This video covers The Dream House by Craig Higginson. I'll start with giving you guys some tips on just essay writing in general and on writing essays for The Dream House and then I'll talk a bit about the theme of truth and reconciliation within the novel. So I'm going to start with just this screen. I'm just going to speak and then I'll move on later to look at some previous essays that I've written and to look at some quotations that you might like to use. If you do want access to my quotation lists and to my essays, they're available on Stuvia. My username is Kate I. Jones. So just search on Stuvia, search Dreamhouse Essays or Dreamhouse Quotations or something like that and you should see them pop up. Unfortunately, you do have to pay for them, but I think they will be really useful. I think the most important thing when you're writing an essay is just to know your quotations. A lot of people go in knowing like one or two, maybe three quotations and have to find a way to use them no matter the topic. But I think it's a lot easier to go into the essay knowing 20 or even 30 quotations if you can. What I used to do is I had, you guys will see my quotation list, I had I don't know how many probably 100 quotes there. And divided by theme and then I stuck this list up in my bathroom and when I was brushing my teeth I would just read the quotes and try and learn them and when you write essays as practice you'll start to know which quotes work in which situation and then you'll be able to use them again and again in different essays so that's always helpful and it doesn't have to be a paragraph long quote it can be three words that work that the market can see okay they know their quotation this is good for me I try to incorporate a quote every two sentences, but that is, you don't have to do that much. My teachers always recommended about two quotations a paragraph if you can. Another tip I'd give you is just do as many practice essays as possible. If your school hasn't given you access to practice topics, you can send me a message. My number's up on our Instagram and our Facebook page, and I'll send you a list of quotations that I have, I mean a list of topics for the essay that I have. Just write the essays. If you can, obviously ask your teachers to mark them and look over them for you. But even if... nobody is looking over them, it's still a good idea to practice the essays because you learn which quotations you can use and you can start writing the essay without even looking at the book, without looking at your quotation lists, just writing from the knowledge in your head. What other tips? Oh, I think try start with writing essays on themes that you're confident in so that you know that, for example, the theme of truth, okay, I can write a good truth essay. Then you know that if you get an exam. and they give you the topic of truth, you know you can write an essay like that. But once you've written one or two on a topic that you're comfortable with, try and write essays on topics that you're less comfortable with. Because if you go into the exam and both the topics are topics that you haven't really studied, you're gonna panic. You're not really gonna do so well. So try and write on as many topics as possible for practice. And then I think moving on to the theme of truth and reconciliation. It's definitely, well to me, the most important theme in the book. If you just read the book you'll know. Truth comes up a lot. Another tip would be, make sure you've read the book. Don't just read it in class with your teacher because you're going to be scribbling down notes that she's telling you. You're not going to be paying attention to the storyline. It would be a good idea to read the book once or even twice on your own at home. Then you get an idea of the storyline and the content and you won't be writing about something that didn't happen in your essay or about events that occurred in the wrong order. So I think to have a working knowledge of the content of the book is really important. But sorry. Moving on to the theme of truth. The main idea with truth is that in the Dreamhouse it explores how truth is subjective. There's no one truth. Everybody has a different perception of the events that happened in Dwaleni on the farm. And everybody believes that their events are the correct, that their events are the truth. But what the Dreamhouse explores is that there is no one truth. We can all watch the same event and we see, okay, the dog did kill Grace, but do we see it as the dog is purposefully attacking Grace, mauling her, and that's a reflection of Patricia's views of Grace? Do we see it as, oh, Grace was at fault for taunting the dog? That's the difference between each version of the truth. So if we look at the central event of the novel, which is obviously Grace's death, we can see that there are multiple truths surrounding this event. Patricia initially believes that, that as Richard told her, Grace upset the dog, Grace was provoking the dog, and it tore from its post, and it attacked her, and Grace was at fault. Patricia, one of the quotes I use for this is, Patricia views it as a whole sorry affair. where Grace was taunting the dog. But then we look at Luxmart's opinion, and he sees it as Richard set the dog on Patricia, and Richard is a murderer. Richard was at fault for Grace's death and Patricia was also at fault according to LookSmart because Patricia didn't prioritize Grace's survival. She focused on making sure the seats of her car were clean rather than rushing Grace to the hospital to try and save her. LookSmart thinks that Patricia saw Grace as less than human. That's another quote. And then we see that as Patricia said, looks back on the past, she realizes that she always brushed those events behind her. They weren't an important part of her memory of her life, but for LookSmart this was without a doubt a turning point in his life, where the love of his life was killed. For him, that double beast in the garden is always with him. Because he loved Grace so much, and because he witnessed her violent death. he can't separate this love and this fear. So for him, love and fear are always intertwined. And when he comes back to Dwellene and he discusses it with Patricia, he begins to be able to separate his love and his fear and to realize that Patricia didn't purposefully kill Grace. She did. She acknowledges that perhaps she got it wrong. Perhaps she did focus on her seat rather than on saving Grace. But... She says to Luxemart, I'm sorry, maybe I did get it wrong. And for Luxemart, coming back to Dwellene allows him to gradually begin to heal from that event. So Luxemart's truth about the day of Grace's death is a lot more harsh, a lot more violent than Patricia's is. But as Patricia discusses it with Luxemart, she finds herself... wanting more. She wants to know the full truth. Although I'll kind of put that in quotation marks because we realize that there is no one full truth. We all have our own truths. So then Patricia starts to talk to Beauty. And Beauty is the only one who knows, I'll say the whole story, although again, is there one whole story? Beauty is the one who knows that Grace was pregnant with Richard's child and that Grace, that Richard wasn't raping Grace once off in the barn. He had done it before and he'd done it for money because Grace simply couldn't afford her way, her, to live. She had to do something for money and she found herself sleeping with Richard and looks might never knew this. And of course, when Grace tells Richard that she's pregnant, he set the dog on her and For Beauty, this is a different truth. It's for her, she knows that Richard wasn't doing it out of malice. He was doing it well, he was doing it out of malice. He wasn't doing it because he simply raped Grace once. He was doing it because she was pregnant with his child. So for Beauty, that's another version of the truth. And Patricia learns that she's not doing it because she's pregnant with her this version as well and she begins to see that her previous one where Grace was at fault is wrong but that looks smart truth is not completely correct either. Looks smart leaves without learning this about Grace but Beauty sees it as looks smart couldn't handle this truth. She chose not to tell him. She knew and she chose not to tell him because there's a quote somewhere about this. saying, LookSmart is like a boy in his heart. Beauty believes that LookSmart simply couldn't handle knowing that Grace maybe didn't love him as much as he loved her. So that Grace's death would be the main event that you discuss in your essay if they asked you to talk about different perceptions and the subjectivity of truth, how there's no one truth. But there's also a few other events that you could discuss. So, the second one would be Luxemart's first day fishing. When Luxemart comes back to Dwellene, or Patricia sees a fishing rod, somewhere in the beginning of the novel they talk about a fishing rod, and Patricia remembers Luxemart's first time fishing. He remembers the excitement on Luxemart's face and how he was so excited to catch his fish. but looksmart remembers how he felt like Patricia was forcing him. He felt like her toy monkey with a battery up its ass. That's a quotation. He, because of his views of Patricia, partially affected by Grace's death, he now looks back on his past with a lot more hurt and a lot more mistrust of Patricia. And so he... It's possibly, we don't know, but we could argue that it tainted his memory of the fishing trip and makes him believe that he didn't enjoy it at all, he wasn't excited like Patricia thinks, he was just doing it because she forced him to. And he says, oh yeah, you made me smack its head with a rock and you made me kill this fish. And Patricia's quite alarmed by this violent imagery. And he's trying to invoke this. more harsh, violent story to show Patricia that the memory, her memory is not fully correct. It's not just happiness and sunshine in Lucas March's childhood. He was affected by her, by her behavior and how she felt. To him, she looked like she was always superior and just doing it out of not compassion, but pity almost. So the fishing, the two different perceptions of fishing, Patricia's where she sees his excitement and his enthusiasm and Luxmar's when he remembers the violence and how he feels coerced and forced like a toy monkey with a battery up his ass. Those could be two perceptions you could also look at for the theme of truth. And there's a nice passage somewhere in the novel where it talks about how Patricia, Luxmar talks about his version of the fishing and then Patricia goes, I wonder if I was, I am truly remembering correctly that LookSmart was so excited, or if I'm just taking the images of multiple boys that came to my farm and that went fishing and placing them all in LookSmart's, in a memory of LookSmart because he was the most important child to her. So you could look at that, perhaps see if you can get a quote or two from that. And then the last or another event that you could look at for the subjectivity of truth would be Luxemart's naming. And he, I haven't read this book for a long time, I can't remember the exact storyline, but he says to Patricia, oh no, I've got this English name. My real name is P. Wayne Corsi. Patricia goes no no no your mom named you look smart I remember and at first look smart it said no you just called me look smart my mom actually named me P Y and Corsi but Patricia says no I was there when you were born she said we'll call this child look smart and then he says oh no well she must have done that because she felt kind of pressurized by you to give him a white and English name So you can look at the two different narratives around LookSmart's naming where he thinks his mom named him LookSmart either out of subservience to Patricia or she didn't actually name him LookSmart, she named him P.Y. Nkosi and Patricia merely assumed it was LookSmart. And then you can look at Patricia's view of that where no, LookSmart's mother named him LookSmart. That's what happened, she was at birth. So there's again two narratives, two truths there. So when you're writing an essay on the subjectivity of truth, they probably won't give you, well, maybe with this coronavirus they'll make the topics a bit easier, but in theory they shouldn't give you such an easy topic as just talk about how the truth is subjective. But if they did give you something like that, I'd recommend if you have time to talk about more than one. So the most important without a doubt is Grace's death. If you're going to write an essay about truth and subjectivity, you've got to talk about Grace's death and the different opinions there. But if you've got time and you've got the words, you can try to talk about either Lux Mart's fishing or Lux Mart's naming as well, because the teachers always like another example. It really does boost your mark. And then if we move on to the theme of reconciliation. In the end, Luxembourg and Patricia, they don't fully reconcile. You've got to know that it's not a full reconciliation. They're not best friends after Luxembourg visits, but they're not as angry with each other. Luxembourg's not as full of hate as he was in the beginning when he arrived at Duelini at first to confront Patricia. So it's only a partial reconciliation. But that's okay. A partial reconciliation is hard-earned. They've fought and they've... come together and had gone to agree on some things. And so they had still reconciled, partially. So at first, Luxembourg comes to Delaney to confront Patricia. He wants to bring her guilt, darkness. He wants her to be sorry. But... and he wants her to, he wants to confront her about Grace's death, he wants to tell her that, oh, your husband's a murderer, you're at fault as well, you saw Grace as less than human, you're the reason that I feel like I'm missing an organ, like I can't fully love my wife. He's angry with her, and he wants her to know that he's full of hate. But, as he talks with Patricia, and as they... relive those events in the past he begins to become less full of hate and you see um somewhere in the novel he says to her he so once he's acknowledged or told patricia that he's gonna um take over to eleni that he's part of the project workers on the farm he she says to him will you look after my roses and we've seen already that the rose this is a quite important part of patricia's um farm are quite an important part of her past and she says to him will you make sure they don't bulldoze my roses and he says yes I'll keep your roses exactly as they are but we both know this is well they both know it's a lie I think it says somewhere in the book they both know they're lying but the important part to note is not that he lied to Patricia because he didn't do that out of hate he lied to her to comfort her to say okay I'll look after your roses even though he won't he wants her to feel like satisfied. So you can use the example of him lying to her in order to comfort her, in order to be kind, as an example of how they've begun to reconcile. And another thing he says is, when she says they're moving to Durban, he says, oh maybe my children will come visit, maybe I'll bring my children and we'll come visit you in Durban. they can play with your dollhouse and we can make the dog jump through hoops and they both laugh and again they know he's lying he's not going to come visit them in Durban he's he wants to move on from the part of his past that Patricia is involved in but they both make an effort to seem like they believe that Luxembourg is going to come visit so that's another example of how they lie or they lie to each other to comfort each other and to bring healing and it kind of shows again relating to truth it could show that we can make our own truth we can make ourselves believe something that we maybe know is actually not the truth and what's they're gonna say look smart when he leaves he says humbug athlete and instead of storming in the house and as he did in the beginning and being full of hate, he leaves with a kind of satisfaction, even though he doesn't know the full truth. He's learned enough from their discussion of the past to realize that he can now move on with his life. Even though Grace is always going to be an important part of his past, he can now begin to move forward and to heal. And he can heal his relationships with himself, with Patricia, with his wife, with his children. And Patricia likewise. She can see that she can begin to heal. heal with herself as well. In the beginning of the book she wasn't confident in her skin, she didn't love herself, if you could say that, and by the end she becomes more satisfied with that. And again linking to truth, you can see how Patricia has grown because initially there's a quote somewhere that says something like, she sees the truth as something that only children believe in, like fairies and I can't remember the exact quote, I'll show you when I go to my quotation list. But by the end, she's begun to acknowledge that there's a mystery that must run through all things. That's a quote. And Beauty says to her, you must find the truth for yourself. So she realizes that each person must find the truth for themselves. And that's quite important because she now believes that there is a truth, but that we don't all have the same truth. And so that's almost her reconciliation with herself, which is another aspect of the theme of reconciliation. So I think those are the main ideas that she could talk about for the theme of truth and reconciliation. And, oh, maybe one other thing is how Patricia... has begun to acknowledge that the past is important. I'm going to do a separate video on the theme of the past. But one thing you could talk about is how she realizes that she has to dig up Rachel, her daughter, and bring her with to Durban because she has to take ownership of her past. She has to acknowledge her mistakes and her hardships and she can't just constantly look forward. She has to acknowledge the past as well. So if we have a look at some essays. This is the essay I wrote on objective and subjective truths. And I spoke, obviously I had an introduction, I spoke about Grace's death, and then I spoke about Lux Mart's fishing. I then spoke about how Patricia learns more of the truth from beauty, and how she learns that the truth is subjective and we can't all know the truth. A quote here, sometimes a small amount of the truth is enough to satisfy a person's appetite. That's a beauty you realize is that and that's quite important when we show that LookSmart lives without the truth but with enough of the truth to satisfy his appetite. And then here's a little paragraph on reconciliation. I'm not going to go through other essays, you can find them on Stuvia. Send me a message if you're having difficulty finding them. I'll send you the link. But if we have a look at some quotes. I've got these quotes divided into theme and I'll do a video on some of the other main themes in the next few days. But for now, if we just look at the theme of truth. Beauty has knowledge inside her eyes smoldering like a fire. She, Beauty knows the truth, but she she doesn't feel the need, like LookSmart, to force the truth on other people. To tell, like LookSmart comes to Patricia and says to her, listen, Richard murdered Grace. You're at fault. He's at fault. It's not what you think where Grace was taunting the dog. But Beauty knows the full truth, but she doesn't need to tell everyone. She kind of has moral authority because she didn't make any mistakes. Oh, here, this is a quote I was talking about earlier, where Patricia says this, as though the truth is a concept only children believe in, like dragons and houses made out of bread and cake. So at first, Patricia thinks that, what is truth? There is no truth. But we realize that there's not no truth. There's just no one truth. There are many truths. And in the end, Patricia begins to acknowledge this. So how looks smart? accuses Patricia of viewing Grace as subhuman. He says, you viewed her as if she was slightly less than human. That's quite a good quote to just pop in. You can just say, less than human. You can say, LookSmart accuses Patricia of viewing Grace as less than human. Perfect quote. They'll be happy with that. Power lies with those who withhold their information from others. LookSmart says that, but it's kind of ironic because... he unloads all his information onto Patricia. He almost tries to relieve himself of the burden. And he does, partially, but he still carries the burden of Grace is Dead, but so does Patricia now. But Beauty, she has power in knowing that that's the fullest story, if not the full story, because there is no full story. But she doesn't abuse her power. She doesn't... march around as if she owns the place because she knows the most. This is the quote I was talking about, enough truth to satisfy a person's appetite. You can read through these quotes as well. Patricia said she finds she likes him for his lies far better than she likes him for his truths. That relates to what I said where he wanted the truth because he wanted to make her feel guilty, make her feel... evil and hurt, but he lies to make her feel better, to comfort her. So you can use this quote in your reconciliation discussion. Patricia acknowledges there's a mystery that must run through all things. This relates to how there's no one truth. And Luxmark carries gaps inside of him. He doesn't even know they're there. He doesn't know what he doesn't know. He doesn't know that Grace was pregnant, that Grace had been paying Richard for money, but for him that's enough. He doesn't need to know that. But you can talk about, you can simply use the quote, the gaps that look smart carried away, or the gaps that look smart carried away, or even the gaps that look smart carried. Something simple. something that will work in your essay and that your markers will see, okay, they do know some quotes. And then just the rest of the truth theme. Here, this is what LookSmart says. LookSmart says, I mean, Beauty says, LookSmart is like a boy in his heart. He will not be able to hear a thing like that. He will not be able to hear the full truth. And Beauty knows this. Beauty knows that. what looks not knows is enough for him. He has his own story. And then Beauty tells Patricia to find the truth for yourself. So often, I pretty much use this almost every essay I wrote, Patricia endeavors to find the truth for herself. And I know it's yourself, but I just put this in square brackets and I write herself. And we can link this to South Africa where everyone must find their own version of the truth about. the past about apartheid which is quite a big almost theme or sub theme in the novel and everybody must find the truth that allows them to best move forward and rebuild their lives and not constantly focus on the past um and then if we quickly look at the theme of reconciliation patricia says maybe i got it wrong this is very important that she begins to acknowledge that she wasn't perfect, that her past is worth looking back at, and she must take responsibility for her mistakes in the past. And here's where Luxembourg lies to her. He says, I'll keep them exactly as they are, talking about her roses. He says, wishing her well, wishing her to be comforted as he leaves, rather than... when he started, all he wanted for her was darkness and guilt, and he wanted her to be sorry. And she talks about, Patricia talks about how she knows that she chose this, that she helped create this, how she helped create the darkness, the miserable aspects of Duolene, and she realizes that it didn't simply happen around her, she played a role in it. She didn't make a conscious effort to. be happy, to smile, to learn from her mistakes and move on. So she becomes more, she starts to hold herself accountable. Again, she feels responsible for this event, for John's suicide. John's suicide isn't a very important event in the novel, but it can be useful to use this, where she... feels responsible for John's suicide in a way. And this is because Luxemont has taught her that she must feel responsibility. She must start to hold herself accountable. Right at the end of the novel, it says, they remain little more to each other than a silhouette as they drive past each other. This is quite important because the full truth is not between them. They don't have full clarity. They can't see each other perfectly, see each other's viewpoints perfectly, but They can see enough of each other to begin to build a reconciliation. And that's where it says here each of them keeps their peace. They no longer need to fight and bicker because they've learned from each other. So I'm going to do a few videos in the next few days for some other themes. I'll do a video on the past. I'll probably do a video on language and the power of language. I might do a video on the dream houses I'll see how much time I have and and you can just have a look at these quotes there you can find them on stuvia but yeah if you guys have any questions or if you'd like to get hold of these notes send me a message I'll help you out with questions and I'll send you a link to my studio account to buy these notes