Picnic At Hanging Rock
Picnic At Hanging Rock
„The shadow of the Rock has grown darker and longer“.
At the beginning of the book, on St. Valentine’s Day, nineteen girls and their two school mistresses from the Appleyard College leave for a picnic to “Hanging Rock”. The girls are all wearing white and clean clothes. That symbolises purity, cleanness, properness and virginity. Thereby author, Joan Lindsay, tries to show, the contrast between these girls and the hard, brutal and ruthless nature. The atmosphere is very positive- everything and everybody seems to be very beautiful and friendly, but after some time, some indicators show, that there will soon be a big turmoil and many troubles.
One indicator for some troubles is, when Miranda opens the gate and the horses are spooked and birds fly up. Another example which shows that something terrible is going to happen soon, is when Irma is leaving, wearing a stark, red cloak. Red is often associated with danger, anger, and even evil or death and will perhaps cause also big troubles. After some time, four girls, called Miranda, Marion, Irma and Edith, decide to go to explore the „Hanging Rock”, with the result, that only one of them comes back. The other three seem to be disappeared.
In this essay I will describe most of the characters and will briefly explain how the lives of the characters in the book, "Picnic at Hanging Rock" have been affected by the contact with the „Hanging Rock”.
The first character which I will write about is Mrs. Appleyard. She is the owner and headmaster of the College and from the beginning on, she is a quite unfriendly, temperamental, impatient and mean character. She is also the one, which unloads/vents her annoyance on Sara and unfortunately, Sara has to suffer quite badly from that. One example were Mrs. Appleyard treats Sarah quite mean, is when Sarah asks, if she could perform her own poem, instead of another. But Mrs. Appleyard rejects.
Mrs. Appleyard also drinks alcohol. But the effect of the „Hanging Rock” on Mrs. Appleyard is fairly extensive. First, she just drinks very much alcohol but as she realises that the whole situation starts to get out of control, that she will loose her reputation and her college, she goes to the “Hanging Rock” and commits suicide by falling down the “Hanging Rock”.
The next person, called Marion, was also one...