The Violet Jacket Quotes

My essay explores the significance of personal and societal boundaries, which emerged during my quarantine experience. Helen Garner’s “The Violet Jacket” influenced the use of antithesis, contrasting society’s paradoxical need for barriers against its need to break them. Symbolism, inspired by Stan Grant’s “Talking to My Country”, has also been utilised — figuratively representing the variability of boundaries and their ever-changing existence. These ideas prompt the reader to understand the diversity of human experience.

Paragraphs one and two of my text discuss the importance of upholding boundaries: “Although we resist boundaries, we need them.” However, paragraph three is antithetical and deviates from this argument: “Still, I believe

Corona’s intrusion stressed the importance of restrictions but simultaneously “broke pre-existing societal boundaries”; it is metaphorical for humanity’s perilous “innate defiant tendency”. Without barriers, dysfunction ensues. Yet, ironically, our defiance is what revealed the injustice of excluding same-sex couples from marriage. Australians subsequently abolished this inequality and antithetically demonstrated how breaking boundaries can be positive. I was inspired by “The Violet Jacket”, as Garner similarly employs structural contrast — except via a diptych that exposes the disparity of life. The characters originally enjoy lighthearted conversation, but this cheer does not endure. A “hinge” in the plot appears when a female customer mentions a rapist who “put bits of (his wife) down the drain. Some of her he put into a blender.” As

“Fenced boundaries are flexible, allowing quick disassembly… robust walled boundaries require chronic hacking to crumble” metaphorically links the abstract concepts of societal ethics and human rationale to physical structures. The reader learns that upon a boundary’s erection, it enters a liminal space determining its durability. Fenced boundaries expire and fall without much force, moving dynamically with the population’s oscillating thoughts. Conversely, walled boundaries are reinforced beliefs with substantial inertia; they require continuous demolition from many people over time to collapse, like a tangible concrete wall. “Talking to My Country” influenced me since Grant also uses symbolism — but instead depicts the oppression of Aboriginal people. Fear symbolically links this to a material object: “a fear of what could touch us… the police”. Grant explains how Indigenous people fear the police, a physical extension of the law. Although the reader may have faith in society’s justice system, Grant reminds them that it has mistreated Aboriginal people throughout Australia’s past and still causes them angst today. I chose to imitate symbolism in Grant’s style as it infused his personality yet objectified a broad issue; he needed to experience fear as a Wiradjuri man to describe it with authenticity.