Malouf evokes the horror and absurdity of war in ‘Fly Away Peter’ through an Australian frame of reference that creates reality for the reader. Discuss.Malouf’s ‘Fly Away Peter’ uses an Australian frame of reference to display the horrors and absurdity of war. The way in which Malouf writes creates reality – the reader can suspend disbelief and believe that the events in the novella are actually real. When we read ‘Fly Away Peter’, we see the story through Jim’s eyes. Jim is a bird watcher, and he is Australian. Ashley, his employer, was born in Australia and educated in England. Ashley has inherited the land on which Jim watches the birds. The Australian frame of reference is seen through Jim, juxtaposed with Ashley’s British influence.The first few chapters of the book are set just before World War One, in coastal Queensland. A description is given where Jim and Ashley live and their lifestyles. Here we learn that they are not incredibly important or powerful people – they are ordinary. Many readers can identify with the characters, creating a sense of feasibility and reality within the story.World War One is another setting in ‘Fly Away Peter’. Australia, being strongly tied to England, to obliged to be involved in the war, despite the lack of any other solid reasons. Jim and Ashley enlist, Jim as a soldier, Ashley as a general, only Ashley returns. Descriptions of events and locations that Jim gives while in war really display to the reader the horror and war and just how much people had sacrificed.At the time of the World War One, Britain was Australia’s ‘mother country’. Influences were still very strong, and Australia, still very young, needed this support and comfort that Britain offered. Australia, as a country officially existed, but she had no identity of her own to set her apart from Britain. This is seen in history through the ...
