Submitted by: Submitted by abassanetti
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Category: English Composition
Date Submitted: 04/17/2010 09:15 PM
Discuss Goldsworthy’s use of contrast to explore the central issues of Maestro.
‘Peter Goldsworthy’s novel, ‘Maestro’, is a ‘rights of passage’ story. ‘Maestro’ tells of the life experiences of the protagonist, Paul Crabbe, in this ficticious ‘memoir’. Goldsworthy has used a life heavy with contrasts to accelerate Paul’s learning experiences. Through Paul’s interactions with various characters and settings, Paul is able to learn the difference between love and lust, and about both life and music. Through Keller, Paul is able to learn the gulf between genius and the ‘second rate’. Goldsworthy has used contrast to enable Paul to reflect his success and failings and continue life ‘Endlessly, effortlessly’. Darwin is a town of ‘booze, blow and blasphemy’.
Darwin is so far removed from the cultural ‘veneer’ of Vienna, that it is here that Keller can remain living out his spiritual death, undisturbed. Because of this heavy contrast, Paul is able to be taught ‘all that you were able to learn’ from Keller about both life and music. Darwin also becomes the backdrop to Paul’s first sexual excursions. The rich, exotic fecund air parallels the almost uncontrollable hormones bubbling in Paul’s body.
From Keller, Paul is to learn to be suspicious of the facade, ‘never trust the beautiful’, implicit in the opening statement ‘First Impressions? Misleading of course’. Through Keller’s ‘libretto’, Keller tries to teach Paul of the fragility of the human condition, he sees his ‘textbooks’ as an ‘operatic’ testimony to the stupidity of the human race, he finds them to be ‘a kind of poetry’, ‘an ugly untrustworthy poetry’. Keller’s aphorisms are to teach Paul more than he realises at such a young and arrogant age ‘Every fish has its depth’. These early days of Paul’s life spent in Darwin, allow Paul to realise the difference between true love and lust, and the importance of ‘I loved him in many ways – but I love Rosie more’. Through Paul’s sexual experience with Megan, he...