Discuss how you have developed your ideas about changing self through the studying of Sally Morgan's My Place, one item from the HSC Resource Booklet and at least two pieces of your own material.
In your answer you must consider how both ideas and techniques/ features of each text type contribute to your understanding.
Through the study of Sally Morgan's My Place, the documentary Captain Sarah's Odyssey, The Door by Miroslav Holub and Chain of Hearts by Maureen McCarthey my ideas on changing self have developed and changed. I have realised that in order to change you need love and support from friends and family and that sometimes people need to change who they are in order to obtain their dreams/ goals. Sometimes a tragic and unexpected event can cause a person to change themselves. These ideas are represented through the use of various techniques such as humour, dialogue, poetic devices and sound techniques.
My Place by Sally Morgan is an autobiography/ biography in which we see Sally change several times throughout the book. Because Sally herself writes the book, we also see how Sally's feelings and thoughts change. At the beginning of the book, we see how Sally frequently truanted from school. This is generally a bad thing but at times her mother encourages it. In these circumstances, we are shown the humorous side of Sally's family because parents do generally not encourage this type of behaviour. Humour is regularly used throughout this novel to help lighten situations and give the reader a deeper insight into the family. Humour also helps to break up tense situations and because of this we are able to witness how the family reacts to situations with humour when many of the times the situations are actually quite serious. This humour that the family share allows them to grow closer to one another so they are able to cope with difficult situations. .
An example of when humour is used in a difficult situation is when Sally's Nan hoses down the children when a fire is threatening to burn the houses down.
