Judith Wright: Poetry Lesson Plan

Whom or what does the boy in “Legend” symbolize? How does his relationship with nature transform over the course of the poem, and what might this transformation represent?

There are many possible interpretations of the symbolic meaning of the boy, including that he represents white Australians’ attitude toward and triumph over wilderness (“cobwebs snatched at his feet,/ rivers hindered him,/ thorn-branches caught at his eyes to make him blind/ and the sky turned into an unlucky opal,/ and he didn’t mind”). Students might define this attitude more explicitly, perhaps by comparing it to attitudes held by Aboriginal Australians toward nature (i.e. the idea of nature as...