Rainbows End And Rosemary Dobson's Poem Cock Crow

Jane Harrison’s play Rainbows End and Rosemary Dobson’s poem Cock Crow comprehensively explore how the process of discoveries may result in new understandings by exploring the characters who's values and sense of self is challenged.

In Rainbow’s End, Dolly discovers how important culture and family are through her encounters with Errol as they have differentiated views, which results in a new understanding of her collective identity. Errol declaratively insists that Dolly should move to the city:

‘ You should come to the city… you'd like the city’.

His assertive tone that Dolly would ‘like the city’ reveals a presumptive attitude in regards to Dolly’s feeling and wishes. The breakdown in communication challenges her values, as she is

When Gladys attends the council meeting she discovers the prejudice by the attitude of white society in their exclusionary exclamations:

‘ Eject this interloper…Eject her!’

Gladys’ response acknowledges the new understanding of her indigenous identity in her assertive tone:

‘ I’m not an interloper- I belong here-this is my land!’

The stage directions represent the enduring struggle Gladys has been challenged with throughout the play in which she has to fight” to be heard, much like the necessity to constantly fight in an attempt to fit in. Gladys’s courage to address the racism, shows a new understanding of white society which is shown through her changing aspire to be a part of white culture:

“Where’s my white gloves?’

In Cocks Crow, the persona has a renewed understanding of her family duties and her own desires. She says:

‘And I that stood between denied’

which alludes to the idea that she denied the chance to discover herself because she was always between ‘my mother and daughter'. However, we see a new perception in the following