“A good war story is not simply about blood and death. It examines war as a transformation in the lives of those affected.” Comment on this statement, making close reference to David Malouf’s Fly Away Peter.
War is a subject that fascinates us all in many ways; our reasoning is usually out of pure curiosity as most of us have never been, although we know that war is hell on earth. Know one wants to read or watch a war story filled with blood and death, what a miserable way to spend your time, but it is just a fact about war that can not be ignored. Human transformation is what really appeals to us; it fuels our knowledge about things we do not understand fully, just like Jim Saddler does in “Fly Away Peter”, he chooses to go to war because he has a similar curious drive that motivates him.
You do not need to go to war to know that it changes the way you view your life, we all know that now from
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It is because war is a subject that touches us all in some way or another, it has shaped how we live our lives today and helps you learn about human psychology. We learn what triggers certain emotions, relationships and connections; you do not need to be a psychologist to understand that going through traumatic experiences bonds people together. David Malouf experiments with this idea very well in Fly Away Peter, he uses strong imagery with a very poetic and mildly relatable style in Australia during the period of 1914-1918 in World War 1.
Jim Saddler would eventually become one of the many men that went over to Gallipoli and forged the ANZAC legend. David Malouf already draws his audience in with this piece of knowledge directed at mainly Australians, which engages the audience to learn about the history that shapes our lives today. Malouf gives us a true insight into what it was like for the people of Australia during this time period, he does it by using fictional characters and backgrounds into a fictional