Henry Lawson, Experience Through Language

Good morning/ Afternoon year 12, today I will be addressing you on a future topic for your studies in English.

You will be prescribed with a text. The text I was prescribed in year 12 was “Henry Lawson short stories”

Henry Lawson’s short story “The drover’s wife” is about a bush woman and her four children and how they live and cope with the natural elements of the Australian bush whilst her husband is away droving. Lawson description of the women” The drovers wife” makes her the symbolic in the story as she is known only as “the drovers wife” throughout the story or “her” or “she” and never is named, she is only “the drovers wife”

The danger of a snake in her house reminds the woman of the tough challenges she had to face as a woman alone in the bush. She fought droughts, floods, bulls and drunk men. The snake represents the danger of the bush, but also humour when the boy club done and “skins the snake aforesaid nose”

Descriptive language of the setting of the Australian outback, “bush all around, bush with no horizons, for the country is flat, no ranges in the distance, almost waterless creeks, nineteen miles to the nearest sign of civilisation. Showing the hardship of the land and the life the drover wife is put through and showing the negativity of the bush, with flashback to put the image in your head to feel s

“The loaded dog” is a strongly descriptive, humorous short story from Henry Lawson, involving three gold miners and their dog Tommy, and the consequences of leaving a bomb cartridge unattended. Tommy "an overgrown pup, a big, foolish, four footed mate...Most of his head was...a red, idiotic slobbering grin of appreciation of his own silliness" Henry Lawson describes the dog visually