Wake in Fright

2 Pages 474 Words

“Wake in fright” first appealed to me through its title rather than its promised content. At first I found the novel very tedious to read and lacking in the action that was promised by the title but as I continued through the text I became engrossed in this violent story of animal people and animal customs set in the overpowering heat of the Australian outback.

The language, I found was not difficult to comprehend and was simplistic and basic. I feel that if the language were any more complicated than this it would have taken the focus off the storyline, which is at times a labour to fully comprehend. Although as the storyline became more erratic I sometimes found myself lost in the speech of the text in which the main character thinks to himself which matches in some ways how erratic the character’s life has become.

One of the first things I noticed about the text was that there was a very heavy, depressed tone which continued to increase throughout the text as Grant’s stay in Bundanyabba continued and gradually worsened so the tone reflects Grant’s helplessness and his state of mind. In the opening pages Cook presents us with people who “ have withered, their skin contracting and their eyes sinking as their stock became white bones” and statements such as “little of the hope that he had abandoned”. These underline the oppressive tone which continues throughout the novel.

John Grant is a character that I found I could not admire. At the start of the text I didn’t really feel a response towards him but as the story continued I felt immense pity for him and even felt some of his own frustrations as a simple game of chance sets off a chain of events which slowly moves John Grant into a hideous nightmare world. He is confronted by the ugly side of the Australian outback, where human behaviour descends to animal depths. Every effort made by Grant to escape this living hell is frustrated by the cruel hand of fat...