Distinctive Personalities

1. Distinctive Personalities

2. ASSESSMENT • MY ADVICE • 60/40 60% time in your speech should be spent on the Related Text. You will need to cover TWO voices. 40% of your time should be spent on your Related Material. Cover ONE voice in the text (make sure it is distinctive!!!) • PRESCRIBED TEXT 30/30- Equal time on Harry and Claudia’s voice. Discuss the city of Sydney within your analysis of ONE voice- either Claudia OR Harry. Remember TECHNIQUES!!!!

3. Claudia Valentine • Voice: Honest, cynical, bitter world view, fiercely believes in right and wrong- strict moral code, hard. At times she is ruthless when she needs to be, she is a complex character. At times her voice shifts and becomes softer, less cynical- around Steve Angel. • Experiences that have shaped her voice/ personality: Broken down marriage, traumatic childhood, her father was a hard-nailed reporter- he fiercely believed in right and wrong, father left. Private Investigator. ’I quietly closed the door on my unblinking father.” p. 89. • Claudia’s reaction to people/ experiences: She is intelligent and uses her intellect to solve puzzles about people and experiences first. At times her response is to be ruthless, as with Sally Villos in the Sauna.

4. Claudia • Honest; authentic; Cynical- her cynicism is necessary given her job as PI – questions the reality with which she is presented • Her cynicism is also a product of her experiences – alcoholic homeless father left her at 5 yrs old; now insane lives on the street; for Claudia life is not a fairytale – her father is not coming home. The shattered childhood creates the cynical outlook in the adult – she sees through the facades of people and Sydney as one whose happy childhood was destroyed; she’s a realist not a dreamer. • authoritative (not authoritarian) - She is the expert from whose perspective the reader comes to know Sydney and the events of the novel. • The reader’s understanding of events is coloured by Claudia’s voice; her cynical view is our view; her ability to see through people like Sally Villos and her “mask of make-up” and Sydney with its “façade of lights covering a multitude of sins” shapes the way the reader interprets the text

5. Claudia • “The Imperial was by no means imperial” pun used to establish the voice as one with expert knowledge, playing on the irony of the dingy pub with a regal sounding name; further highlights the duality of Sydney – beautiful in name only but not nature • “hangovers from the days when most pubs looked and smelled like public lavatories in all their tiled glory”  again the voice of one who knows; simile used to provide insight into the appearance of the pubs; irony of “tiled glory” – the tiles are anything but glorious • “The deroes…perhaps they had the answer: never get sober.” cynical tone • “Memories are short in this city and facades change all the time” cynical tone

6. Claudia • “Sydney is pretty much like that anyway. Not what you know but who you know. Without contacts in this city you’re dead. And sometimes dead even with them.”  authoritative tone used to convey Claudia as an authority on the way things operate in Sydney • Dedicated hedonists, all so cool, unaware that sooner or later the debt collector would be around, knocking hard on their bodies.”  “debt collector” a euphemism for death – paying your debts for a life lived to excess.

7. Claudia’s Personality • Cynical- “you’ve dived in before and found the waters murky and cold” p.29. Her personality has been influenced by her past, her scepticism of Steve Angel’s honesty is due to her past experiences of men- broken down marriage. Technique- metaphor of the pool/ eyes of Steve Angel. The pun often used when referring to Steve as the ‘angel’ and ‘Lucifer’ when she thinks he has betrayed her. “I had made the hard choices, left my children, honed myself down. The Amazon. No breast, no heart.” p. 160. Cynical Tone- This quote demonstrates Claudia’s view of herself after her fight with Sally Villos in the Sauna. Her voice is honest her and self-critical- acknowledging the tough decisions she has had to make.

8. Claudia’s Voice • Shift in tone- around Steve Angel, when she remembers Guy Valentine and speaks to her children. “And meeting an angel had certainly brightened up my day.” p.25  Pun and metaphor of the angel. “To hear their voices, to know my flesh and blood was safe. My babies.” p.98  Softer tone in Claudia’s voice.

9. Claudia’s voice comments on the personality of Sydney • At first Claudia describes Sydney as a poxy ridden lady. “She blew hot and cold like a moody child.” “She’d been a very sickly child, proxy and plague-ridden.” p. 47. “in this beautiful corrupt city” p. 160. • As the novel progresses Claudia realises that the city is a reflection of Harry Lavender. personification of the city reflects Claudia’s view of Sydney. “the breath of the city, Harry Lavender’s city.”

10. Harry Lavender • Voice: Ruthless, immoral, dishonest, confident, arrogant, megalomaniac, authoritative, manipulative, cunning. in contrast to Claudia there is no soft side to Harry Lavender. • Experiences that shaped his personality: Immigrant experience, he had to survive on his wits as a child, bullied as a child, traumatic childhood. He was and always has been an outsider. ”Using my mother’s cloak of invisibility to barter with men in black alleys, lost children like myself.” p. 42 • Harry’s reaction to experiences and individuals: Harry responds with violence, he is completely immoral. He does not regret his actions at all.

11. Harry’s Personality • Confident/ Megalomaniac: “They will want to know the beginnings, the child that makes the man.” p.41 “I would also trade gold for a mountain with my name on it.” p. 42

12. Harry’s Personality • Immoral/ ruthless- Harry’s reaction to people and experiences is violence, that is part of his ruthless nature and personality. “I seek out the quiet solitary moments of each of those boys and one by one show them my knife.” p. 41 – as a child his reaction. “a plan that seeks out the solitary, vulnerable moments. Off-duty moments.” p.65- as an adult his reaction.

13. Harry’s voice comments on the personality of Sydney • Views Sydney as an extension of himself. He sees his reflection in the city of Sydney. He also believes Sydney is duplicitous in nature. “There is more hidden from view…the labyrinthine underbelly, the city of the night.” p. 84 • He personifies Sydney as well, it takes on the personality of a monster with tentacles. “Its growth and mine are inexorably linked” p. 83. “Its tentacles reaching west into a great forbidding land” p. 83. • He owns the city. “I stand on top of my city” p. 132. personification of Sydney. Motif of cancer. “my cancerous city” p. 134 extended metaphor of the motherboard. p. 132-134.

14. Contrasts between the voices/ personalities • Claudia and Harry • Claudia can be ruthless when she needs to be (Sally in the Sauna), in contrast, Harry is always ruthless. • There is a softer side to Claudia’s hard-bitten personality, whereas there is no soft side to Harry Lavender. • Claudia has a strict moral code, which she inherits from her father. Harry is immoral.