#Comparative essay example free#

#Comparative essay example free#

As a result, the texts exhibit that there are times when we cannot truly be free from the past, memory is inescapable. Additionally, Wright adopts the long monologue of the Ghost who by illustrating the futility of war, also highlights that memory lasts forever as the Ghost “wasn’t heading home” but rather “specks of dribbled back through the wood into the river,” alluding to the legacy of war asserting that although WWI has ended, the memory of trauma and suffering continues for eternity.

Wright’s intends the reference to the world of the grown-ups, as a metaphor to represent reality and thus emphasise the harsh pain Bertie suffers as he had to witness “hundreds of bodies” which he cannot escape but rather forever retains in his memory. Similarly, Wright examines that the recollection of the past can be inescapable, he explores through Bertie’s trauma who he depicts as completely shell-shocked as despair has completely taken over him, he has lost all sense of peace and tranquillity as he, and as a consequence he is “not coming back from the world of the grown ups”. Cook is unable to escape from the memory of her rape, it was so traumatic she “wanted to die”, thus D’Aguiar reinforces to his audience that memory of trauma remains in us forever, we cannot escape from our past. Here D’Aguiar adopts the metaphor of a statue to emphasise that not only did Cook freeze as she was stricken by fear from the abuse, but also to suggest that she had no means of escape, and thus for Cook, “this whole mess cannot be ended”. D’Aguiar utilises the tragic rape of Cook to demonstrate that memory of traumatic events can never be forgotten “I told her if she made a noise she would soon be dead… I resorted to choking her until she virtually went into a faint. Both D’Aguiar and Wright depict memories of trauma and oppression as being an unavoidable aspect of one’s life journey. However despite this, D’Aguiar and Wright also assert that some people are able to bear the devastating impact of prejudice and oppression. Likewise, Tom Wright’s play Black Diggers depicts the oppressed Indigenous Australians who, despite enormous sacrifice, could not escape the agony of the past nor the disappointment of a bleak future, thus both texts highlight the underlying power of memory, being both unavoidable and intolerable. Fred D’Aguiar’s novel The Longest Memory explores the depressing reality of slavery and the overwhelming, inescapable pain suffered by the slaves.