English Essay:

Journeys change a person’s conscious awareness. It is not the movement from one place to another alone. Journey is made up of different aspects that are illustrated in all three texts being discussed and is conveyed through the presence of their past. “The year my voice broke” is a coming of age film directed by John Duigan. It explores the journeys of its three protagonists, Trevor who explores how some characters don’t undergo any change but only go through a trip, Freya who undertakes both a physical and emotional journey as she has self-realisation through her pregnancy and issues that happen in the past, and lastly the main protagonist Danny that grows and matures through self-awareness and goes through a physical journey. Journey is also illustrated through two poems by Judith Wright “Woman to Man” which goes through the inner emotional journey of a woman during her pregnancy and “South of my days” which has a physical and spiritual journey and reflects the external journey that someone can have, in this sense on a train and the world around them. The journey is in itself an act of growth.

Dugan’s’ film “The Year my voice broke” shows the growth of three teenagers in a country town in the 1960’s. Danny, who is the main protagonist, is an awkward adolescent, who falls in love with his best friend Freya. He goes through both an internal and physical journey. From the beginning of the play, we are able to know that the main protagonist will undergo change by the title ‘The year my voice broke’ meaning the year that Danny’s voice broke, the year that he became a man. In the film, we see his sexual desire for Freya and the lust he has for her, through which he expresses in his poems. This is seen in the scene 11, research and hypnosis, when he tries to look at her underpants by firstly hypnotising her, or trying to. Through the experiences and actions of his past, Danny realises that his feeling for Freya are not just lust, but pure love. He realises this and is shown in the quote “I could marry you, we can get engaged. I don’t care,” as Danny puts his reputation on the line, so he can save Freya’s, by wanting to take responsibility of the child, even though it is Trevor’s. At the end, we see Danny carving Freya’s, Trevor’s and his name on the rock. This shows that his mature self knows that he will never see Freya again.

Freya undergoes an emotional and physical journey. At the beginning of the film we learn that Freya is an outsider and always needed a place for her through the quote ‘It was her special place, even though she is 16’. In the opening scene of the film, we see trees in the distance that symbolise life, where the roots are the past, the truck is the present and the branches are the future. Freya is unconsciously living her life just like her mother Sara who was the town’s prostitute. They both got pregnant at a similar time in the ghost house. In scene 6, Freya starts to change as she learns about her mother’s past and realises that it is the same thing that has happened to her. She takes that as motivation and leaves the country by train to start a new life from scratch. Trains are usually a symbol of a physical journey and shows that she wants to build a new future, away from where all the drama. When Freya falls pregnant, she takes responsibility for her own actions when she tells Danny that she will never marry anyone but Trevor. This shows that she is going to take responsibility of the child and that she matured.

Trevor illustrates that some characters don’t change, that they always stay the same as he passed away after committing a series of crimes and not taking responsibility for his actions. There is irony as Trevor has the reputation of being a great footballer which is about teamwork, but in reality he is independent. In scene 6, we hear the dogs howling. This is foreshadows the death of a person in this case