An Analysis of Tomorrow When the War Began, a Book by John Marsden

Analysis, Pages 4 (833 words)

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With reference to John Marden's Tomorrow When The War Began, discuss the ways in which particular issues, themes, or attitudes are conveyed via the medium of the literary text. John Marsden s Tomorrow when the war began is a gripping work of fiction. The book deals with various themes, issues and attitudes that are present in our society throughout the medium of the novel, we learn that war is not only stupid but it is devastating for those who are involved.

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The issues in John Marsden's masterpiece were very dramatic. Marsden's masterpiece is about a small country town in the Eastern States of Australia, which gets invaded by a foreign force and starts ruling parts of Australia. This foreign force wants to take over Australia because of the wide open space which Australia has an their Country doesn t. They want to bring people from their country and give them a home each and manage a farm and have the Australians as slaves to them.

Through Ellie's eyes you find out information you never thought possible. The information you find out from Ellie is about what the group is going to do to try and stop this force and other various things like bringing live stock into their camp site which is named hell. Issues from whom to take camping, to find out how to blow the towns main bridge apart. Issues were the main part for the book if it werent for the issues this look wouldn t be as compelling.

The book is written in an indirect way where you see it through a persons eyes by the name of Ellie. Ellie got chosen because she was known as the best writer even though this brought some controversy between Ellie and Chris It's only half an hour since someone - Robyn I think - said we should write everything down, and it's only twenty-nine minutes since I got chosen, and for those twenty-nine minutes I've had everyone crowded around me gazing at the blank page and yelling ideas and advice. Rack off guys! I'll never get this done. I haven't got a clue where to start and I can't concentrate with all this noise. The book is only through Ellie s eyes meaning you only see what is going on with one person. This gives you the feeling of not being the God of the book by knowing everything including what the foreign soldiers are thinking or the other friends. This makes the book very interesting and wants you to keep reading.

This book seems like it is a normal novel theme, but this novel shows an individual theme. There are minor themes, which get strung off of Marsden's book like friendship and the labelling of friends, which ends up ruining a friendship between two old friends, These old friends were Ellie, Homer and Fi. This was caused by Ellie writing something she shouldn t have about Homer and Fi s love life.

The main characters in the novel were 7 people they were Ellie who was the main character, Robyn who was a person along for the camping trip which ends up being a fearless hero, Corrie who helped the group out but sadly ended up being shot and had to surrender, Kevin who was one of the guys who didn t get a very big role in the book and ended up taking Corrie to hospital and surrendered as well. Homer is the heroic character of the book who thinks outside the lines and also thinks like the soldiers and is always one step ahead of them. If Homer wouldn t have come on the journey the group would have been caught along time ago. Chris is the last of the characters who is a druggie and an alcoholic who is very depressed and ends up going missing without a trace to the end of the novel. Chris was the most useless person of the group.

John Marsden s novel has been written so someone who is reading the book can be put into any one of the main characters shoes (mainly Ellie s) The form of writing makes it easy to believe that you actually know and feel for any one of the characters. The book is split up into a series of 6 books, which makes you want to read every book in the series. The style used catches a lot of reader s attention and makes them want to read on with enthusiasm.

Conclusion

John Marsden s Tomorrow when the war began is a gripping work of fiction. The book dealt with various themes, issues and attitudes which we learn about throughout reading the novel, these attributes are present in our society throughout the context of the novel. We learnt that war is not only stupid but it is devastating for those who are involved especially the characters in the novel which had to deal with problems that trained army personnel would have difficulty battling with these tasks.