The construction of a fresh enables it to incarnate. integrate and pass on its content by uncovering its function in the creative activity and perceptual experience of it. A complex construction such as that of Robert Drewe’s work The Drowner. published in 1996. refers to the interrelatedness or agreement of parts in a complex entity1. Drewe’s novel is a multi-faceted heroic poem love narrative showing a fable of European aspirations in an foreign landscape. and a excellently sustained metaphor of H2O as the life and decease force2. The chief concerns of the fresh include concerns about love. life. decease and human infirmity. These concerns are explored through the complex construction of the novel. That is. through its symbolic rubric. prologues. and division into subdivisions. The complexness of the novel is here. in its inter-twining of the different facets of construction and they manner in which they all ‘communicate’ to foster the implicit in concerns. These concerns are in bend explored by the attainment of an in-depth analysis and apprehension of them. The rubric The Drowner explores the chief concerns of the novel through the different representations of ‘drowning’ . As a consequence the rubric itself is a complex construction of the novel.
Harmonizing to Robert Drewe ‘as an business. drowning was someplace between a trade and an art’3. However submerging is more than merely an business. it is to Will a manner of life and tradition. However Will is non a drowner but an applied scientist. and here it becomes symbolic of Will’s life. Although through his reason he left behind drowning. he speculates that technology is “in its hydraulic possible possibly merely an extension of drowning”4That is. although through Angelica he enters a new universe and life. drowning is symbolic of his yesteryear and continues to act upon his nowadays. Here the yesteryear is presented as an built-in portion of life and an facet of human infirmity in the manner that we succumb to it.
In the same manner it is through his treatment of submerging that he courts Angelica. besides going representative of their sexual resonance. For Will says “The male sun sinks into the female sea” ; he appears to enforce his subjectiveness onto her. to cut down her to a ductile object and whilst she is content to let him to ‘sink’ to her deepnesss. certain sex scenes between them see his efforts to love her meet a cold deadness. In many cases he besides has no strong sense of her ‘self’5. and therefore Will is rather literally presented as ‘Drowning’ in their relationship. Thus the concern of love and the frequently unequal power battle between the two participants are raised.
The rubric here signifies the destructive nature of love. The rubric is besides associated with decease. presented through the deceases by submerging such as Hammond Lloyd. Kate and the allusion to Ophelia. which were chiefly as a consequence of love. demoing the inter-twining of the destructive nature of love and drowning ( decease ) . Again the rubric is multi-faceted researching the life giving and taking qualities of H2O as the forerunner of decease every bit good as the idealising and fright of it. Kate’s eulogy clearly explains this as drowning is idealised for it “transported our darling peablossom. our gossamer favorite to heaven” and feared as it “pull’d the hapless wretch from her tuneful lay/ To muddy death” . Throughout the novel there is an absence of the word self-destruction. and decease. alternatively it is submerging. meaning human infirmity and decease as a cosmopolitan fright. Much like the rubric. the prologues explore similar concerns although it is by showing two contrasting scenes.
Despite this the rubric continues within the prologue and the novel through the motive of H2O. It must besides be noted that the two prologues signify the key secret plan events throughout the novel. Both prologues are titillating. passionate and animal. Yet one is a dream whilst in febrility and the other is lust. They are besides slightly semblances and refering Angelica. As a consequence they provide insight into her complex character. of her ‘actressy’ qualities and of her playing her part6. Ultimately the prologues are to a great extent based around the geographic expedition of love. The first prologue is extremely animal and unstable though it is short lived by the danger symbols of “hot flowers and foreign hot clime birds” . here the ‘watery fluidity’ of the prologue is contrasted with the sudden heat and ‘foreignness’ . This strangeness is encountered subsequently in Africa where Angelica becomes ‘depressed’ and their familiarity is lost.
In the prologue their relationship is strictly physical ; it is the demand for more than sex in Africa that crumbles their relationship. Again the unsafe and destructive nature of love is represented. in relation to Angelica and Wills opposing lives showing the position that their relationship is lust non love. In the 2nd prologue excessively Angelica is the cardinal focal point. nevertheless she is physically absent and merely through Will’s febrility and dreams is she present. There is a clear contrast here in the absence of Angelica and the loss of a fluid tone. Alternatively it is burdensome. unsettling and agitated. It is merely one time Angelica is gone that Will becomes ill. and it is so that he thinks of her. Here human infirmity and human infirmity as a merchandise of love are explored. Human infirmity is explored in our demand to love and be loved every bit good as the fright of lone.
This prologue is after Angelica’s going subsequently in the novel. Will’s hankering for her. even after she has hurt him farther emphasises this every bit good as the febrility itself demoing the mental and physical breakability of worlds. The division of the novel into subdivisions and the struggles within them could be read as separate sets of short narratives ; they are nevertheless linked in the concerns explored through them. The Drowner has 9 subdivisions. each a chronological patterned advance of clip. experience and love affair every bit good as puting. The subdivision ‘woman snoging cockatoo’ raises new characters and with them new concerns. It is here that the lavishing of H2O is replaced with the abrasiveness of the sweet ; it was “largely a landscape without noise” . It seems to change by reversal the ‘essentially musical structure’ of the old subdivisions held together by the ‘leimotiv of water’7 ; the absence of it making a realistic mentality. The struggle met here is instead daze at Axel Boehm. a adult male. and his watchfulness to a women’s difference and demands in the outback ; “that was merely a adult female passed by” .
When in a ulterior subdivision he turns out to be female. his secret is the convergence of all the parallel lines coursing through The Drowner. That is. his hermaphrodism is an geographic expedition of alteration ; Axel is transformation incarnate8. The really art of Axel through his picture taking is capturing the minute and altering it inexorably into something else. It is what endurance in the outback depends on ; “With blind. visible radiation and chemicals Boehm can turn a dust-covered dryblower into a excavation magnate” . Here alteration is presented as doing struggle. and the battles to accommodate to it underscore human infirmity. In the same manner Axel ‘changes’ through his art. and here it is the conquest of alteration that consequences in a declaration. Between Will and Angelica excessively. merely one time they have changed themselves does their relationship win. For Angelica this is in Hammond’s decease and maternity and for Will. the manner in which he adapts to life without Angelica in Western Australia.
The unsettling nature of alteration is besides presented in ‘Blackwater’ . in Africa. in the ambiguity and ingenuous placing of the subdivision. every bit good as the absurdness of “shark smells” and “bottlers” . This in bend destabilises their relationship. The geographic expedition of alteration is furthered in the last subdivision of the novel ‘The Reservoir’ . in which Locke’s “big verse form of unanswered love and the decease of an old imbibing companion” recounts the impossibleness of love and life without alteration. At this point many characters have undergone important alterations through struggles they have encountered. for Locke he is an mortician. He does non bury the dead but signifies decease. For him nevertheless nil alterations. he is every bit only as of all time. and the fresh concludes with him desiring to take back his verse form.
Although this may propose alteration. he does non accomplish any triumphs or additions. he merely continues to be. Here a black mentality is presented with the absence of alteration. although Drewe gives a lame ounce of hope in the Afghans steely credence of decease. Basically in his entireness Locke acts as an geographic expedition into the demand for love. credence and belonging. Unlike Locke. Will achieves a certain self-awareness as he gazes into the H2O “he idea of alteration of the manner events in the desert had bit by bit become a going. A alteration in the degrees had occurred. from potency to a higher degree of reality” . The alterations he thinks of are representative of him and of Angelica. as in the decision of the fresh the two find love in equality. Proposing that merely after Angelica’s forsaking of her ‘actressy’ qualities. and Will’s assurance addition does their relationship flower. This so becomes an geographic expedition of love every bit good as alteration. It is apparent that The Drowner is a ‘big’ novel. and within this. it is highly complex in its construction.
About every word. sentence. rubric. and sub rubric in The Drowner contributes to an apprehension of the concerns it explores. This is through the multiple significances they evoke and what they stand for. The Drowner in its complex construction stands the hazard of falling quarry to going over complicated. nevertheless Drewe manages to equilibrate the complexness of the construction of the novel with the complexness of the concerns raised and explored. In this manner. without the complexness of the construction. such a huge scope of concerns and underlying concerns within them could non be explored. Further the usage of a complex construction throughout represents the challenging and complex thoughts of life presented in The Drowner. and that readers invariably come across throughout theirs.
