Year 13 - English - Unfamiliar Text Practice - Critical Response

With close reference to the two texts, compare the ways the sea and things associated with it are important in both texts.


The sea are very prominent aspects in both Glen Colquhoun’s poem Lament and Brian Turner’s prose Dreamers. Both texts view in similar lights as the character whose perspective we are following have lost someone dear to them to the depths of the ocean. Colquhoun views Buck as someone who is very close to the main character, but is not discussed on how close he is. From reading the text, it would be safe to assume that Buck is more than a friend, and something more akin to a lover or a family member that they looked up to. Turner’s Dreamers, on the other hand, is a prose following Kate, who is mourning his neglectful father who was lost at sea. He spent all his time fishing, and not showing affection to his family, when all Kate wanted was to be loved. Both texts showcase the idea of the sea being a dangerous place, but they also have a different tone to them. In the case of Lament, the main character never really got over the loss of Buck, and is taking his loss very harshly. Whereas in Dreamer’s, Kate has accepted that his father that ignored her is gone, and has come to terms with his loss, but still misses him everyday and mourns him. Lament, as the title suggests, have heavy themes of having difficulty coping with loss, whereas Dreamer’s has tones of accepting the inevitable and wishing you had more time with them. The two both share a similar narrative, yet the two have completely different underlying tones. The mood that both texts set are also completely different and unique to each other. Colquhoun did a really good job of setting the mood of his poem, as it uses language features like metaphors, similes and personification to give the setting a dark, gloomy feel that works in conjunction with the melancholic tone that happens throughout Lament. On the other end of the spectrum, we have Dreamers. The text itself isn’t necessarily sad, where it follows Kate’s morning routine followed by her going down to the beach to remember his dead father. With the relevance in mind, we can draw a comparison between the sea in Lament and the sea and Dreamers, and contrast the two in a critical lense. In Lament, the sea brings deep sadness, as the character never got over the loss of Buck, who sounds like he’s been lost at sea. Whereas, in Dreamers, the sea evokes emotion in the main character and makes them think what life would have been like if her father showed the love and affection that she wanted out of his father. Although the fact that her neglective father isn’t returning from the ocean evokes a sense of sadness and repressed anger in the character, there is also a slight feeling of hope or joy when Kate imagines what could have been.