Gus

Tomorrow When the War Began. =Task 1.=


 * 1) 1. If I was put in a situation like that and had to choose one, I would have chosen to inflict damage on the enemy. Simply because in war you have to use your wits. ‘We can try to rescue our families from the show ground’, but you’re not going to be able to turn up like Rambo and get out alive. You have to use your head and think logically in war, even if you long to see your family, you have to do what’s best for the group. It also might be appealing to just sit back and just wait it out, but the war isn’t going to get any better if you don’t do anything about it. Eventually you are going to run out of supplies and if you don’t put up a challenge to the invaders they will take the area and would settle in quicker, with that it makes it harder to get supplies. So in a situation where I had to choose, I would inflict damage, even if it was just small thing you do in war it all adds up.


 * 1) 2. Killing is wrong anytime, but in a situation like a war, you do ‘whatever necessary’. It may not be the nicest thing in the world to kill someone, but in this circumstance where your life is threatened by the enemy I think murdering someone in a war situation is the right thing to do. You also need to think about what is best for your groups survival and your country in the long run, Is the group better off with one less person, maybe food and supply wise, but in a conflict situation I know I would like to know that we have that one more person, in this situation that one person may be the difference between life and death.


 * 1) 3. In my opinion I think it would be right and wrong to refuse treatment to Corrie, why should they after she and the group have killed about 3 of their soldiers. But in a sense it would be wrong, one because in any situation you don’t know the persons story and they might be just an innocent person caught in the crossfire. Two with not allowing treatment to a wounded enemy and other countries hear about the un- fair treatment of victims, that might provoke other countries to get involved and if I was invading a country I wouldn’t want the extra heat on me.


 * 1) 4. I don’t think the role reversal is much difference to the situation in the first place. Since them coming in dividing up the land and making Australians do all the hard work, they are still ‘imbalances in the region’, they are just the ones with all the wealth and resources making Australians do the hard work. However they do have a point with Australia being quite rich in its national recourses, if I was another poor country and I could see that Australia was living a rich and wealthy life, yeah I would be envious. Though it could have been handled a lot easier and fairer.

=Task 2.=


 * 1) 1. I don’t think there was one leader, I think they all chipped in and played a role. But if I had to choose I think Homer and Ellie were the two main leaders, I say this because in the situations they had, most of the time the group looked to them for inspiration on what to do next. What made Homer a good leader was his ability to come up with great tactics and military events. But that wasn’t what made Ellie a good leader, what made Ellie a good leader is that she goes over every little detail of the tactics and she weighs up every little option in her head. Whilst that can be a good thing, it can work against you in other situations.


 * 1) 2. Nearly all of the characters show courage, in their own way and giving what they have been through. Take Robyn for instance, when Lee had been shot by an enemy patrol whilst they were scoping out Lees family shop, Robyn picked him up and carried him to safety. However I think Ellie showed one of the biggest acts of courage, when Kevin Corrie and herself were cornered in a back yard. She had the wit and courage to blow up the mower and protect her friends, that was just to name a few. Kevin was one of the weaker characters but he showed remarkable courage when Corrie had been shot after blowing up the bridge. Corrie needed to get to the hospital and couldn’t make it on her own, Kevin put up his hand and took her into hospital which was run by the enemy. Given the situation they have been put in, they have all showed courage.


 * 1) 3. There were a few different tests of their friendships in the novel; one was where Lee and Ellie were sitting quietly together after Ellie had saved him from his shop. Lee was pressuring Ellie into committing to a relationship; Ellie was torn between her feelings for Homer and her feelings towards Lee. This would have made it hard, let alone Lee pressuring her into making a decision. I think when they had kissed that made it harder because Lee used that against Ellie when she couldn’t make up her mind.

=Task 3.=


 * 1) 1. I think Ellie was the best and most reliable character to have been given the role of narrator, not just because she was a good writer but ‘Little things like feelings and emotions’. Also the way Marsden described her she came across as intelligent, for example if he had chosen Homer to be the narrator we could of got a whole other story. The other option to write could have been Chris, as he had been a great writer, ‘but he hasn’t been here from the start’ so it was a smart choice to choose Ellie as the Narrator.


 * 1) 2. Foreshadowing means to give hints about the future, we see this in the novel when it is the last night in hell and Ellie wakes up to the sound and smell of planes going over head. That morning at breakfast they were all talking about it and joking around saying ‘we have probably been invaded and we don’t even know’. All of these little hints of being ‘invaded’ are giving you a little idea of what is going to happen next in the novel.

=Task 4.=


 * 1) 1. All of the characters go through change due to this new way of life forced on them because of the war. The one who I think goes through the most change is Homer, Homer use to be a sort of hooligan and according to Ellie ‘The guy who wasn’t even trusted to hand out the books at school’ he was always doing dumb things and was just your typical prankster. But now that they have been invaded they have all had to change; now there is no time for tricks and pranks because they have to look out for each other. Not only has he become a mature adult figure but he has become one of the leaders in the group, making plans and putting forward what to do next.


 * 1) 2. In my opinion Homer was a ‘genius’ for coming up with plans on how to ‘rescue’ Lee and to destroy the bridge. What helped Homer make some of these plans are his life before they had been invaded, mucking around and planning and executing good pranks. In war that can be handy if used the right way, in Homers case planning to save Lee and blow up ‘Herron Bridge’. It may not be the same sort of thing that you are pranking or doing but it still works in the same way, you are trying to trick and get an advantage over the enemy.


 * 1) 3. Yes I do think Ellie was a good person, she did what needed to be done in the right moments to save her and her friends lives. If some foreign country came into your land, killed your people and turned you into slaves, wouldn’t you want to do anything you could to stop them from doing these sorts of things. Once again I think she is a good person, the life they had beforehand isn’t like war, if you could just go on through the war without any speed bumps or hurdles in that way, then I don’t think that is war. It all changes and you do what has to be done.


 * 1) 4. I think Chris did and didn’t belong in the group, why I say he doesn’t belong is because he is unreliable, in war you can’t have anyone who is unreliable, sure in some situations someone might pack up under pressure. But you deal with that then, you have a sentry for a reason to keep alert and aware of what is going on, say if an enemy patrol walks up and decides to check the place out, they could be out of the area if the sentry is quick enough. But if you have a sentry that falls asleep on the job and the patrol walks up into the area you’re in, then you’re in a sticky situation and as mentioned in the book, back in World War 1 and 2 sentries caught asleep on guard used to be shot. But then he did belong in the group not for any amazing skill he had, but just because the more people you have in a group the more people you have to back you up in a conflict situation.

=Task 5.=
 * 1) 1. ‘Hell’ plays a vital role in the situation that they have been put in, if they hadn’t of been in hell at the time of the invasion they themselves could have been captured. Without Hell they would have no place to fall back on, or most likely they would have been caught. Hell provides a sort of safe haven for the characters, for when things are getting a little too hot in the war situation they can fall back and know they are going to be safe.


 * 1) 2. I think the novel does suggest that people can ‘belong’ to the land and it showed a great example of it. Here were some teenagers who have never been without food and water for most of their lives, but when the war comes it puts them in a situation where they can’t just go down to the shops and buy food and whatever. They have to learn to live off the land pretty quickly, they need to blend in to the environment around them or else they are dead.

=Task 6.=


 * 1) 1. There were a few major pointers that lead to Ellie thinking of using the lawnmower as a bomb. The first being when Corrie ran into something she couldn’t describe it, but Kevin chipped in saying ‘it`s a ride-on mower’. Now she didn’t think to use it as a bomb there and then but I think it clung in Ellie`s head. Then when she was under extreme stress trying to think of something to help them get out of there she started thinking, ‘Yes, petrol’ that’s when things started ticking over and she put her plan into action. She hadn’t told the others of her plan yet but she just told them to start looking for some ‘matches’, when they found some she said to Kevin ‘take me to the ride-on’, that’s when us a readers knew that she was planning to use the ride on as a bomb.


 * 1) 2. Marsden was very clever in the way he created tension in this scene, he used words like ‘desperately’ and he made them sound panicked and scared. He put them in a situation where if they didn’t do something drastic they wouldn’t live, by placing them in that garden where there was no other escape except the one the soldiers were coming from, it created a lot of tension.


 * 1) 3. Marsden made us not really strongly identify the people who Ellie had killed with the ‘ride-on’ bomb by not really going into any major description on what they looked like. He does this by simple little things like the choice of words he uses, the ‘soldiers’ were faceless, he didn’t describe what they looked like or anything. He does this because he doesn’t want us to feel sorry for them dying, he wanted us to feel like it was them who were ‘evil’.

TWWB Task 7. =Famous Five.= The famous five is about a group of children, George, Julian, Anne, Dick and Georges dog Timmy. They set out to find the lost treasure on George`s parent island. I think John Marsden mentioned this book in TWWB because the children in Famous five are in a similar situation to the characters in TWWB, and in a way the characters are similar. The kids in famous five are out on an adventure looking for a box of missing gold without their parents or anything and are completely independent solving crime. The TWWB characters are on their own and are on a sort of adventure, which involves a bit more risk that the famous five. Tomorrow When The War Began Essay. By Gus Turner.
 * 1) 4. I think we don’t condemn Ellie for killing those people because as in the last question he didn’t describe the soldiers. This makes us not really relate to the soldiers making them seem like they were doing the wrong thing and Ellie did what she had to too save her and her friends.

Are qualities like courage goodness and loyalty natural or do they only come out in different circumstances?
Tomorrow When the War Began is written by John Marsden and follows the lives of seven high school students who are trying to keep alive after their country has been invaded. The characters go through a huge amount of change, not because the want to, but because they have to or they simply won’t survive. Loyalty, courage and goodness are three of the main concepts in this book, in order to survive they need to show loyalty to each other and their country. They need to show courage to be able to take on the enemy and they have to show goodness to one another so that when the time comes they know someone always has their back.
 * __ ‘Loyalty, courage goodness, I wonder if they are human inventions or if they just are.’ __**

Loyalty
Loyalty comes naturally to everyone, even if we don’t know it. Loyalty is apart of our every day life, even if its getting and going to school, being loyal to your parents and school by your behaviour and loyalty to your friends. In the case of Tomorrow When the War Began the characters are loyal to their country and to each other, not because the want to but because without their friends they would have been captured or even dead. With one of them being un- loyal it puts the whole group at risk. As with many of these concepts different situations will force these traits to come out and really matter more than in other situations.

Courage
Courage again comes out in every one everyday, even if it’s just a small thing. Courage can come in many situations from waking up, going to school or even out on the footy field. I think a good case is Homer, he shows a great amount of courage, from pulling pranks and coming up with great ideas. When it finally sinks into the characters that they have been invaded they all show loads of courage, it would have been easy just too wave they white flag and surrender, but they didn’t and they chose to fight for what they believed was right. This takes a huge amount of courage and even more so blowing up the bridge, even when some of them didn’t want too they still did and it paid off.

Goodness
Goodness is on everyone and it doesn’t take much to find. We as humans have a lot of goodness some more so than other, but we all have it. We show goodness to our family, friends and other people .In the book they all showed goodness to each other, some tempers might have flared but they were all good to each other. They had to be what else where they going to do, they depended on each other to survive and just one sour relationship can again put the whole group at risk. Even the enemy in the book have some goodness, they are fighting to orders that they are given. It would be easy for them to just come in a kill everyone and come out victorious with a clean take, but they don’t they have some compassion and goodness. The three main aspects loyalty, courage and goodness all come naturally even if we don’t know it. We need these everyday qualities to function and get along with each other, just in war they mean so much more, your life depends on other people and if they didn’t get along and do the things they did the war wouldn’t be getting better and they would mist likely be captured or dead. The message that Marsden is trying to get across is that it doesn’t take horrible situations to bring out these things but I can really count more in some situation more than others. We all have loyalty, courage and goodness, some people more than others, the worst people in the world have these qualities deep down somewhere, they just might not show it.