Life_and_Crimes_of_Harry_Lavender

Composers use distinctive voices in their texts to enable us to shape our understanding of characters and their situation. Marele Day, in her novel The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender (LACOHL), uses the literary form of hardboiled detective fiction to confront our perception of the roles of men and women in society and presents us with characters that use distinctive voices in different situations revealing much about themselves and their relationship with others. Day focuses on three main distinctive voices which are the voice of two narrators, being Claudia Valentine and Harry Lavender, the voice of social criticism, with constant reference to Sydney and the female voice, the voice of Claudia Valentine a strong female detective. The effects of distinctive voices are also explored in the article A Little Walk for Jem by Chris Hampson, NBC news. While the prevalent themes in the core text are gender roles, corruption and resistance, Hampson explores the opposite themes of pain and healing. Each of the composers of these texts effectively use distinctive voices to present their ideas and reveal different ways of looking at the world. Marele Day has created powerful characters who are clearly defined by their distinctive voices and these characters fulfil their roles within the novel of the crime fiction genre. She utilizes crime fiction genre to create a unique and strong voice of the two narrators, Claudia Valentine and Harry Lavender. Day employs a first person narrative representing both the distinctive voices; however, the italicised chapters portraying Lavender’s voice help to provide dramatic irony and to involve the responder in Claudia’s investigation. The voice of Claudia Valentine is unique and original, she is an independent and strong female investigator living and working in Australia’s largest city, Sydney. Day has created a distinct voice that is appealing to the reader. This voice is believable because of its lack of formality as she often speaks in colloquial language like “smooth as a baby’s bum” and uses the elongation of vowels like “Yairs” and “Gawd” that Australian readers are familiar with. She also adapts her language and adopts a different relationship when she is talking to different people in order to get information. This is evident when she speaks with Mrs Levack using language implying that she is a policeman when she says “anything you think might help us with our enquiries.” Marele Day depicts Claudia’s sense of humour through the use of puns in the opening sentence of the novel, which indicates Day’s fondness for playing with words: "I woke up feeling like death. Ironically appropriate given what the day had in store." By focusing on Claudia’s manner of communication and word choice Day conveys a distinctive persona who adapts to her circumstances. Marele Day uses distinctive voices in The Life and Crimes of Harry Lavender to subvert the traditional hardboiled detective genre with a female voice and therefore challenge both the patriarchy and the masculine stereotype. There is the reversal of roles in the first paragraph of the opening chapter when she says “there was a good looking blonde in there as well” where the traditional male hardboiled detective is subverted by a feminist hardboiled detective. Day created a realistic female hero who is neither used by nor exploited by men. She does not carry a gun and relies on her physical fitness, “her legs are her best weapon.” Her fast paced, witty dialogue and sharp actions outpace her male adversaries. However the female voice of Claudia also presents the reader with a more romantic view, which can be seen through her use of romantic imagery to describe Steve Angell’s eyes: “with eyes like the pools you find beneath waterfalls.” This imagery is symbolic of her romantic attachment to Steve Angell and the attraction that she has towards him. The themes of corruption and the reversal of gender roles that are explored in Harry Lavender contrast with the themes of pain and suffering in the article A Little walk for Jem by Chris Hampson. The third person narrative voice is a distinctive voice that describes Jem and his mothers search for closure after his violent death in Afghanistan. However both Anna Little and her husband provide a first person perspective of their emotions. While the composer’s voice dominates the article and deals with the pain of Jeremy’s loss, her first person view at the end of the article symbolises the closure she achieves after completing the journey and through the healing language contrasted with the violent imagery at the start of the article. The tone used by Anna Little in her concluding statement “I am no longer the person I was, perhaps this walk will help me understand the person I’ve become” is symbolic of her sense of closure and of coming to terms with the acceptance of her loss. Hampson in the narrative voice conveys the distinctive voices of the separate journeys that are undertaken by a freelance sound recordist who lost his life covering the Iraq war and the voice of the mother following the last journey of her son. The journey of Jem which was completed in a “dark and dangerous night” is contrasted to the Ana’s journey which be “a long walk ahead.”