"It is the repetitions and contrasts in the events, characters, settings, or use of language in a text which often consolidate our understanding of it." In what ways did repetitions and contrasts in one of the texts guide your understanding?
             'What's life all about?' is the question that David Malouf puts to his readers in the novella Fly Away Peter. He has created repetitions and contrasts in events, characters and settings that help a reader to understand the underlying messages of the text and be guided to the conclusion that "A life wasn't for anything. It simply was." (p.132).
             Fly Away Peter begins with the image of a bi-plane flying over the swamplands in Queensland. The difference between Jim's view of this "awkward, noisy" (p.3) bi-plane and the birds that inhabit the swamp is the first major contrast in the novella and is representative of the differences between man and animals, or natural and unnatural. Malouf describes the birds in such a way that it seems they are the lucky ones. They do not question the meaning of life or why they exist as humans do; "What am I doing here?" (p. 130), but simply go about their daily lives, accepting the changes that occur. Birds appear in the sanctuary of the swamplands as well as at times in the war. On the other hand, humans seem to be unable to accept the natural order of life and try to control things by changing what is natural and recording whatever happens. Imogen Harcourt's photography and Jim Saddler's book are examples of this. Ashley discovers that humans are not as important as they think they are when he realises that he is unimportant in the greater scheme of things. The birds, "moved... so transiently across his lands... and knew nothing of Ashley Crowther. That shocked him each time he came here." (p.32).
             The birds in Fly Away Peter represent many things, including freedom and change, and are one of the repeated ima
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