Introduction: The fictional book Wild Pork and Watercress shows us how the New Zealand bush is a way to escape society and also creates a vivid setting for the characters. The Author, Barry Crump used language features throughout the text to create a vivid setting for one purpose only. Paint a picture in the readers heads to help them place themselves into the main characters shoes. This technique is very common among writers and is popular for many reasons. One reason being that it is a much better way to describe characters and locations through someone else’s eyes.

P1: The types of language features Barry Crump used in the text consist of colloquiums and idioms. A colloquium is a type of informal language like slang that is native to a certain countries way of talking. A idiom is a type of sarcasm where a sentence says something but doesn’t actually refer to the real thing. For eg: “he was build like a brick wall”. These are used to represent the New Zealand slang and ways we speak. These are in the novel to help us feel more at home while reading and also help convey the idea that the bush is a place of familiarity. This type of language is used to make the reader understand the vivid setting as a familiar place. A familiar place is somewhere you can feel safe and know your way around. If Barry Crump had used other types of language features such as clinical or cold language features, us readers would not be as likely to feel that Uncle Hec and Ricky had found a safe place to call home. If Crump had used clinical language features, not only would the novel be as interesting but also as said above, the readers wouldn’t be so confident that the characters knew what they were doing and that they were lost in a sense. Colloquiums and idioms are also used in the text to help us understand more about Ricky the character and how he relates to the bush. They are positioned all through the text to make New Zealand readers have good laugh and also make foreign readers understand the ways we speak and how different it is compared to other countries. Some good quotes that show this are “Skinny old bag of bones”. Foreign readers may not understand this as New Zealanders do but it is also a learning experience.

P2: Crumps use of first person narrative helps us to understand the contrast between Rickys life before the bush and what his life becomes. Ricky had a tough life before coming to Hec and Bella’s farm. Crump manages to highlight many real world problems and issues. Writing from Ricky’s point of view helps us to see the setting in comparison to his life before the bush. Some examples of this are the stories Ricky tells about his rough time during school and not having a real family and home. He explains how he was moved around a lot while he was younger and growing up and how school was harder and more complicated for him. “they shifted me around from class to class, trying to work out where fat Maori boys what can’t play rugby or learn simple stuff fitted in”. Although this is just a fictional book, stuff like this actually happens within the real world and more specifically New Zealand cities and towns. Kids with difficulty learning are usually moved around a lot and are treated differently. Kids are also neglected in schools which motivates them to also give up on learning. Not only learning, kids are also pretty much expected to play rugby, especially Maori boys. It is a well known thing that has been happening for years, and also since most of the all blacks are Maori, it is even more of an expectation for them to join up. This is I sign of racism and it is happening all through New Zealand. Unfortunately a lot of kids go through this especially at boarding schools that are rugby specified. It has turned into an expectation that peer pressures kids into playing a game they don’t want to or even like. This is just a couple of the real life problems that this book shines some light on.

The use of first person narrative used by Barry Crump is a great way to place us readers into the characters shoes and also help us create a picture in our heads to help us understand what the characters are seeing and feeling. The use of First person narrative is to give us readers a sense that we are actually int he novel ourselves, experiencing everything that they are feeling. The reason this technique is so popular is it makes almost all novels page turners. Something about experiencing things characters are doing while we are actually just reading in our bed for example is just more interesting that just reading what someone did. [WHY does Crump do this in this novel – to make us see the bush from Ricky’s point of view and to help us see the richness of his descriptions of the vivid setting – this make the place more familiar and helps build a sense of safety]Some great examples of Barry Crump performing this in the novel are when Ricky is just experiencing the farm lifestyle for the first time. Everything was quite new to him and he did an excellent job at describing everything to the readers to help us see what Ricky was seeing. Not only in this scene, but all through the book, we knew exactly what everything looked and felt like to the characters. Another example is when Ricky is exploring the bush with Uncle Hec and their dogs. Ricky is still pretty new to this and explains how the bush was neither his friend or enemy. It was just a large haven for them to escape in and Barry Crump allows us to picture it perfectly using his first person narrative. Other than First person narrative, Barry Crump also uses other language features such as similes, personification, adjectives and many others. Other Writers can all do this but In my opinion, Barry Crump did this especially well with helping us see and feel everything Ricky was. I feel the novel wouldn’t be what it is today without the first person narrative, similes, adjectives, colloquiums and every other language feature he used.

Metaphors and similes are essential in a novel in order to help us understand more about a certain part, feelings, emotions, scenery, thoughts and other things. A metaphor can provide a stronger description with a lasting impact. A simile uses the reader’s imagination while also getting the information across. They help the readers visualise the scene and scenery better and make the text more subtle to read. These help us readers visualise the situation the characters are in much easier and helps us understand the vivid setting. These help us by building the mood of a story, creating, mystery, suspense and even conflict. Barry Crump’s use of metaphors and similes help us understand the purpose of a vivid setting and how beneficial they can be. Crump used a great variety of metaphors and similes, all with a purpose of explaining something to us readers. I think Barry Crump decided to use these a lot to clarify what the purpose of a vivid setting and what it adds to the storyline. In my opinion, he did this quite well and for me, I could visualise everything he was explaining. So, to conclude this, similes and metaphors add a lot to the text, especially with creating and building a vivid setting.

In conclusion, I believe Barry Crump has achieved the goal of creating a vivid setting within the book Wild Pork and Watercress. The language features he used really helped paint a vivid picture within our minds and helped create a safe haven for the main characters as they flee society and head into the bush. The bush in the novel acted very much as a safe place for them to take refuge in. Comparing the bush to the society/social welfare system they had just left, really shows us how comfortable they become in the bush and how it acts as a ‘second home’ for them. The language features that I found most suitable were his use of first person narrative, personification, metaphors and similes. With all these being used throughout the text, his goal of creating a vivid setting within the text has been achieved.