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Golden Age, CHARACTERS, IDEAS - Coggle Diagram
Golden Age
Symbolism
Light/darkness
- Traumatic experiences are associated with darkness
- Characters often seek out the light as an antidote to this darkness and sorrow of the past (the first chapter "light" Norman offers Frank Light, and he might as well have said "life")
- Light is often associated with people (Elsa is referenced with gold, SOP)
- Netting Factory is a constant source of light in the dark and offers the children comfort, that they are never in complete darkness. It also represents the outside world, a life they may one day be part of; "It brought hope to the girls doorstep"; "Like a theatre or dancehall or the Royal show"; "it seemed to be promising something"; "that the future was a brightness". "The netting factories glow filled the windows. The pages of her book cam alive and filled her head with other lives as she slept"; reminding Elsa of the outside world
Nature - Natural world is always present (dogs barking, birds chirping, weather)
- Characters relish open space
- Meyer prefers to walk than catch the train (that he probably associates with the war)
- Margret finds solace in her garden and watching the sky
- Elsa talks about the sky outside providing comfort (moon = second mother), talking to baby Rayma; SOP relates to moon "IN moonlight, you become another self. Alone in the mystery"
- Sister Penny enjoys swimming, so do the children on their "refreshing" excursion and summer nights on the verandah
- Animals + outdoors represent the freedom when we embrace out natural selves, an antithesis to the claustrophobia and structure of indoors
Third Country - Frank calls Elsa the "third country"
- First country is Hungary, second is Australia, but with Elsa is where he truly belongs
- His was to express his feelings of displacement, trying to find his identity; he feels truly himself, cultural and physical differences don't matter (disease)
Trains
- Ida "shudders" at the sound of trains, they represent the trains that took away Meyer to labour camps. represent death and imprisonment
- To Frank the sound of trains are comforting, familiar. They were company, a sign that the outside world continued
Birds
- Australian bird sounds are throughout the novel, reminding the children there is a life outside
- Children often compare themselves to birds, this can show freedom, or the fragility of the children "she limped unaided around the house, like a bird with its wing broken. Tame, because it couldn't fly away", Ida described as a "bird who refused to sing"
Poetry
- Franks way to make sense of the world around him, eg, "Your bed way empty today/ when i looked for you./ Why?" Frank admits this poem could be about Sullivan either. This represents Franks fear of losing those who mean most to him, and the sense of reliance he has on Elsa as his "homing point"
- Represents freedom
Piano
- Ida sees her skill on the piano as a "divine gift", yet she has refused t play piano since Frank contracted polio, also as a form of revenge or anger at fate/ God. Her concert at the Golden Age is significant, "thank-you note for Frank's recovery". In this final performance, Ida says "at last she fully understood" that Australia was her new home
Veranda - it acts as an in-between the comfort of the Golden Age and the security of its walls, and the outside world they long to get back to. On the veranda during the heat wave the kids feel as if they're "free spirits" - "half way existence" - "it took them one step closer to normal life"
Love + Connection
Love is essential for a sense of hope, trust and belonging - "Elsa... gave him hope"
Characters have different ways of showing their loves, through physical touch/ proximity, emotional intimacy, sacrifice, humour, etc
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Most adults in the novel are portrayed as lacking love in their marital relationships
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Frank + Elsa
- "Her face in profile, was outlined by light"; Frank referencing Elsa with light
- "Yet when he thought of Elsa, that he shared his fate he did not feel the same way"; Elsa provides Frank with hope, belief that he is not "cursed" or "deformed"
- "With her you would feel safe, superior" - When Elsa left, "the room became intolerable"
- "That would annoy her. Frank knew Elsa's pride and determination, but her family only knew pity"
- "She was his homing point"
- "For where would he go if there was no Elsa?"
- Frank becomes "uneasy" without seeing Elsa
- "He saw now that everything that had ever happened to him led him to her. That everything would turn out right"
Isolation
Most characters in The Golden Age are isolated in some way, either physically, socially or emotionally
- Parents are isolated from their communities due to their children having polio
- SOP isolated from her daughter in attempt to give Elizabeth Ann the life she wanted
- "And another suspicion: that to love a place, to imagine yourself belonging to it, was a lie, a fiction. It was vanity"; Meyer doesn't allow himself to feel at home
Many characters are familiar with the feeling of "otherness" in the eyes of the world, either because of their disease, background or social status
- "Un-Australian"
- Ida experiencing it after the concert
- "He felt like a pirate landing on an island full of little maimed animals"
- "He was desperate to be normal"
- "Tragic children, cursed, deformed"
- "outside world"
- "They did not have family here"
- The outside children "hung around and stared"
- "damaged creatures"
Solitude provides characters with a sense of relief
- Meyer and Sister Olive Penny find solitude in the outdoors. As time to be alone
- "she woke at least once every night. It was peaceful, the only time she felt alone here"; Elsa
- Margret escapes to her garden when she can't "bear the presence of people anymore"
- "Elsa fought off a sense of invasion" (her mother coming to visit) "She felt calm, weightless no part of her as yet cramped or in pain"
You can feel alone even when surrounded by people
- "It seemed sadder somehow. He knew they cried because they were alone"; The babies at the GA
- "He felt alone and trapped here"; same feeling to post war; "Forced to live within breathing distance of strangers, like animals in a burrow"
- "If you didn't hold onto something - you would go down" "she felt the aloneness of all the kids"; Elsa
- "sometimes she saw this look in his eyes... the look of someone who has lain in bed thinking, alone, for too many nights"
The stigma attached with polio
- "It was humiliating for him to have a daughter who'd caught polio"
- "She felt shame for her second-hand swimsuit, for the weight of her useless legs"
- "People kept away form families of polio victims"
- "She had brought shame on her family"
- "She felt like an outcast" (Margret)
- "They didn't say anything. This was the effect polio had on people"
Isolation of the Golden Age
- Seeing a dog walk by, London references it with a "jungle beast", exclaiming to the audience just how foreign the outside world had become
Recovery
Alienation that comes with recovery
- "The children.. were in need of help to find their way back to the world"
- " What her mother had to get use to was that it was she, Elsa, who had to deal with what had happened to her"
- "Elsa got better on her own"
- Being "stared" at, "prepared them for the real world"
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- "They were on their way back into the real world"
How individuals move on from the past
- "Generally he left the nostalgia to Ida, the past did not deserve it"; "The natural world, which was all he allowed himself to miss"; Meyer moves on the from the past by forgetting about it; "For him this was a city with no past"
reasons for recovery
- Ann Lee; refusing to be helpless again, wanting to be able to help the brumbies looking for water
The restorative powers of nature
- The chapter labelled "the sea", uncovers how the natural world can help revitalise individuals.
- "A day at the sea was prescribed" (after a heatwave)
- "everybody was in high spirits"
- "The cure appeared to have immediate effect"
- "forgot their daily exertions on land"
Loss
Those with polio experience loss in many ways - they see the impact of death as well as the loss of things like childhood, belonging, trust, normalcy, relations, freedom etc - "There was darkness waiting in the bush around those verandas...Death was out there"; Frank about the IDB after Sullivan's death; "Poetry had deserted him"
Loss impacts people in different ways, but most characters are never able to fully overcome the losses of their past. Generally, the losses not related to polio are the ones that hurt most of all
- Ida + Meyer lose alot during their relocation; Ida stops piano, Ida feels like she failed Frank
- "Here they were, in a free, democratic country, and they were gutted, feeble, shellshocked"
- "Now she was a bird who refused to sing"; Ida doesn't believe she deserves her beauty in music
- "Lying still in that place, alone, never left him"
Many thinks, both physical and emotional are lost in the process of suffering
Moments of the past reminding them of everything they've lost - “The certain knowledge came to her during rest-time that whatever her achievements in the future, she would never again ride a bike around the river to Perth, or stand up to the dumpers on a windy day”
Growth
Growth is a painful but necessary process
In the process of growth, characters strive to move on from the past, often unsuccessfully
Hardship inevitably speeds up growth
- Sullivans death impact on Frank
- "Polio had taken her legs, made her pale with thin cheeks, and yet, somehow herself"
- Meyers trauma; "nobody now, apart form immigration officials, could stop Meyer from doing anything. He knew this about himself"; "small things give you happiness. He'd learnt that above all else"
Belonging
The other side of isolation, belonging is the way that most characters strive to overcome feelings of loneliness and otherness
Characters in The Golden Age find a varietry of different ways to find belonging in people, places and things, not always successfully
- Margret in her garden; "The outside calmed her"
- "She was his homing point, the place he returned to. His escape, his refuge"
The Golden Age itself is a haven, home and sanctuary for the children as well as the staff, more than than their actual homes in most cases
- "At last she fully understood"; Ida accepting Aus as their new home
- "Everyone knew that Ladja would never give up on you"
- London describes the returning children from christmas as "tired, distant and alone", as returning home only reminded them of the life they no longer live
- "Until they returned home they'd forgotten they were a tragedy"
- "Old haunts, toys, books lay all around them, remants of a past life"
- "she had found out she belonged here now, with him, not back with her family"
- "christmas is very unsettling"
Structure
Writing style
- Written in third person omniscient, which allows London to show use multiple perspective
- Non-linear and can show the memories of the characters
Chapter Titles
- The chapter titles are decriptive, paint a picture of the incoming story
- The last chapter "New York" does not have a number, it is really an epilogue showing the long lasting effects of the events 50 years later
Duality - Characters are often displayed as having two different sides (duality), or living between two worlds, never able to completely be themselves
- Hungary/ Australia or Budapest/ Perth: Meyer, Frank & Ida
- Public/ Private: when alone or with someone they trust, characters reveal intimate details. Many withdraw from public life all together, preferring solitude
- Child/ Adult: Elsa and Frank are adolescents, in between childhood and innocence and the "oldness" that comes with adulthood. Their realisation of "how the world really is" at the end signifies their acceptance of adulthood. Often the children appear old and their parents young and awkward. "voices in the wind reminded her of childhood" (Elsa in the iso ward).
- "The children looked like little royals and the adults looked as pitiful as clowns"
- Past/ Present: many characters are unable to enjoy the present as they are haunted by the past
- Real world/ Golden Age: the children and even the staff are often sheltered form the real world by the golden Age, a world their families must live in
- Inside/ Outside: the verandah is the halfway point betwen inside and outside, but many characters find comfort and privacy in the shelter of natural with all its unpredictability
- Freedom/ Limitation8
Freedom
Freedom through vocation
- "Polio had taken his legs, but given him his vocation: poet"
- "He could overcome any hardship because he had a vocation"
- "Poetry was his way into the world. Poetry had to save him"
SOP
- She makes tea before going checking on the children, adding honey "just in case", then "yes, lewis was awake". SOP almost knew she would need to nurse the child back to sleep
- "She'd gone into nursing for something to do before she got married and had a family...Yet it was nursing that sustained her"
- "More and more she noticed how much she let her hands do her work for her, how she knew without thinking what we needed"; Nursing became second nature; "She could often tell id there was something wrong as she entered a room. A voice said, Do this, Check that"
- "sometimes it seemed to her the instinct was drawn out of the deepest part of her"; self discovery
Breaking societal norms
- "She loved, this freedom of choice. Like a man's"; SOP and her partners; "She knew she met them on the same terms as theirs. According to choice. Instinct"
prescription pad - symbolise freedom (explore grounds beyond GA), symbolise his growth
CHARACTERS
Meyer Gold
Connection to Nature
- "he felt a lift in his heart"; when he steps outside to a warm evening
- "he always felt better near water"
Unacceptance of Australia
- "Budapest was the glamour love of his life who had betrayed him. Perth was the flat-faced, wide-hipped country girl whom he'd been forced to take as his wife"
- "He had a suspicion that never again would he feel at home as he once had"
Final Acceptance of Australia
- "This is the community we belong to now"
- Christmas is the first time Meyer felt like he belonged again, refering to the Christmas. "our sons first Christmas in a polio hospital" as "good"
Guilt towards Frank
- Hearing Frank say that one day he'll play footy "It completed his sense of failure, powerlessness that he had not protected his boy"
Meyers trauma
- "since the war he'd been unable to say goodbye"
- " he could't unlearn the practice of death"
- "only solitude was natural to him now"
- "Something had been taken away form him in the war, against his will, and he would never be the same"
Becomes disconnected from his family
- "How could his soul bear such endlessness? Such loneliness"
SOP
- Meyer is attracted to the matter of fact about her
- She appears a mystery to him
- "For a moment only her eyes were true, dark with a secret life, a knowledge"
- "how happy she is, he thought. A widow. Who is her lover?"; Meyer is amazed by her independence
- "She was vibrant with life and yet she was solitary"
Frank Gold
"the day patients irritated Frank, even repelled him"; They are closer to the real world than he is. "A reminder to the Golden Age kids of how they must look to the outside world. Tragic children, cursed, deformed"
Sullivan "opened a door to a world that made everything have meaning". Sullivan acts as Franks mentor, but when he dies the door "closed behind him". Frank lost faith in poetry, until he met Elsa
Growing up due to illness - "He didn't look like a child now... His eyes were serious, his cheeks sunken and his mouth had the faintly bitter resolve f a much older person"
At christmas time when his parents help at the Golden Age, Frank is "apprehensive about this exposure, the invasion of one world by another"
Margret Briggs
Connection to Nature
- She can sense the environment around her, "she could feel it", the incoming heatwave
- Each evening nature "called" her outside, if "she didn't go she felt trapped", "the garden was the only place she could breathe"
- The forest provided her with a sense of comfort and belonging, "she felt its presence, its gentleness and endurance", "it was never silent there and she did not feel alone"
- "The garden told her things"
- When Elsa become ill, Margret promises never again to "turn her back on the springs of life", as if her domestication was the cause of Elsa falling sick
- "The only place Margret prayed now was outside"
Isolation from society due to stigma attached to Polio
- "They didn't say anything. This was the effect Polio had on people"
- "Most people now seemed very far from Margret"
- "The first time she'd walked into the butcher... people walked out"
- "It seemed to her now that her home had a darkness about it, a mark on its door"
- "she felt like an outcast"
Elsa + Margret
- Elsa would calm Margaret down, when Margret is on her way to see Elsa finally, "all her lethargy, anxiety and anger had disappeared"
- "Everything was flowing smooth as water"
- DUALITY. Often Elsa appear as the adult and Margret the child. "Elsa felt as if she were looking at her mother through the wrong end of a telescope. Seeing from far away the face of her childhood". "each time she saw her, she had become more of an adult. She had lost her childhood"
- The have a strong mother/daughter bond. "She knew how you were by being with you". "She was always close, part of you, like a mother animal"
- "She knew she'd only kept breathing because of her mother. So that her mother wouldn't die"
- "without Elsa the whole family fell apart"
- Being her first child, "they had grown up together"
- Frank senses that Elsa had "made the decision to be good...To protect her mother?...He sensed that Margret was breakable"
Ida Gold
Unacceptance of Australia
- The feeling of being in another country lesser than another "He couldn't stand the thought that he had come to another country which once again was inferior to another, like a servant or a child. It enraged him" (Frank). It reminds them of Budapest and the horrors they endured, losing Meyer, then Frank
Piano
- It provided her with relief from the world; "Now he liked to watch her, on her own not anxious or angry"
- Meyer views Ida's playing as a "elegy" (poem) a "plangent song of childhood"; Duality as his son writes his own poems to escape from the world
Elsa Briggs
Viewed as an angel
- "every movement Elsa made had grace"
Sister Olive Penny
Meyer Gold
- "It was relief to see his face. Why? A face without innocence or complacency
Jack Briggs
- Dedication to his sister Nance over his wife
- "He always did his sisters bidding"
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