Boldrewood

Boldrewood Robbery Under Arms is the story of the Marston brothers. Australian born Dick and Jim, and their English-born ex-convict father, Ben. Under Ben's influence the brothers take to the lawless path, following the charismatic Captain Starlight. The novel affords many interesting aspects for literary criticism. These range from the character of Captain Starlight to the role of the 'Terrible Hollow' through to the many and varied dualities in theme and character delineation. This paper will demonstrate that Boldrewood's narrative style is equally important in accounting for the attractiveness and durability of Robbery Under Arms. In particular his choice of key words which happen to be Irish language words bring a new dimension into consideration of the novel, reinforcing as they, and the other non-standard English words of the novel do, the overall theme of Freedom and Constraint. Three keys words in the novel are spree, call and world, of which the first two are Irish language words and the use of the last in phrases owes its origin irish, words, novel, language, under, english, australian, through, theme, starlight, speech, role, robbery, phrases, particular, narrative, marston, key, freedom, european, early, dick, character, captain, brothers, australia, arms, world, whose, while, way, visitors, vernacular, variety, varied, upon, underground, two, throughout, take, style, story, standard, spring, spree, spirit, speaking, society, societal, scattered