Empathy is about finding echoes of yourself in the eyes of others. The Shape of Water (2017) by Guillermo Del Toro is a magical realism film that follows mute heroine Eliza as she falls in love with a Fishman while facing the villainous...

The Pearl, by John Steinbeck and The Secret River, by Kate Grenville both explore issues surrounding racism and classism. However, whilst The Pearl places a heavy emphasis on classism due to racism, The Secret River discusses racism and the...

Early European settlers did not understand that, as the original inhabitants of Australia, the Aboriginal people were entitled to the land, yet they did not claim ownership of it for their possession. However, the Aboriginal people belonged to...

The 16th – 20th centuries represented an era marked by European colonialism. This included the forcible occupation of foreign lands and the control of these lands through various mechanisms of power. In Australia, this expansion involved the...

The process of overcoming different challenges faced in a journey has the potential to transform an individual’s identity and morality. Peter Skrzynecki’s ‘Crossing the Red Sea’ (1975) recounts the journey taken by the refuges from the horrors of...

The concept of how a person’s view of themselves can be comprised up of many influences and experiences is effectively explored throughout Kate Grenville’s The Secret River. The broad range of experiences and influences that impact upon William...

“The problem of half-castes is simply not going to go away”

“The bodies lying like so much fallen timber”

Both the novel ‘The Secret River’ written by Kate Grenville and the film ‘Rabbit-Proof Fence’ directed by Phillip Noyce showcase themes of...

New South Wales is more a battlefield than it is a colony. Smasher is the vicious commander steering colonization forward where else Blackwood is an innocent bystander protesting the war. New South Wales is the beginning of colonization; firstly,...