Tom Brennan
- Submitted by: cassmwse
- Views: 2078
- Category: English: Novels
- Date Submitted: 08/12/2010 08:13 PM
- Pages: 5
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“The story of Tom Brennan” provides a valuable lesson for all adolescents growing up, facing challenges, going out into the world and how different people respond to those challenges in different ways. In a similar way the related text ‘Edward Scissorhands’ provides us with a greater knowledge and understanding of issues relating to growing up and transitions into new phases of life.
Tom’s transition into the world is a hard one, he moves initially feeling angry, disconnected, frustrated, depressed, lonely and guilty because of the role that Daniel had in the accident. They left Mumbilli early so no one would know, if they were to stay Tom wouldn’t of been able to move on from what happened. Tom isolates himself to see his renewed self, the audience sees this transition when he speaks to his sister Kylie about what happened and how he feels. The use of flashbacks by J.C Burke is a great technique, flashbacks stimulate a readers curiosity. Tom only gets flashbacks in the first half of the book, therefore he stops having them when he begins his journey ‘into the world’. Guilt is another technique used to relate to Tom’s struggles to move on into the world, its quotes “that night was etched into the bones of my skull”, which makes the readers assume he won’t transition.
He has to let go of his past in order to move into the future.
Tom experiences a flashback of the accident, showing how much it’s getting to him, he is clearly struggling to move past this challenge. In chapter 4, Tom isn’t close to transitioning. We know this because of the flashback, he relives the night of the accident in his head which shows he can’t move past it. Tom also sends a letter to his best friend Matt telling him that they had moved, in the letter Tom sounds really upset, and openly blames Daniel for everything, showing again he isn’t close to transitioning. The use of first person, makes the reader view everything exactly how Tom feels, we can tell how disjointed he is feeling...
Tom’s transition into the world is a hard one, he moves initially feeling angry, disconnected, frustrated, depressed, lonely and guilty because of the role that Daniel had in the accident. They left Mumbilli early so no one would know, if they were to stay Tom wouldn’t of been able to move on from what happened. Tom isolates himself to see his renewed self, the audience sees this transition when he speaks to his sister Kylie about what happened and how he feels. The use of flashbacks by J.C Burke is a great technique, flashbacks stimulate a readers curiosity. Tom only gets flashbacks in the first half of the book, therefore he stops having them when he begins his journey ‘into the world’. Guilt is another technique used to relate to Tom’s struggles to move on into the world, its quotes “that night was etched into the bones of my skull”, which makes the readers assume he won’t transition.
He has to let go of his past in order to move into the future.
Tom experiences a flashback of the accident, showing how much it’s getting to him, he is clearly struggling to move past this challenge. In chapter 4, Tom isn’t close to transitioning. We know this because of the flashback, he relives the night of the accident in his head which shows he can’t move past it. Tom also sends a letter to his best friend Matt telling him that they had moved, in the letter Tom sounds really upset, and openly blames Daniel for everything, showing again he isn’t close to transitioning. The use of first person, makes the reader view everything exactly how Tom feels, we can tell how disjointed he is feeling...