WEEK 6- FLY AWAY PETER SUMMARY

The book I read this week was ‘Fly Away Peter,’ by David Malouf, which is primarily suited for adolescence, as it involves the reader to comprehend the story by making meaning of the descriptive text. In this book David Malouf makes the audience experience the life of a soldier that goes to war. Throughout the book the author illustrates his ideologies that people within a war setting are doomed, explaining to the readers that wars do not solve anything, they simple just destroy numerous lives. The techniques used to show man is doomed are writing the book in first person, using very descriptive writing (by using verb, adjective groups) and how the narrative is structured. 
David Malouf uses the character, Jim Saddler, to explore how man is doomed. He did this by showing Jim’s life before going to the war. This was shown to display how his personality and thoughts changed before he goes to the war and during the war. Jim was an innocent person who would never hurt any one and never wanted to turn out like his father and be aggressive, but, during the war, he felt that he was being more aggressive, as he wanted to hit Wizzer. During the war, his thoughts change, as he believed that there was no hope for him to survive, as all his friends were dead and Jim was left to fight the battle without them. The author wrote 'fly away peter' in first person of Jim Sadler. This allowed the readers to get inside his head and understand all the thoughts and feelings Jim Sadler is feeling. By illustrating the characters viewpoint whilst being at the war, the audience received a strong negative towards the war setting. 

the technique of making the text extremely descriptive was very effective, as it created the text to have more meaning. Malouf used many adjective and verb groups to accomplish this , producing the readers to have a more distinctive image of the event and emotions that are occurring in the narrative.   

Another technique Malouf used was the way the narrative was structured. It simply did not illustrate the common structure, which involves an Exposition, Developing Conflict, Climax and a Resolution, however the book was structured to show how life changes once a war occurs. The first half of the novel explains to the reader how well created the land is and how we should appreciates its beauty. When war was declared not only did it affect the people but the land and environment. Beautiful paddocks of grass were soon transformed into fields of mud and trenches. All creatures were killed or vanished. Blood of innocent men was spread over fields. Malouf wants the reader to realise war was nothing but destruction.