"Outsiders are victims of themselves and society" What is your view? use the texts you have studied ("The Floating World" by John Romeril and "Death Be Not Proud" by John Donne)and one other text.

Outsider Essay

An outsider is a person who has been exiled or excluded from society because they are

different in appearance, beliefs, background, behaviour, or mental health. Outsiders may

choose isolation but their victimisation is carried out by society. Romeril's Les Harding is

deliberately portrayed as one of society's innocent victims in contrast with Shakespeare's

murderous Lady Macbeth And John Donne's pathetic death. In John Romeril's surreal

comic tragedy "The Floating World" he uses a narrator to relate his thoughts about the

degeneration of Australian society to the audience, using Les Harding's disintegrating

sanity as a metaphor for this. Romeril portrays Les as a victim of society's materialism

and of the effects of war. John Donne paints death as an outsider in his metaphysical

poem "Death Be Not Proud" by rebelling against the traditional forms of a sonnet and

using three quatrains and a couplet.

Lady Macbeth by George Cattermole.

The sleepwalking Lady Macbeth

Sarah Siddons in the Sleepwalking Scene

Donne also uses a loose rhythm to portray death as

being outside the societal rules, but his strict rhyming pattern controls death. Lady

Macbeth in Shakespeare's "Macbeth" is frustrated by the pressure to appear feminine in a

patriarchal society and uses her husband to break society's rules. Ironically she becomes

isolated from her husband; driven mad by a guilt which she has created for herself,

unlike Les of "The Floating World", who is driven mad by a guilt caused by the values of

his society.

In "The Floating World", Romeril attempts to put a persons mind on stage, much like

Shakespeare does in "Macbeth". Romeril does this to examine how reality and society

can cause people to go 'insane'. His theory is that there are no insane people, but that

society itself is insane. He attempts to convey to his audience through the use of...