The Invisible Hero Character Analysis

Words: 1800
Pages: 8

Good morning/afternoon students of modern popular literature. As you are studying the ways modern popular literature can influence our attitudes, values and beliefs, I have been invited here to explain to you the concept of gaps and silences and will be providing examples of both gaps and silences within the book ‘The Invisible Hero’ by Elizabeth Fensham. Additionally I will share my extract written from a character’s perspective who is silenced throughout the whole book. This book consists of journal entries written by year 9 students who are studying heroes and villains for their English and History assignment. The main characters in this novel are Phillip and Macca; Phillip being the protagonist and Macca being the antagonist. During this …show more content…
The reader has to ‘connect-the-dots’ in the text and assume outcomes by using their own common sense and knowledge. It’s like completing a puzzle with a few pieces missing, you have to assume what that missing pieces looks like to view the full picture. Readers do this unconsciously. An example of a gap in this novel is in Phillip’s journal entry in week 4, after the SOSE incident. It’s a short entry where Philip has written that he refuses to write a whole page. He says Mr Quayle has given him an afterschool detention and two lunchtime detentions with no information on what actually happens in those three detentions. The reader then has to fill in the gap by assuming and using their common sense and knowledge of what a detention looks like to determine what happened in this event.
A silence is where no mention of a character or topic has been put into the text at all. Silences were evident a number of times in ‘The Invisible Hero’ such as the ‘SOSE incident’ event where Phillip Dugan, Sam de Grekh, Mustafa Gulecoglu, and Imogen Webb’s point of view were unheard. For this event the reader had to picture what effect the event had on each character. Characters that were silenced throughout the whole of the book were Mrs Canmore, Mr Quayle, Phil’s Nan, and Charlie
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In this part of the book Macca had hosted a Tree Day at the school to get on the school’s good side and for publicity. When his attention is taken away from him by a group of people in his grade, (Phil, Raphaela, Imogen, Mustafa and Ruth, AKA the Little Red Team) who genuinely have a passion for caring about the environment and for the mystery tree named Little Red, he is devastated.
I’ve chosen to write it from one of Macca’s closest friends, Charlie Cheung’s, perspective because I believe it was an issue that his voice was unheard in the book. Not hearing from him directly was a problem because for the reader to feel more of a connection with the book they needed to have more information on Cheung.
It wasn’t until the very end of the book when the reader found out more about Cheung from Phil’s final entry which questioned the way people viewed this character all along. In this entry we learnt that Charlie did have a good side and what he was doing with his friends was all for the purpose to have a sense of belonging. If we had more of these moments throughout the book it would tell the reader that Cheung may be a deep, thoughtful