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COMMENTS |
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INTRODUCTION
The speeches of Paul Keating and Margaret Atwood explore humanity’s idealistic strivings, and are thus poignant to audiences both within and outside of their respective contexts.¹ Paul Keating’s Redfern Park Speech was an axiomatic event in the process of Aboriginal reconciliation in Australia, an ongoing process of undiminished prevalence over time. Using a variety of techniques appropriate to his predominantly Aboriginal audience, Keating appeals to the democratic ideals of Australians necessary for the undertaking of mitigating actions in the face of the continuous consequences of dispossession.² Margaret Atwood’s speech Spotty-Handed Villainesses similarly employs a range of techniques to address the historic and current goals and beliefs represented in her subtitle Problems of Female Bad Behaviour in the Creation of Literature. She also she confronts the objectives of the women’s movement and their impact on constructions of flawed female characters, relevant to her historical context 20 years after the advent of this social zeitgeist.⁴ Consequently, both speeches offer a continued relevance to issues of racial, and gendered facets of humanity’s values and subsequent objectives.⁵
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1. This opening sentence immediately engages with the prompt and sets a foundation for this essay’s focus on these two texts.
2. This is an effective introduction of this first set text, and offers a concise summary of the composer’s main intentions and ideologies.
3. Now, we transition to discussing the second text – any time you are writing a comparative essay, the most important thing your introduction can do is give your marker a clear sense that you understand the messages of both texts in relation to the prompt.
4. This is a great word to use when discussing the socio-cultural context and the general atmosphere surrounding the text.
5. Lastly, be sure to end your introduction with an explicit link to the prompt, and a thesis statement.
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PARAGRAPH 1
Paul Keating employs techniques both structural and nuanced to appeal to Australian democratic values in order to highlight the necessity of Aboriginal reconciliation to both the audience present as well as the wider Australian audience contemporary and future. For instance, Keating establishes in the introduction⁶ the proposition that “this is a fundamental test of our social goals and our national will: our ability to say to ourselves and the rest of the world that Australia is a first rate social democracy.” Using inclusive language and asyndeton, Keating thus makes a controversial point in the context of an Australia divided over Aboriginal Rights⁷ that it is the responsibility of all to prove their adherence to intrinsic national values, an element significant in the diffusion of cynicism presiding in the largely Aboriginal crowd he addressed.⁸ In light of the shocking Royal Commission into Black Deaths in Custody as well as the success of the Mabo decision,⁹ this appeal is reinforced later in the speech, as Keating emphasises the attainable possibility of justice. Employing anaphora to accent his assessment, he states “I say that for two reasons: I say it because I believe that the great things about Australian social democracy reflect a fundamental belief in justice.” By repeating the appeal to the notion of democracy as both intrinsic to Australian values, and thus an indispensable tool for attaining the goal of reconciliation,¹¹ Keating is able to reassure and motivate his Redfern audience that this is a viable aspiration. Further, modern audiences may be equally as affected by this message in the contemporary development of Keating’s objectives, its significance encapsulated by the Co-chairs of Reconciliation Australia who stated that this speech was “one of the most significant speeches ever delivered by an Australian political leader.”¹¹
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6. Always try to integrate structural analysis with language analysis for stronger arguments.
7. Here, I’m explicitly linking the ideas in the speech to their cultural context. Remember that the background information you gather in your research isn’t just something you should fleetingly reference in your introduction and then forget – it can actually enhance your analysis to incorporate these ideas throughout your body paragraphs!
8. With speeches, it’s always important to draw into your analysis, the dynamic between the audience and the speaker’s content.
9. Again, historical context, where relevant, will make your argument much more sophisticated.
10. This sentence structure (by doing X, the author accomplishes Y) is a highly effective way to connect textual evidence with authorial intent.
11. It’s also useful to get quotes which can qualify your assessment of the speech’s reception.
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PARAGRAPH 2
Keating subsequently¹² develops in his speech, the necessary precedents for action that these democratic values establish, giving hope to the disillusioned Aboriginal people in the audience, as well as modern individuals pursuing equality. Keating makes explicit reference to the tragic findings of The Report of the Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody, fresh in the mind of Australians at the time, however states that “down the years, there has been no shortage of guilt, but it has not produced the responses we need. Guilt is not a constructive emotion.” Employing simplicity both in diction and syntax to explain this notion to the general public, Keating is able to provide an explanation of the need for striving towards a future fuelled by positive emotion using high modality. This remains a relevant message today in the fight for indigenous justice, as well as in the context of the release of the report.¹³ Drawing on the motif of imagination to promote empathy for the plight of Indigenous Australians, Keating closes his rhetoric saying that “we cannot imagine that we will fail. And with the spirit that is here today I am confident that we won’t.” Keating thus acknowledges the atmosphere described by Patrick Dodson, that “in admiration and thanks, [the audience]¹⁴ now began to ponder the import of what the prime minister was placing before the nation.” Keating draws upon this hope for the future, as he encourages the importance of direct action in the face of a legacy of dispossession, a message of aspirations and beliefs which resonated with the audience he addressed, as well as modern audiences today.
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12. Little linking words like this go a long way in helping to bridge the gap between body paragraphs and create a sense of flow and fluency within your essay.
13. Always draw your analysis back to the question; it’s better to overstate the same point than understate it!
14. Remember that you can modify quotes using square brackets if the tense does not fit that of your essay, or if there are confusing pronouns that you need to replace with your own words. Alternatively, you can also sometimes paraphrase parts of the quote, and then only directly cite the most important language – whatever is easiest for you to remember and analyse!
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PARAGRAPH 3
Feminist writer Margaret Atwood also presents a timelessly resonant speech, pertaining in the first section to the issue of female constructions in the context of creating authentic representations of human values in literature. She introduces the breakfast motif using a personal anecdote, effective in establishing a familiar rapport with her audience, describing her child’s “play” in which “the audience grew restless” because nothing was happing, to which they drew the conclusion “‘Then it isn’t a play.’ We said. ‘Something else has to happen.’” She conclusively denotes the requirement of literature to possess a “disruptive to static order,”¹⁶ of which a bad woman is, in her opinion, acceptable to fulfil the role, contrary to idealistic notions of the feminist movement prevalent at her time. She continues to denote the function of a novel to portray the human condition, using a complex metaphor which her highly literary audience would have appreciated,¹⁷ that “its roots are in the mud; its flowers, if any, come out of the rawness of its raw materials.” These “raw materials” are revealed to in fact be the human condition and the beliefs associated with it,¹⁸ which she evidently sees as the subject of value in a novel, and which require a diverse and thus realistic representation of women in their reputable and condemnable capacities. By thus addressing the latter half of her subtitle, Atwood effectively engages her audience comprising largely of intellectual females, as well as modern audiences still concerned with the necessarily diverse literary construction of gender in the context of social beliefs.¹⁹
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15. Now that we’re transitioning to the second set text for this essay, it’s important to do a quick bit of comparison to connect this discussion. Even if you’re not drawing thematic links between the texts, it’s still useful to try and create flow in your essay by comparing them even in minor ways.
16. You can include quotes from the text without analysis where relevant and with brevity. Just make sure that the bulk of the quote you use are ones you stop and analyse, as this will guarantee you more marks than an essay that only uses blended quotes like these.
17. In moderation, you can also be more specific about the target audiences of speeches. As long as it’s plausible, the marker will accept analysis like this because it shows you’re thinking about the connection between content and audience.
18. Here, I’ve picked out one specific phrase from the quote in order to unpack it in more detail.
19. This is a very effective concluding sentence that gives us a strong summary of authorial intent, and reiterates the points made by this paragraph.
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PARAGRAPH 4
The notion of human values and ideals are explored by Atwood with her rhetoric surrounding disreputable female characters as “explorations of moral freedom” and are thus valuable to literature for audiences across history. Consistent with her ubiquitous intertextual referencing, she uses humour to describe how Lady Macbeth’s “wicked murder” would have “w[o]n approval for her in corporate business circles.”²⁰ By thus appealing to the intellectuality of her audience, she exemplifies the relevance of diverse representations of female maliciousness, in this case adhering to corporate aspirations and subsequent moral beliefs, equally as engaging to modern audiences.²¹ Closing her speech, she asks the rhetorical question “why shouldn’t their many-dimensionality be given literary expression?” Following this more formal diction is the more colloquial afterthought that “when it is, female readers do not automatically recoil in horror.” By mixing these styles of speaking²² as she had done throughout the speech, Atwood engages her audience on both an intellectual and personal level, to draw attention to the variety of beliefs and aspirations present within females, which acceptably demand “literary expression.” This summarises the concept which she reiterates throughout her speech using effective rhetoric methods, concerning the merits of representing the less idealistic sides of women in order to authentically explore human values, a concept unequivocally relevant to audiences today.²³
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20. Here, I’ve isolated only the most important excerpts from this longer quote, making my analysis more efficient and precise.
21. Notice how I am consistently linking this discussion back to the prompt throughout each body paragraph.
22. This is a slightly more complex chain of analysis that requires more quotes and explanation, but is ideal at this stage of the essay after we’ve already spent a few paragraphs exploring key ideas and quotes.
23. Make sure your concluding sentences in paragraphs link the question explicitly with your analysis as this is the last impression the marker will have of that analysis for that theme.
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CONCLUSION
Through a close analysis of these speeches, one may glean an insight into the human goals, ideals, and values which are explored by Keating and Atwood from their respective contexts, and yet still resonate today through their rhetoric methods. Keating addresses an audience constituency of largely Aboriginal people initially sceptical of his words, and accordingly, he effectively appeals to social democratic values as agents for action in the path to reconciliation which he exemplifies as a shared aspiration. Margaret Atwood similarly alters her rhetoric methods to her audience of female intellectuals, discussing the intrinsic necessity of a diversity of characters including “bad women” to good literature, and thus their merit as moral comparison points for reflection on one’s own beliefs and ideals.²⁴ Both of the concepts represented thus by Keating and Atwood are continuously engaging to audiences across time due to the poignancy of their subjects and construction pertaining to human aspirations and beliefs.²⁵
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24. This serves as our ultimate interpretation of each text, and is an effective summative point to end on.
25. If you’re rushed for time in an exam or assessment task, your conclusion doesn’t have to be anything long or fancy – just try to end on a high note by restating your position in relation to the question, and reinforce your arguments.
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