Tomorrow, When the War Began Analytical Essay, By Ekta Singh (DRAFT)

The novel Tomorrow, When the War Began, written by John Marsden and published in 1993, is a motivating book for young adults and explored the journey of a group of friends trying to save their town and family from the Asians that have invaded their hometowns. Throughout the novel the characters exhibit great courage when tested with facing the realities of invasion and the imprisonment of their families. John Marsden, the author of this captivating novel, intentionally positions his modern teen audience to connect with the experiences of these characters through the use of language and textual choices. The three main protagonists that showed courage, bravery and incentive were Ellie Linton, Homer Yannos and Robyn Mathers

Firstly Marsden effectively uses a variety of language and textual features in order to position his audience into bonding with Elie, as for she is the main character and who demonstrates great bravery in her judgements and actions. Ellie’s character trait and background affect how she reacts. Ellie is very neutral and doesn’t need continuous grown-up guidance. She explains that “...they’d given [her] the habit of doing things without looking over [her] shoulder every sixty seconds
to see if an adult was nodding or shaking his head” (p 256). She has had lots of familiarity and understanding, for example she exhibits camping skills, she knows how to ride a motorbike and how to use weapons. Ellie is strong brave female that shows courageous actions throughout the book.”That was the first moment at which I started to realize what true courage was. Up until then, every thing had been unreal, like a night-stalking game at a school camp. To come out of the darkness now would be to show courage of a type that I’d never had to show before, never even known about. I had to search my own mind and body to find if there was anew part of me somewhere. I felt there was a spirit in me that could do this thing, but it was a spirit I hadn’t known about. If I could only find it I could connect with it and then maybe, just maybe, I could start to defrost the fear that had frozen my body. Maybe I could do this dangerous and terrible thing.” (Page 81)

Thus, Marsden clearly uses language and textural features to characterise the main protagonist, Ellie, as being a leader and a role model and to position his audience to connect with her experiences.

In addition, Marsden (modality) uses language and textual features in order to prompt the audience to connect with Homer Yannos. Homer is a brave character, as demonstrated when he chooses to leave the pets and kill some of the livestock since they were in pain already. He says, “We have to abandon them. Leave all the dry dog food you want for them, but that’s all you can do…Second, the milkers…it’s gone gangrenous as well. We are going to have to shoot her. It’d be too cruel to leave her here to suffer”(p 114). In moreover, Marsden purposely uses languages and textual features to influence this audience into identifying with Homer who is a careless male minor who likes to trigger trouble but prefers to work alone.

Robyn Mathers is another character that the audience is definitely positioned to connect with through