How Language Features and Text Structures Represent a Social Group in "Going Home" and "Sissy" Kei-Kei Koh 11th Grade

Representations of social groups are often present in short stories, particularly aiming to convey an idea towards the reader. 'Going Home' (1986), by Archie Weller, a short story that follows a young successful Aboriginal man named Billy and his struggles with assimilation. 'Sissy' (2017), by Tony Birch, tells the story through the naïve perspective of a twelve year old Aboriginal girl, Sissy, and her experiences with the Catholic Church and Stolen Generations. In both of these texts, the narrators have manipulated language and narrative features to represent the Aboriginal members of the community as treated with inequality.

POINT 1

One of the most outrageous aspects of 'Going Home' is the way in which it describes the oppression that Aboriginal Australians face from traditional figures of authority. It offers the representation that Aboriginal people are subjects to abuses of power from the very people whose jobs are to defend the rights of citizens: the police. For instance, as Billy wanders back to the humpies, he is met by a white policeman who "slams" him to the van, and also rudely calls him a "black prick" and a "mongrel black bastard." The actions and dialogue that the policeman presents towards Billy are utterly...