Transcript The Shark Net and Whose Reality?

The Shark Net and Whose
Reality?
Connections between text and context
Memoir
The Shark Net is a memoir. Reality and its
representation play a major role in the writing
of memoirs or autobiography. Memoirs have
three layers of reality: the present, the past, and
the remembering of these.
As a memoir, The Shark Net is a sub-genre of
autobiography, generally less inward looking,
focusing on re-creating setting and a feeling of
the time and place being remembered.
Taken from an article on The Shark Net by Janet Strachan published in Insight Guide
MemoirNarrator versus subject
The difficulty of discretely identifying these layers of
reality lies in separating the reality of the subject – the
one being written about – from the reality of the self –
the one who does the writing. In other words, there is a
gap between the reality of Robert Drewe the adult
writer (in the present) and the reality of Robert, the
little boy and young man (in the past) who appears as a
character in the text.
Taken from an article on The Shark Net by Janet Strachan published in Insight Guide
The reliability of the narrator
How accurate is Drewe’s picture of
his childhood and adolescence?
By their nature, all memoirs present
a subjective reality. Memoirs are
often more fiction than fact because
memory is selective and details of a
remembered event are often lost.
Taken from an article on The Shark Net by Janet Strachan published in Insight Guide
The reliability of the narrator
There have to be some fictional aspects to
Drewe’s re-creation of events in which he is
a young boy, even if this is only in the
selection process – that is, in what Drewe
chooses to recall in print.
What does Drewe select? What memories
has he focused on to construct his memoir?
Taken from an article on The Shark Net by Janet Strachan published in Insight Guide
Constructing reality- the writer’s
craft
The memoir is full of details that transport us
into the sights, sounds, feelings and smells of
the author’s childhood world. This is the adult
self, the experienced journalist and wordsmith
creating the illusion that these details are
factual descriptions of the past.
Taken from an article on The Shark Net by Janet Strachan published in Insight Guide
Memoir- Re-shaping reality
“This is both a book of memory and my portrait of a
place and time. Memory may falter and portraiture is a
highly subjective endeavour, but I have tried to tell a
truthful story.” pg 361
The Shark Net’s epigraphs enhance this idea that reality
can be reshaped, in particular, the quotation from
Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros: ‘You can only predict
things after they have happened.’
Drewe indicates that he has selected the memories of
his childhood and adolescence in the light of what
happened to him in later life. His experiences as an
adult have reshaped his perception of the past.
Taken from an article on The Shark Net by Janet Strachan published in Insight Guide
Memoir- Re-shaping reality
Although the setting – Perth in the 1950s and 1960s –
has an objective, historical reality, Drewe’s memory of a
sunny, seaside childhood is shadowed by a
retrospective guilt about his mother’s death. This guilt
provides the text with a different kind of reality that is
both personal and psychological.
In what ways does Drewe’s guilt present itself? Where
in the text can you tell that he feels this way?
Truth versus fiction
It is assumed that nonfiction is more
‘real’ than fiction, but it is sometimes
more difficult to determine ‘whose
reality’ is presented in a story such as The
Shark Net than it might be in a purely
fictional work.
Ways of reading / Ways of writing
The ‘multiple realities’ at work in ‘The Shark Net’
While The Shark Net has one author – Robert
Drewe – it depicts multiple realities.
It is the work of a reporter, attempting to re-create
a specific place and time.
It is, however, reported on in retrospect, so this
reality is distorted by the selectiveness of memory
and the inevitable way in which we see things
differently in the future from how they happened
in the past.
What are the multiple realities presented in this
text?
Ways of reading / Ways of writing
The ‘multiple realities’ at work in ‘The Shark
Net’
The Shark Net is also a personal memoir,
distorted by Drewe’s feelings of guilt.
It is a ‘true crime’ story, distorted by
sensationalism and the conventions of thriller
writing.
And it is a satire, shaped by exaggeration for
the sake of humour.
How would guilt distort Drewe’s reality?
Ways of reading / Ways of writing
The ‘multiple realities’ at work in ‘The Shark Net’
The Shark Net is also a literary memoir,
employing symbol and metaphor to describe
reality
The ‘shark net’ that fails to protect Perth and
Drewe from danger and death is its primary
literary construct.