Queen Kat, Carmel & St Jude

Throughout part one of Carmel’s chapter in the book Queen Kat Carmel & St Jude Get a Life it becomes quite apparent that Carmel has unusually low self-esteem and she seems to feel atypically nervous on the subject of socially interacting with unfamiliar people. Just one of many examples of this behaviour is when Carmel is at her University, “There was a large courtyard filled with young people laughing and chatting. My first instinct was to flee.” This quotation suggests that she has an inclination towards becoming overwhelmed by crowds of people resembling her age. As soon as the first paragraph, Carmel displays evidence of her anxiety, for instance when she arrives at Katerina’s house in Melbourne she recalls thinking, “The crushing sense of doom that filled me when our car pulled into the kerb was not a new feeling.” The reader slowly develops a sense of Carmel’s self-hate as she constantly puts herself d

Carmel seems to perceive herself as fat and ugly, for example she describes how she feels when she meets Katerina, “I felt her eyes sweep over me. I flushed with shame, knowing that my clothes I had been happy with back in Manella now seemed ridiculous.”This quotation is exhibiting self-doubt and again shows how Carmel develops into a self-conscious character when confronted by unfamiliar people. However when Carmel becomes friendly with someone she tends to loose her self-consciousness and ‘open up’-she is able to talk freely. This process shows Carmel changes her own character for her own benefit, but as quickly as she begins to open up she can just as speedily ‘shut up’-she becomes her old quiet and shy self. As an example, when Carmel is socialising with her University acquaintances and begins to enjoy herself, she becomes completely silent when Paul, a boy she particularly looks up to, enters the room.

Readers are able to gather that Carmel is often very conscious of everything about herself including her family. This is evident on page 42 of the text when Carmel quotes, “I was so aware of how dad and I looked in front of this beautiful creature (Ka

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