Imagery

Imagery

How are words used to paint pictures?

Misto creates imagery by using a combination of dramatic techniques which stimulates the minds of the audience, to enable them to somewhat comprehend what occurred in the POW camps.

The use of dialogue and the projected images on stage challenges the audience’s creativity as they imagine the circumstances of these nurses. The photos of some of the POW women, “emaciated, haggard, impoverished” combined with the dialogue between the interviewer, “were __you__ ever that bad? “With Bridie’s response “we were worse” causes the audience to imagin what the women endured during the War. Misto uses the words, “we were worse” to stimulate the minds of the audience as they realise that not only were the women malnourished and physically abused, but these women were worse than the famished 'skeleton like' figures projected on stage. Misto uses imagery like this to highlight the suffering of the nurses during the war, so that their anguish wouldn’t go unnoticed.

“On the other side of our barbed wire fence were twenty or thirty Aussie men – as skinny as us – and wearing slouch hats. Unlike the Japs, they had hairy legs. And they were standing in rows – serenading us.”

John Misto creates a visual image that comes through in Act 1 Scene 7 (Page 52). This is brought up in the play when Bridie and Sheila are being interviewed by Rick (Host), they were originally talking about the conditions that they were in, how they were starved and the lack of nutrition, this then moves on to how they sang through the hunger at Christmas. The Japanese then allowed the Australian men to visit the nurses, while the nurses sang a Christmas carol them. “The Japs let us do it”.

Misto created this image for the viewer to understand the separation between the men and the women in war; it was the image that was created that was used to show the division of the Australians by the Japanese. The Japanese wanted to be able to control the Australians whilst they were in the POW camps. In this quote the audience uses their imagination to picture this division of the Australians. The separation of the sexes is to take away the feelings away from the prisoners; to not allow them to communicate or be together is to block the emotions they would normally feel. The Japanese are simply stopping them to feel emotion, to stop this would be to dehumanise the Australians in order to make them do the work, like a robot, just a number to count by the Japanese. Simply given orders by the Japanese, and not to have anything said back, comments or rebellion would lead to death.