individual representation and see things on a societal level as well.

6) And finally, I liked Boalsy’s finding of perhaps the real perpetrators were the Allies and the USSR….. and the victim of this whole situation was indeed, Germany. Love that!!!!!

Anyway, many excellent responses…..thank you to you all contributing verbally. Pax …you added some great ideas too…can’t leave you out!

In the meantime, please listen to:


http://www.abc.net.au/local/audio/2013/04/11/3734893.htm?site=melbourne



It's a podcast exploring the text.

Prompts for Folio: Year 10

Creative: 'An outsider can never truly belong'.

Persuasive: 'Australians are not tolerant of 'others' '.

Expository: 'Society makes us hide our 'otherness' '.

Folio due on TUESDAY, Day 7.

You must have:

* One nominated piece.

* One piece peer assessed.

*It must be hard copy, NO EMAILS!

Structure, language and style : Year 12

It would be advantageous for you all to read the "Structure, language and style" section of this document to help consolidate your comprehension of Funder's construction.

http://textpublishing.com.au/static/files/assets/32157b21/STASILAND_VCEENGLISH_TEACHINGNOTES.pdf

Funder's different styles of writing: Year 12

We are currently dicussing the '3 Anna's'....

Keep the following different types of Anna's writing in mind which formulating your findings:

Her writing is:

1) personal
2) evidential
3) descriptive
4) metaphoric
5) symbolism
6) colour usage
7) mood
8) character description
9) language lexicon/vernacular (German)
10) anaphora and tetracolon
11) alliteration
12) literary allusions (popular culture)

When Funder is writing in 3rd person evidentially, she uses the following references:

* songs
* letters
* newspaper advertisements
* use of figures
* dates
* lists
* personal testimony
* expert opinion
* reference to photographs
* historical referencing


Some helpful links on setting, characterisation and narrator :)

http://merspi.com.au/8205/settings-and-characterizations-stasiland

http://merspi.com.au/7303/how-would-i-write-a-stasiland-by-anna-funder-essay

Also, think about the humour, irony, puns and sarcasm she utilises.

Stasiland Quotes

Stasiland QUOTES

•           “it was an experiment and it failed” p13

•     “suddenly the landscape here seems crowded with victims” p84

•        “the stories of ordinary people must be told. Not just the activists or the famous writers” (144)

•        Word created for "facing the past" p 4

•        “the only needed a men’s bathroom. Women couldn’t get past colonel rank and there were just three of them anyway. This was a Mannerklub” (74-75)

 

Herr Bock:

•        “Herr Bock’s living room is, overwhelmingly, beige and brown” 196

•        “this was perfect dictator logic” 199

•        “we investigate you, therefore you are an enemy” 199

•        “he had to be able to adapt to new situations quickly” 200

•        “he needed to be honest, faithful and trustworthy”

•        Funder “I grab my things and leave him there, all lights out in the GDR” 203

 

Von Schinitzler

•        “he has slipped into a practised authoritarian speech rhythm with occasional startling emphases” 131

•        ‘could turn into a rebuke to the listener whose attention waned” – 131

•        “He is incandescent with rage” 132

•        “Because it prevented imperialism from contaminating the east” 134

•        “this man who could turn inhumanity into humanity”

•        “in the face of all available evidence” p 136

•        “A sign of being accustomed to such power that the truth does not matter because you cannot be contradicted” - 136

•        Funder – “this is so mad that I can’t think of a question immediately” – 134

 

Koch:

•        Koch says he is “the only person alive who can represent, in his documents and photocopies and photographs, the Wall from the eastern side. Perhaps this is because most people on that side want to forget it. “

•        “he was redrawing the limits of the free world” – 155

•        “can you rework your past, the grit that rubs in you, until it is shiny and smooth as pearl?” – 157

•        “disloyalty was calibrated in the minutest of signs” – 157

•        “ostracised by his friends” – 159

•        “Koch is talking, dipping into his document box, talking” -159

•        “to construct or confirm a story of his father’s innocence during the war?” – 160

•        “there’s clearly a portion of the past here that cannot be pinned down with facts, or documents” – 160

•        “before things could be rewritten” – 161

•        “protecting easterners from the western disease of shallow materialism” 171

•        “I am the only person who is keeping alive the sense of the Wall from the eastern side”

•        Funder – “for him the past is the Wall, and I am part of the present, whether three years ago or now”

 

Winz

•        “this is the world unfrozen. It’s black and white and snowing on my screen, but I know that it is really the bright yellow of rape, the green haziness of wheat, and the heavier green of summer oaks lining the road” – 78

•        “He speaks in authoritative barks” – 81

•        “hotel has a low-ceilinged lobby with brown booth seats and a lot of plastic plants” – 82

•        “it is more or less secret society of former Stasi men who write papers putting their side of history” – 84

•        Funder – “he looks at me as though all his suspicions are confirmed: I come from a place so remote, so primitive that the people there have not yet been labelled and numbered” – 82

 

Herr Christian

•        “I’ve always had an acute sense of duty to obey the law” – 150

•        “this, my second life” – p 151

•        “everything must be reported” – 152

•        “I remember the joy on their faces for the instant they thought they were in freedom” – 153

 

Herr Bohnsack

•        A rally cry: “the most important thing you have is power!” Hang on to power at all costs! Without it, you are nothing!” – 238

•        “the files would have to be destroyed” – p240

•        “I destroyed everything” – 240

•        “He knew everyone would read it, find his name and address on the list and feel whatever they would feel – contempt, hatred, or self-righteousness. He knew there was only one thing for him to do. ‘I would out myself before I was outed” – p 242

•        “a code of honour that rules them” -242

•        “birthday, proceedings were run like a divisional meeting from the old days” - 242

 

Miriam

•        “I tried to write your story, but I found I needed to explain other things around it” 246

•        “alone in the big city”

•        She humiliated the Stasi. It was ‘beyond comprehension that a sixteen-year-old with no tools, no training, and no help’ could scale the wall p25

•        “if she had any future it was over there, and she needed to get to it”

•        “they just want to stop thinking about the past” – 45

•        “what a revolution can do to people’s memories”  - 46

•        “it was dark and I was lucky – later I learned that they usually patrolled the gardens as well” – 21

•        “I still have the scars on my hands from climbing the barbed wire, but you can’t see them so well now” – 22

•        “the whole area was lit as bright as day” 22

•        “I was basically no longer human” 31

•        “perhaps they beat something out of her she didn’t get back” – 31

•        “the deportation came eleven years too late… and six months too early” 45

•        “For Miriam, the past stopped when Charlie died” 44

•        Funder – “all of a sudden I am very tired… I look up and it is dark outside” 33

•        “she was brave and broken all at once”

 

Julia:

•        “Julia and her family, like many others in the GDR, trod this line between seeing this for what they were in the GDR, and ignoring those realities in order to stay sane” (p96)

•        “I was living with too many things from my past that could come find me there” 246

•        “the world ‘leader’ (Furhrer) was forbidden after Hitler” – 104

•        “there are some things- she stops. I don’t think I’ll be able to remember this. I haven’t remembered this’. P106

•        “I look at the box in her arms and know that you cannot destroy your past, nor what it does to you. It’s not ever, really, over” – 117

 

Frau Paul

•        ‘Frau Paul does not picture herself as a hero, or a dissident’ p229

•        “they didn’t see or hear anything of what was going on to divide the city they woke to a changed world” – 206

•        “it was important to me to get news from outside” 208

•        “things remained close, and hard” – 210

•        “memory, like so much else, is unreliable. Not only for what it hides and what it alters, but also for what it reveals.” 216

•        “Frau Paul remembers her interrogation clearly” 219

•        “The picture we make of ourselves, with all its congruencies and fantastical edges, sustains us.” 229

Symbolisation in Stasiland.

 

Props are used to order, collect or preserve the individual’s memories.

Klaus: keeps copies of his Stasi file on his bookshelf.

Frau Paul: keeps her ‘short biographical note’.

Julia: shoebox of love letter is an ‘aide memoire’.

Miriam: her box of letters, photographs and poems.

Herr Winz: research for the Insiderkomitee (his theses).

Koch: expansive Wall archive/the plate.

Herr Christian: his itinerary of sites.