2022 HSC

How does Parrett represent the emotions arising from human experiences through the
features of prose fiction?
In your response, make reference to the prescribed text.

Parrett, within her 2011 prose fiction novel Past the Shallows (PTS) explores the paradoxical
nature of family and the importance of place for the Curren family, this representation
allowing readers an insight into the emotions that can arise from such human experiences.
Her exploration of the paradoxical nature of family highlights the differing emotions felt by
individuals due to their unique human experiences, accentuating the specific emotions of
stability, comfort, pain and anger. Similarly through her exploration of the importance of
place the emotions of isolation, pain and entrapment are emphasised. Through her expert
use of the literary techniques unique to prose fiction, Favel is able to explore human
experiences through the Curren brothers, through this the arising emotions highlighted.

Through her exploration of the paradoxical nature of family through the experience of the
Curren family, Favel Parrett highlights the unique emotions of comfort, stability and anger
that can be experienced. This is evident within Harry’s personal experience, Parrett’s use of
vivid imagery in ‘coloured lights that pulsed and breathed light across the dark plains,’ the
lights symbolising the boy’s late mother, representing her role as a source of comfort for
Harry even after her passing, accentuating the ability of positive family experiences to evoke
feelings of stability and comfort within particularly youth. This emotion is further
exemplified in Mile’s analepsis, recollection of his mother making him ‘feel the warmest he
had ever felt,’ the extended metaphor of the mother as a source of warmth showing the
ability of maternal relationships to provide consolation and relief even in memories. Thus
this shows the extensive power parental relationships have over children’s experiences, this
demonstrated by Parrett through the Curren children’s paradoxical experiences of maternal
and paternal relationships. Their experience of paternity is shown juxtaposingly to be
abusive and a source of fear and dysfunction. This is elucidated by the simile of ‘and he
shook him like a rag doll,’ revealing the skewed power dynamic within parents and children,
the father’s behaviour being anomalous, juxtaposing with the traditional parental role as
nurturing and comforting, this experience of family evoking emotions of fear, dysfunction,
and pain. Thus Parrett’s analysis of the paradoxical nature of family within PTS is able to
effectively accentuate to the reader the juxtaposing emotions of both stability and comfort
as well as fear and pain that that can arise from human experiences.

Similarly, within PTS through the exploration of the importance of place in shaping human
experiences the emotions that can arise from such experiences are clearly highlighted. This
is most evident within the depiction of the ocean, the main setting for the prose fiction
novel. Parrett’s choice to set the text in a seaside town, the coast symbolising the
intersection of humanity and the natural environment, allows for the emotions that arise
from human experiences to be clearly shown to readers. This is evident through the
extended metaphor of the water, ‘water that was always there… would be there always,
right inside of him.’ This depicts the steadfast quality of the environment, and
subsequentially place, in shaping individuals’ identities through the experiences entered
around place. For Harry the oceans danger is exemplified, the emotions centred around the
fear and sense of foreboding it creates demonstrated through Parrett’s use of foreshadowing
in ‘right inside of him,’ representing the waters dangerous and eventually life-taking abilities.
Similarly the role of place in shaping human experiences is evident when examining the
family home of the Curren family, Parrett’s description of it as ‘the brown house… with a
concrete bathroom tacked on’ using an allusion to prison to embody the emotions of
entrapment and stagnation felt by the brothers due to the lack of love but inability to leave.
The lack of possessive language, ‘the brown house,’ represents the lack of connection
between the brothers and the place, materialising human experiences of abuse and neglect
and thus evoking only emotions of pain and dysfunction rather than comfort or stability, an
anomalous experience of home. Another place that holds significance within the plot is the
site of the crash, the allegory of the ‘scar, a line where the bark had never grown back’ used
to represent the collective experience of the death on the small town. The place is used to
embody the human experience of the loss of the mother, similarly evoking emotions of pain
and turmoil for those involved, portraying the constant mark such experiences can have a
town and person, speaking to an individual’s inability to escape their past actions and
experiences. Thus within PTS Parrett uses places to embody human experiences and allow a
deeper understanding of the emotions that can arise from such experiences.

Within her prose fiction novel PTS, Favel Parrett uses features unique to her form in order to
capture the multitude of emotions that can arise from different human experiences. This is
illuminated through her effective representations of the paradoxical nature of family
alongside her elucidation of the importance of place in shaping human experiences.