TEACHING UNIT ON

DOPPELGANGER

By Amanda Kaye with

Michael Parker
© Amanda Kaye
EXPLANATION FOR TEACHERS: WHY
STUDY IT?
Why study Michael Parker’s Doppelganger? There are as many different reasons as there are
classes to teach.
• Maybe because it is a thrilling page-turner that will engage everyone from reluctant
readers to the very able.
• Maybe because you are looking for something new that deals in a complex way with
the issues of good and evil, moral responsibility, identity and personal choices.
• Maybe because you are looking for an accessible, yet rich, text for a comparative
study with a year 10 class. Doppelganger could be used as a ‘transformation’ text
with Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, or in a more thematic comparative study with
Golding’s Lord of the Flies or perhaps even Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse
Now.
• Maybe because this unit has done all of the preparation work for you (even
outcomes).

The qualities of Doppelganger are perhaps best summed up in the opening paragraph of the
‘Cover Book Review’ that Magpies magazine (Vol 21) gave the novel. It stated:
‘Parker’s dysfunctional society, where anything soft is treated with contempt, is characterized by
the same energy and vitality of The Lord of the Flies or The Chocolate War. His shadow world
that co-exists with present day Sydney is so convincingly rendered that reading this novel is a
compelling and chilling adventure. What makes it an even more fascinating experience is that it
also explores the concept of guilt by association.’

Different types of classes.

This unit has been developed to help classroom teachers to get the most out of teaching Michael
Parker’s Doppelganger in a variety of contexts and to classes of differing abilities.

a) If you are using this with a mixed ability class, you might find the following activities to be
central:
• Doppelganger and you: Personal Response
• The Jerry Springer Show
• The Website.

b) If you are teaching a high ability class or are looking for enrichment activities you might find
the following activities to be central:
• Links to Heart of Darkness
• ‘The Big Issues’
• Historical Hypothetical Links
• Deconstructing Doppelganger

c) If you are teaching a less academically able class you might find the following activities to be
central:
• Make your mask
• Music For Doppelganger
• Class Discussion Study Guide Responses.
© Amanda Kaye
The table format below is meant to organise the activities as a unit. It has not stipulated the
number of lessons for each activity as different schools have lessons that go from between 35 to
90 minutes. If all of the activities were completed, it would take about thirty periods of forty five
minutes each. We fully anticipate, though, that teachers will pick and choose activities.

© Amanda Kaye
 DOPPELGANGER SUGGESTED PROGRAMME
Activity and Classroom Activities Resource Activity Suggested
Outcomes Link Type Student
Homework.
INTRODUCING • Consider the five stimulus questions that ask about Class discussion Read the novel and complete
BLM 1 Listening to a reading. study guide questions as
how you would react in certain situations (e.g. in a
THE NOVEL war, having to kill a ‘bad’ person to save a ‘good’ instructed.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: person).
5, 9 • Work in groups to come up with tentative ideas for
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: these issues.
6.1, 6.5 • Read and discuss the prologue.

RESEARCHING • Read provided material about Doppelgangers. BLM 2 Research Online research.
• Look up suggested websites about Doppelgangers BLM 3 Reading
DOPPELGANGERS online.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Discuss the process of using the web to research.
2, 8. • Research Jung’s archetypal characters online.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: • Answer provided questions (a-e)
6.5, 6.11
CLASS • Discuss questions from the study guide. This can be BLM 4 Writing Complete the study guide
done as Discussion questions as directed.
DISCUSSION OF ¾ Initial discussion
STUDY GUIDE ¾ Responses to homework
¾ Group work
RESPONSES ¾ Selected in-depth study of chapters.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes:
1, 4
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.5, 6.8.

MUSIC FOR • Divide students into groups. BLM 5 Listening Collect the music samples.
• Choose three contrasting scenes from the book and Speaking
DOPPELGANGER select music for these scenes.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Present your choices of the music to the director of a

© Amanda Kaye
2, 6. film version of Doppelganger.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.1, 6.3.
CLOSE ANALYSIS • Review questions to be analysed. BLM 6 Writing N/A
• Read aloud the passage about hunting the boy in the
OF PASSAGE train tunnels.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Discuss and answer the provided questions 1-12.
1, 4.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.5, 6.7.
CHARACTER • Divide the class into groups. N/A Group work Prepare the visual
• Each group should cover one of the following Visual representation representation
PROFILES characters: Josh, Andrew/Kurtz, Melanie and Close study of text.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: Skinner.
5, 6. • Your group needs to choose a way of visually
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: representing what you have learnt about these
6.5, 6.8. characters.
• Each group should present their representation in
five minutes or less to the class as a whole
explaining why have made the choices that they
have.

LINKS TO HEART
• Read provided background to Joseph Conrad and Heart BLM 7 Discussion Summary questions (d-h)
OF DARKNESS of Darkness
NSW: Stage Five • Compare p226 of Doppelganger with the provided Individual reading.
Outcomes:2, 8. extract from Heart of Darkness that focus on at
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: travelling up a tunnel. Individual Writing.
6.7, 6.6. • Analyse the section in which Kurtz reveals himself to
Andrew (p.256) and compare it to the provided extracts
from Conrad.
• Answer the summary questions a-h about Kurtz and
Doppelgangers.

HISTORICAL • Read the activity about Hitler as a child. BLM 8 Discussion N/A
• Discuss as a whole group what you would do and what
HYPOTHETICAL relevance this has to the novel.
LINKS.
NSW: Stage Five

© Amanda Kaye
Outcomes:5, 9.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.5.
DELETED SCENE • Read the provided deleted scene BLM 9 Reading Finish the provided questions.
• Discuss why this scene was deleted and whether it Discussion
FROM BOOK. should have been deleted. Writing
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Answer provided questions a-j
2, 3.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.5, 6.6.

DOPPELGANGER • As a class review the four questions. BLM 10 Writing N/A

• Instruct the students to write their responses to two of Discussion
AND YOU: these questions. They should be prepared in advance to
PERSONAL SHARE their response to one of the questions and to
RESPONSE keep their responses to the other answer PERSONAL.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Collectively discuss the questions in class.
1, 9.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.5,
NARRATIVE • Get students to consider the effect of a first person N/A Writing Finish scene from Josh’s point
narrator vs a third person narrator. of view.
VOICE • Reread the prologue. Change some of it into third
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: person. What is the effect of this change?
2, 4. • Reread the section in which the ‘other’ Josh meets
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: Andrew for the first time (50-1). Write this from Josh’s
6.5, 6.7. point of view. For some help with this, reread (p236).

© Amanda Kaye
THE BLURB • Look at the several steps through which the blurb on the BLM 11 Viewing Write your own blurb.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: back cover went in order to arrive at the version that Reading
4, 6. finally appeared. Writing
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: • Question why the changes were made and whether they
6.5, 6.11. were improvements.
• Write your own blurb.
• Look at the animated internet teaser that was produced
as part of a viral campaign to promote the book.
Compare it to a written blurb. Look at how the
technology affects the meaning. (The animation can be
found at michaelparker.com.au)

PITCH A FILM • Form production companies groups of up to four people BLM 12 Viewing Complete the transition to
• Pitch a film version by describing why people would Discussion another genre using the same
VERSION OF come to see the film, its premise and the actors you Listening premise and characters.
DOPPELGANGER would cast
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Write an extra scene that finishes the story in the ‘real’
5, 11. world
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: • Change the genre of the film to something else (e.g.
6.1, 6.12. ‘romantic comedy’)
• Discuss how your group worked together. What could
have been improved?

THE BIG ISSUES • Discuss in a class ‘round table’ the issues that are raised BLM 13 Discussion
in the provided questions. Focus on Writing
a) Plot based ¾ Whether ‘evil’ exists and what makes it so.
b) General ¾ Whether Andrew is guilty of ‘murder’ of the boy
NSW: Stage Five ¾ Human nature.
Outcomes:7, 9.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.5.
MAKE YOUR • Design your own mask that Kurtz would wear in the BLM 14 Designing N/A
Startday/Enday ceremonies Making/Production
MASK • Design (and make) a mask that represents both Andrew
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: and Kurtz.
2, 5.
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
N/A.
THE JERRY • Use the provided setup materials to prepare and host BLM 15 Acting Prepare own character dossier
your own ‘Jerry Springer’ show. (This is an advanced Speaking in preparation for the

© Amanda Kaye
SPRINGER SHOW version of ‘hotseating’. Reading programme.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Each student has to prepare to act out a character and be
7, 11. ready to defend him/herself against the probing
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: questions of the television host.
6.1, 6.4.
DECONSTUCTING • Use the provided questions and information about the BLM 16 Discussion N/A
production and reception of Doppelganger in order to
DOPPELGANGER: consider the text through the following lenses:
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: ¾ Religion
6, 10. ¾ Class
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: ¾ Race
6.6, 6.10 ¾ Gender
¾ Postcolonial
¾ Genre

INFLUENCES: • Use the website michaelparker.com.au to read about N/A Research Read or review one of the core
texts that were influential to Parker in his writing of the Reading influences.
LINKS TO TEXTS novel.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Review one of the following core influences:
1, 8. Lord of the Flies
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: The Chocolate War.
6.7, 6.5. Blade runner (film)

THE WEBSITE • Go to michaelparker.com.au michaelparker Viewing N/A

NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Review the site, paying particular attention to: .com.au Surfing
2,3. ¾ Additional deleted scenes
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes: ¾ The soundtrack album
6.5, 6.10. ¾ The teaser/animation
¾ Suggested further reading and viewing
• Ask students how the site enriches their understanding
of Doppelganger. Focus also on whether the fact that
the material is on a website rather than a booklet
increases their enjoyment? What insights can a website
give that a booklet cannot?
ESSAYS: • Plan essays. Brainstorm/mindmap, structure BLM 17. Reading Complete essay.
NSW: Stage Five Outcomes: • Time in class to write essay. Writing.
1, 4
Victoria Level 6 Outcomes:
6.5. 6.8.

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 1

Introducing
Doppelganger

Before your teacher gives you the novel you should consider the following
questions and discuss your responses to these questions in small groups. The small
groups could report back to the class for a larger discussion if you have time.

• Could it ever be okay to kill someone ‘evil’ in order to save someone ‘good’
from death? (e.g a serial murderer to save a full time charity worker). How
would you define ‘evil’ and ‘good’? What if the ‘evil’ person was someone you
knew well and the ‘good’ person was someone you hardly knew at all?

• Do you think you could kill to protect someone you loved, like your mum or
dad, or your best friend? If you did this, how would you feel about it? Would
you have a clear or troubled conscience? Why/ why not?

• Have you ever known anyone who has been bullied or abused? If you knew
about the abuse or bullying while it was still going on, did you do something
about it or not? Why?

• Do you find any difference between a bully at your school and a teenager who
has killed someone (not in self defence) during a civil war that is going on in
Africa at the moment?

• Is violence ever right? Explain or qualify your position.

At the end of the lesson the prologue should be read out loud by the teacher.

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 2

DOPPELGANGERS

What is a Doppelganger?
A Doppelganger is someone’s hidden twin. It comes from the German, in which ‘Doppel’
means double and ‘ganger’ is close to ‘walker’. As Melanie in Doppelganger says: “It’s a
double... Usually the evil version. It's an old German story... my grandmother used to tell me
about it. You have to go into a church to stop them connecting with you and possessing your
soul or something like that.”

Different cultures have done different things with the idea of the Doppelganger. In some
cultures your double is benign. It gives you advice and discusses your life with you (but you
have to watch out because the information is not always reliable). But usually your
Doppelganger is a bit more ominous and scary than this.

They are often harbingers of doom and destruction. Sometimes they are there to replace you.
Sometimes they come to take your soul. Famous historical figures such as Queen Elizabeth
and Percy Shelley claimed to have seen their Doppelgangers shortly before they died. In
Shelley’s case, his Doppelganger phantom pointed toward the Mediterranean Sea. Shortly
afterwards, Shelly was drowned in a sailing accident on the Mediterranean. Your
Doppelganger often cannot be seen by everyone; only members of your immediate family, or
perhaps only you.

Doppelgangers often have no reflection in a mirror and they cast no shadow either. In some
cultures people still cover the mirrors in their houses when someone dies. Although the
reason for why this was done has been forgotten by many, it was once thought that the
double/reflection of anyone going by the mirror could be stolen by the dead person and taken
off to the afterlife.

According to another old belief, if you want to find out who is going to die in the next year,
all you have to do is go and stand by a church door on April 24th (just before the feast of St
Mark). You will see the shadowy Doppelgangers of all the soon to be deceased people filing
into the church. Of course, if you see your own double go through, you know you haven’t got
very long on this mortal coil.

Doppelgangers have been used in different ways in literature over the ages, such as Edgar
Allen Poe’s story William Wilson and Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys. Recently, films such as
© Amanda Kaye
 Doppelganger with Drew Barrymore and television such as Twin Peaks exploited the
concept (although in the case of the Drew Barrymore film, all that happened was that the evil
twin turned up and was nasty to all of Drew Barrymore’s friends).

For more stories of Doppelgangers (and the phenomenon of bilocation) have a look at
http://paranormal.about.com/library/weekly/aa111102a.htm

© Amanda Kaye
Questions on Doppelgangers

a) Why do you think the concept of the Doppelganger is so useful, and why
have so many writers found it useful to convey meaning in their writing?

b) Explore one of the narratives mentioned above or find your own that uses
Doppelgangers. How is the concept used in this narrative?

c) Parker uses the trope of the Doppelganger to explore the dark side in people.
How does he use the structure of the narrative to do this? Choose two
parallel scenes (e.g. the bullying of Derek Thomson on pp. 79-82 and the
killing of Thomson on pp.161-2, 167-9) and look at how he has used
language to do this.

d) Imagine that you are a minor character who appears in both worlds of
Doppelganger. Write a description of both yourself in the ‘real’ Sydney and
your ‘dark’ Doppelganger. Include physical, social, and psychological
details. (If you are already evil, describe your light Doppelganger). This
description should be able to be fitted into the novel itself so try to imitate
the style of the prose in the novel.

e) Research Carl Jung’s archetypal characters, in which people can divide in

order to play different archetypes. What roles does Andrew play by
confronting his own shadow self?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 3

Doppelganger Study
Guide

There are a number of questions here about each chapter of the novel. Your teacher will explain
to you how your class will approach this set of questions. Probably there will be a balance
amongst:
a) Discussion with whole class
b) Discussion in groups
c) Written answers in class
d) Written answers at home
Ask your teacher about the depth and detail required for the questions you are attempting.

The questions are designed to focus you on issues and concerns of the novel, and sometimes on
the way in which it is written.

Prologue
What techniques make this an engaging beginning?

PART 1

Chapter 1
1) Consider the cover as well as what you have read so far. What genre or genres do
you think the book might belong to? Justify your response.
2) What does Andrew do/ how does he react when he is held up at work? What is the
philosophy or theory that informs the choice he makes? (p.10)
© Amanda Kaye
 3) What are the ordinary issues in Andrew’s life? Consider his family, friends, goals,
and worries.
4) Andrew contrasts himself with Josh. Rule up two columns – one headed
‘ANDREW’ and the other headed ‘JOSH’ - and plot the contrasts, quoting where
possible.

Chapter 2
5) How does Andrew feel about Mrs. Swain and Brad and Josh’s treatment of her?
What techniques does Parker use to show that Andrew feels sympathy for her?
Why does Andrew behave the way he does? What excuse/s does he offer for the
treatment of Mrs. Swain?
6) Andrew decides that his arrested relationship with Melanie is ‘typical’ of him.
Quote what he says about this on p.35.

Chapter 3
7) Describe the Sydney into which Andrew has fallen. What things does Andrew
find disturbing about it? Who is in control of what Skinner calls ‘the real
Sydney’?
8) What is a mindscoop? (pp.45-46) Why does this concept send Andrew’s mind
into ‘toxic shock’? (pp.47-49) How does Andrew try to counteract the effect of
this concept? (p.49).

Chapter 4
9) How does Parker’s use of imagery highlight Andrew’s feelings about what he
experiences in Kings Cross and how he feels about ‘his Sydney’? (pp.53-7)
10) Josh remarks ‘So in your world I am not of a leader after all.’ (p.59) Why does he
make this assessment? What do you think Josh considers leadership to involve?
Look closely at pp.58-9 and 66-7. What is the effect of fusing the words together
to create the portmanteau ‘Joshorders’?
11) What is Josh’s plan for the future of Hallboys? (pp.60-3)
12) What does Andrew think he is ‘hardwired’ to do? (pp.65-6)
13) Contrast the language used to depict Andrew’s relationship with Sophie with Josh
and Bowie’s ‘picking people.’

Chapter 5
14) ‘I hated it sure. But that wasn’t all.’ What is Andrew worried about? (p77).
15) Back in his Sydney, Andrew is ‘blissed out,’ relieved to have escaped the horrors
he has witnessed. Is Sydney a ‘haven’? What incident/s contribute to your
response?
16) Like Andrew, get online and research parallel worlds. Consider Andrew’s results
on p.86. Does your research bear out Andrew’s results?
17) How does Andrew narrate the incident between Josh and Melanie at the party?
What is the effect of this technique?

© Amanda Kaye
 PART 2

Chapter 6
19) Why does Andrew consider himself ‘a G-rated kid in an X-rated world’? (p.108)
20) Comment on the significance of settings like the train stations and tracks, the
Great Hall at Sydney University, the Estates etc… (pp.116, 117). How does
Parker’s use of setting link to the ideas being explored in the book?
21) Is the university creepier than Kings Cross? (p.113) Explain your answer.
22) What is Andrew’s strategy at this point? (pp.112-114) Is this strategy moral/
expedient/sensible/wise?
23) Draw a map of inner station headquarters and trace Andrew’s route through it.
24) What tools and paraphernalia does Kurtz use to ensure the success of his cult? To
what other cult is Kurtz’s group implicitly or explicitly compared or contrasted?
(pp.120-1)

Chapter 7
25) Dr Hoeg explains to Andrew about how her Sydney got ‘this screwed.’ What
happened? (pp.127-8) What do you think Parker wants to signify by offering his
readers this alternative Sydney and history?
26) Is Andrew changing in the way he deals with his situation? (p.130)
27) What is ‘spilling.’? (pp.132-3)

Chapter 8
28) What animal imagery can you find in this chapter? What is its effect? How might
this contribute to the reader’s understanding of the ideas/themes that Parker seeks
to explore?
29) What other alternative reality is referred to on p.154? Why can’t Skinner access
this?
30) What is the effect of QZ45? (pp.157-8)

Chapter 9
31) Do you think QZ45 reveals ‘the real’ Andrew?
32) How does the language used to describe the hunt reveal the effect of QZ45
(pp.163-9)?
33) What is ‘atavism’? How does this chapter explore this idea?

© Amanda Kaye
 PART 3

Chapter 10
34) Andrew is discovering the close links between the two worlds. In what ways do
you think Andrew’s values and attitudes might be changing? Provide evidence to
support your opinion.

Chapter 11
35) What does Andrew learn from Melanie about what happened at the party?
(pp.188-9) How does this contribute to any of the novel’s concerns? (e.g.
weakness/strength)
36) ‘When people die in that world they die in this one too’ (pp.193-197, p.200).
What does this lead Andrew to decide? Would you make this decision too? Why
or why not?

Chapter 12
37) What allusions does Andrew make in his situation? How do these contribute to
the ideas Parker seeks to explore? (p.203) (See also page 266).

Chapter 13
38) Is Andrew being governed more by his thinking or feeling? Do you think he is
doing the right thing? (similar to 39)
39) ‘To tip or not to tip.’ (p.210) What does Andrew decide? What significance does
he attach to this decision?

Chapter 14
40) Andrew’s patchwork speech on pp.225-6 is made up of ‘bits of Heart of
Darkness, with my own words and other phrases I had picked up from around the
place.’ Do you recognise any of the phrases he has ‘picked up’? See
Shakespeare’s play Henry V. This is called the St Crispin’s Day speech. Research
and read this speech. What was its purpose and audience? Compare and/or
contrast this to the audience and purpose of Andrew’s speech.
41) What purposes do the maskcap fulfil for the writer, for Josh and Andrew?
42) What decision does Andrew make in the battle (p.229)? Do you think this
decision is different to the one he makes in Chapter 13 (p .210)? Explain and
justify your answer.

© Amanda Kaye
PART FOUR

Chapter 15
43) What do we learn about Andrew’s doppelganger? How does Andrew deal with
this discovery? Does this change the way you feel about Andrew?
44) How does Andrew escape the grizzly public death/ordeal that Josh has planned
for him? (p.238)
45) Andrew has become more active. What action does he seek to take? How does it
make him feel? (p.246)
46) How is Andrew planning to cut the connection between the two worlds? How and
why?

Chapter 16
47) Is Andrew being governed more by his thinking or feeling now? Do you think he
is doing the right thing now?
48) Why do you think Parker chose to construct Dr Hoeg as an aging academic
woman who seems almost grandmotherly? Would you feel differently if Dr Hoeg
was a young, strong, violent male?
49) In the final confrontation with Kurtz – Andrew faces his other self, or his
‘demons.’ What image does Andrew come up with to explain what looking at his
doppelganger is like? (pp.255-6) Why is this such an effective image?
50) Does Kurtz behave as you expected when he talks to Andrew in this
confrontation? Explain your answer carefully. How does Parker almost create
sympathy for Kurtz? What does Parker seem to be suggesting about how monsters
like Kurtz are made? (pp.256-7)

Chapter 17
51) Trace the dynamics of who saves and kills who. What do you think Parker intends
with some of these unexpected choices?
52) Andrew cannot reconcile why Kurtz can appreciate nature and beauty and still be
so cruel and destructive. How does Kurtz explain this? (p.281) Do you think that
Parker agrees? Is Parker suggesting that the difference between us and our
doppelgangers lies in luck, in the lives we get? Explain your answer.
53) ‘It was horrible, it was symmetrical, and it would seal my soul to his forever.’
(p.279) What is Andrew referring to? What does he decide? What is the result?
54) The final pages of the novel articulate what Andrew has learned from his journey
and his resolve to live and act differently. Summarise his feelings and resolutions.
Do you think this a satisfying ending to the novel?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 4

MUSIC FOR
DOPPELGANGER

Imagine you and three other friends are the music directors of a film of
Doppelganger. In a group of four choose three contrasting scenes from the
book and select the music for these scenes. You can choose popular songs,
orchestral music, or any other sort of music that could appear on a
soundtrack.

Present your music to the director in a group presentation. This presentation

should include SHORT extracts of the music. Make sure you explain how
each piece of music contributes to meaning in the scene.

You CANNOT use the material already on the website at

michaelparker.com.au/soundtrack.

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 5

CLOSE LANGUAGE
ANALYSIS

Below is the scene in which Josh spikes Andrew’s drink with the QZ45 before they hunt Boy.
The questions focus on how resources of language have been used to create the mood and the
meaning.

I knocked the whole thing back at once. It had a slightly different taste... as if sand had been
added to it. But it was down past my taste buds and to the back of my throat and then down
into my stomach. Josh poured me another one. I drank the entire thing in one gulp again.
Already I was getting harder. The sandy taste was worse this time.
"Good," said Josh. He leaned over me and looked at the words I had been writing.
"So it’s almost done then?"
"Yeah," I said unconvincingly. "Getting some ideas, you know. Throwing them
together."
“Good.” He paused. “Great.”
Then he stood watching me. Completely silent, almost expectant. It was creepy, as if I
was an exhibit in a zoo. And then I started to feel something inside my nerves. Whoa. There
was something deep down in there. Jolting the neurons.
“Hunt’s ready,” said Josh. “Everyone’s ready to go.” His voice started to sound like
honey. “Just think. The Hallboys get a little bit of the blood on their hands. They’re whetted.
Then I tell them about tonight. Read some of your little speech. Oh, they’ll be craving for
more. They’ll be yelling for it. Then the extra dose of QZ45 inside them and they’ll be
screaming for it. And then, just when they can’t take any more, we all race up the tunnels to
the Inner Station. And I let them all loose.”
And then something kicked into my head. Everything around me abruptly felt ten
times more there. The table. A spoon. The cup the cup the cup. "There's something wrong," I
said unsteadily.
"No, nothing wrong," said Josh. "I just added something to the Raki, that's all." He
smiled at me. "Works fast, doesn't it?"
"What?" It felt like a whip had cracked where my voice used to be.
"The QZ45," said Josh. "The stuff I showed you the formula for up in the Cross.” He
grinned. “Recognise it?”
I stared at him. Recognise it? Me... who’d never taken a drug in my life… who’d
never even smoked a cigarette. My thoughts were being chopped into pieces.
“Remember?” said Josh with mock patience. “The US made it and fed it to their
soldiers during the Burmese Wars. It picked up on the violence inside them and made them
© Amanda Kaye
fight better.” He paused and took a sip of his own Raki. “Unless they were some sort of
pacifist and had no violent stuff in them in the first place. Just put those guys to sleep. You
getting sleepy Andrew?”
I jerked my head back and forwards.
"So then, ready to come have a look at the animal hunt?" He threw me my maskcap.
“Let’s go and find out, underneath all that safeboy talk, what you’re really like.”

With each moment I slipped further and further into the QZ45. It was right there like
a predator in my veins. Filtering down to each of my fingers and toes. I wanted to get out and
run and run and run.
When we reached Platform 5 it had been transformed. It was like a rave for a goth
after a nuclear war. In the middle there was a bonfire piled high and wide like a stake to burn
a witch. Everybody stood around it... a hundred people all hypnotised by flames that leapt
almost up to the roof of the station. Their faces had all been painted over with gashes of
silver and black. Eyes stuck out of them and they kept together in a pack.
Oh I wanted to run and join them, lose myself right in the middle of them. And there
was music seeping into me too from all around. The beat was pounding but it had no rhythm
and its jangle was like a cattle prod and I could bury my mind under layers of hot red organs.
A chant began. “Take boy. Take boy.” Some people grunted it. Others sounded like
they were yelping.
Take boy. Take boy.
My thoughts were tiny things, lost in a distant corner of my brain. I crouched by one
of the fires that flickered beside me. Suddenly, it was all around me, my whole world. It was
the cleanest thing I had ever seen... heat and light and that was all. It rose from the paper and
the sticks. The orange flickered up at me. I swayed to the beat of the music. The beat touched
me in all places. I wanted to let the fire touch me too.
Flicker soft.
I held out my hand. The flame glided over. I felt the first stab of the nerve endings. It
felt completely pure. The pain jolted from my hand to my chest to my crotch. My mind was
right there with the centre of the flame now. I kept my hand completely still.
A strange smell drifted past, but that was all. The pain from my hand was all about
me now. It felt beautiful. There was a dim silhouette on the other side of the flame. I looked
up suddenly.
It was Josh. Crouched down, watching me. And he smiled. He twisted his fist lightly
into my chest. “Feel like you found the real you down there yet?” Then he was gone again.

JOSH THEN LETS A BOY OUT INTO THE TUNNELS.

We stalked up the tunnel together, the two of us. There were a few others as well,
smaller ones who hovered and darted back and forth. But they were hardly there. It was
Skinner and me out on the hunt.
Skinner had a torch. It scanned the roof, the ground, then it clutched like some sort of
epileptic at the walls. The sides of the tunnel were dry and black. A rat ran over my foot and
then shot away in the darkness.
One of the smaller kids made a howling noise, as if he was calling to his mother.
Then the others joined.
I yelled again too. It felt good. In my throat and all around me. Gooey inside me. I felt
weak, spindly thoughts pressing against my mind so I shook my head to get them out again. I
© Amanda Kaye
dived into the feeling instead. It made me wet and slippery inside. To be a part of Skinner
and the others. It put me all together… me with the maskcap and me with the tunnel and me
with all the darkness out there.
It pulsed through me with each new pounding of my blood.
Take boy. Take boy. Take boy.
Blip in the brain, livid, fuel, fire, beautiful inside.

QUESTIONS
1) What is the first indication we get in the writing that the QZ45 is starting to
take hold?
2) What is the effect of saying that Andrew’s voice was a ‘whip crack’ and that
his head ‘jerked back and forward’?
3) Why does Andrew repeat the line ‘the cup, the cup, the cup?’
4) What does Josh mean when he says ‘Let’s go and find out, underneath all
that safeboy talk, what you’re really like’?
5) What is the overall effect of these lines in the passage?
6) At the beginning of Chapter Nine, what has been done to make the scene
sound primeval/primitive? (Look at physical and animal imagery.)
7) How can Andrew’s thoughts be ‘lost in a distant corner of my brain’? Why
has this phrase been used?
8) When Andrew sees the fire he says he wanted to let it ‘touch’ him and then
describes the burning of his finger as ‘pure’ and ‘beautiful.’ What is the
effect of these words? How else is language used to make the sensation of
burning unusual?
9) How are the thoughts described and how are the feelings described in the
sentence beginning ‘I felt weak spindly thoughts pressing against’? Why are
they described so differently? Why does Andrew prefer the feelings?
10 What is the effect of the repeated Take boy?
11 The sentence ‘Blip in the brain, livid, fuel, fire, beautiful inside’ makes no
sense, has no rhythm and is grammatically ridiculous. Why has it been
included as the final sentence of the scene?
12 Looking over your answers to the previous eleven questions, what effect do
you think Parker was attempting to create with language?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 6
BLM 6

LINKS TO CONRAD AND

HEART OF DARKNESS
Through the novel there are links to the novel Heart of Darkness.

Read the following background on Joseph Conrad and Heart of Darkness (From Masters in
Pieces by Fiona Morrison and Michael Parker, Cambridge University Press, 2006).

Joseph Conrad (Background)

Josef Teodor Konrad was the son and grandson of Polish gentlemen who dedicated their lives to
resisting the Russian rule of the Ukraine. His mother died in exile in northern Russia when he
was seven, his father when he was eleven. At sixteen he went to sea, joining a French ship at
Marseilles. After ten years at sea, he became a master mariner and a British subject. English was
his third language, after French and Polish. In 1895 Conrad published Almayer’s Folly and
married an English typist.
Heart of Darkness is his most famous work. It is a novella based on Conrad’s own trip up the
Congo in Africa in 1890 to become a river pilot for the Belgians who ran the trade on the river.
To reach the heart of the Dark Continent had been a dream of Conrad’s boyhood. However,
despite the fact that he was extensively well travelled, the Congo experience was exceptional for
Conrad. He was astounded and appalled at the way in which a ‘civilised’ country could treat
indigenous peoples so brutally. Heart of Darkness was first serialised in Blackwood’s Magazine
Feb-April 1899. It was first published in book form in 1902.

Heart of Darkness- the novel.

In Heart of Darkness, Marlow tells of his journey up the Congo River in Africa, in the
employment of a Belgian trading company. This organisation is ruthlessly enslaving the Africans
and stripping the area of ivory, and what Marlow sees when he arrives disgusts him. At the
company's Central Station he hears much about Kurtz, their most successful agent, who is lying
ill at the Inner Station up the river, in the heart of ivory country.

Marlow sets off after him. He experiences a sense of dread as his steamer carries him deeper into
the primitive jungle, but this is combined with a strong desire to meet the mysterious Kurtz.
After being attacked from the bank by natives, they reach the Inner Station where an eccentric
young Russian adventurer called the Harlequin, who idolises Kurtz, tells Marlow of his power
over local inhabitants and the fluency and fascination of his ideas. But Kurtz's hut is surrounded
by heads on poles; he has become addicted to unspecified barbaric practices, presumably
involving human sacrifice. Marlow gets Kurtz away down river, but Kurtz dies, his last words
being, famously, “the horror, the horror”. Kurtz also leaves a report for the Society for the
Suppression of Savage Customs which includes the sentence: ‘Exterminate all the Brutes’.

Kurtz’s conduct suggests that civilisation may just be a veneer, and when you go behind it there
is only darkness- a heart of darkness. Even worse, at the centre of things is just ‘the horror’. It
was a bleak modern vision for the new twentieth century.

© Amanda Kaye
Some points of comparison
Reread the section in Part Four in which Andrew is walking up to Inner Station (p.222). As he
had read parts of Heart of Darkness the previous day he was aware of some sections of it and
used some elements. Compare it to the following passage from Heart of Darkness.
• What are the points of connection?
• What is the effect of these points of connection? How, if at all, does it change your reading?

Going up that river was like travelling back to the earliest beginnings of the world, when
vegetation rioted on the earth and the big trees were kings. An empty stream, a great silence, an
impenetrable forest. The air was warm, thick, heavy, sluggish. There was no joy in the brilliance
of sunshine. The long stretches of the waterway ran on, deserted, into the gloom of over-
shadowed distances. On silvery sandbanks hippos and alligators sunned themselves side by side.
The broadening waters flowed through a mob of wooded islands; you lost your way on that river
as you would in a desert, and butted all day long against shoals, trying to find the channel, till
you thought yourself bewitched and cut off for ever from everything you had known once --
somewhere -- far away -- in another existence perhaps. There were moments when one's past
came back to one, as it will sometimes when you have not a moment to spare to yourself; but it
came in the shape of an unrestful and noisy dream, remembered with wonder amongst the
overwhelming realities of this strange world of plants, and water, and silence. And this stillness
of life did not in the least resemble a peace. It was the stillness of an implacable force brooding
over an inscrutable intention. It looked at you with a vengeful aspect…
Trees trees, millions of trees, massive, immense, running up high; and at their foot, hugging the
bank against the stream, crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle crawling on
the floor of a lofty portico. It made you feel very small, very lost, and yet it was not altogether
depressing, that feeling. After all, if you were small, the grimy beetle crawled on -- which was
just what you wanted it to do. Where the pilgrims imagined it crawled to I don't know. To some
place where they expected to get something. I bet! For me it crawled towards Kurtz --
exclusively; but when the steam-pipes started leaking we crawled very slow. The reaches opened
before us and closed behind, as if the forest had stepped leisurely across the water to bar the
way for our return. We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness.

There is a revelationary scene in Heart of Darkness as Kurtz dies (after looking into his own soul
and the soul of humanity). In it the character Marlow walks into Kurtz’s room to see him die.

‘Anything approaching the change that came over his [Kurtz’s] features I have never seen before
and hope never to see again. Oh I wasn’t touched. I was fascinated. It was as though a veil had
been rent [torn]. I saw on that ivory face the expression of sombre pride, of ruthless power, of
craven terror. Did he live his life again in every detail of desire, temptation and surrender
© Amanda Kaye
during that supreme moment of complete knowledge? He cried in a whisper at some image, at
some vision- he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath-
“The horror! The horror!”

The scene in which Kurtz looks at Andrew is on p255-6. Reread it and then answer the following
questions.

a) What elements of the descriptions of Kurtz’s death in Heart of Darkness

were used/quoted in Doppelganger. Why do you think this was done?

b) What elements of the description of Kurtz’s death in Heart of Darkness were

left out of Doppelganger? Why do you think they were left out?

c) What do you think Kurtz/Marlowe means when he says “To actually see it,
in your own face. To see you living your life again in every detail of its
temptation and surrender. It’s fascinating. As though a veil has been rent...”

d) How does what Kurtz (in Doppelganger) says link to what Andrew was
thinking as he looked into his own face?

e) What is the difference between Marlowe looking into Kurtz’s face (in Heart
of Darkness) and Andrew looking into Kurtz’s face (in Doppelganger)?
What could be different about Andrew’s horror and Kurtz’s horror (in Heart
of Darkness)

f) Does knowing the context of Heart of Darkness affect your reading of this
section of Doppelganger?

g) How does the parallel worlds plot device of Doppelganger make you think
about the concept of ‘horror’ in the centre of people?

h) Other quotes from Heart of Darkness are included in Doppelganger. This

includes pages 113 and 139. Reread these quotes. What, if anything, do they
add to the narrative?

i) Heart of Darkness was written in the late nineteenth century, Doppelganger

in the early twenty first. Can you find ways in which the story or the
language may have been shaped by the century it was written in?

j) Read the epigraph at the front of the book. What does it add, if anything, to
your understanding of the novel?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 7

HISTORICAL
HYPOTHETICAL EXERCISE

You have invented a time machine in your spare time during some science lessons. It looks like a cross
between a bicycle and a capsule. The thing is made up from spares and cast-offs from the science
resource room and it hardly holds together at all, but it does travel through time. There are a few problems
with it though. Once it travels back to a time, it then slingshots back to the present a few minutes later,
like an elastic band. The other problem is that there is only room for one person inside – and hardly even
that. Not even you and a baby could fit in it.

In order to avoid a lecture on carbon chemistry one day during Period 5, you test the time machine by
hitting the ‘PAST’ switch. Your lesson blurs and fades, and you see times whizzing past you in a blur.
The chronometer reads 1960, 1940, 1910 – back and back and back.

But at about 1900 your machine starts to shake and a few bits fall off it. By 1895 it whirrs and shudders.
The chronometer stops at ‘1889 – AUSTRIA’, plumes of smoke rise up from the cogs. You crash-land.

A scene resolves around you. It is a baby’s bedroom in the fifth story of an apartment building. You go
over to the cot and there is a cute little boy sleeping peacefully. You look at the tag above the boy. It says
‘ADOLF HITLER’. You realise that this baby will become the man who is responsible for killing untold
millions of people as well as starting World War Two.

At that moment, the lights on your time machine start up again. It is about to slingshot back to your time.
You can’t take the baby with you. However, there is a pillow lying next to the baby that you could do
something terrible with. There is also an open window and you are on the fifth floor. You have only a few
minutes before you have to get back into the machine.

What do you do??

Related Questions.
a) How is this dilemma similar to the one Andrew faces in Part Three of Doppelganger?
(when he has to decide whether to kill Josh.) What is different about it?
b) What does Andrew decide about this dilemma at the end of Doppelganger (p282)? Do
you agree with him? Does thinking about this Hitler exercise make you change your
mind?
c) Is it right to hurt a child for something that s/he hasn’t done yet, even if you know that
s/he WILL do it in the future?
d) Would killing Hitler save lives, or would all of those people die anyway? Would World
War II have happened without Hitler? Could killing Hitler create an even worse future?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 8

DELETED SCENE FROM

DOPPELGANGER
The following scene was deleted from a very early draft of Doppelganger. It was positioned in
Part Three when Andrew was walking towards Josh’s house to poison him. After you have
completed the ‘Hitler’ exercise, read through the extract.

He stared bleakly at the houses across the road and felt the Rohypnols in his pocket. All
he had to do was turn around and go home. Throw the tablets into one of the Sulos that lined the
road or flush them down the sink. Try to get yourself back.
No... all of the different Sydneys creating different people stuff was just a bullshit
smokescreen. His Josh was an average middle class thug. And his Josh was capable of a
massacre. If one deserved to die then so did the other.
And it must be okay to take a life to save others. A police sniper would shoot a gunman
who had a revolver at a hostages head and was about to pull the trigger. What about Pol Pot in
Cambodia who killed half of his country in the 1970s ... if you could get in a time machine and
kill him just as he was about to take power, that would be a good thing. Same thing for Hitler.
Kill one, save fifty two million.
Andrew looked up. The small sandstone church stood at the border of the playground. It
had never provided many answers, but at least Father Wilenski was the only priest he had ever
met that listened more than he talked. Perhaps it was just an automatic reaction, but he hid the
beers behind a bush and started walking towards the building’s open doors.

Father Wilenski had only come to the parish only a few years before. It
was his pleasant retirement he said. He got much mileage in his sermons about how he had gone
to seminary college with Pope John Paul the Second. The one about the Pope and Father
Wilenski raiding the novice nuns quarters at one o clock in the morning so they could all go
swimming in the local lake together had become legendary and caused three people to transfer
to the next parish.
As Andrew walked in, he could just make out Father Wilenski at the altar rearranging he
prayer books. He was silhouetted in the gloom of the twilight, and the stained glass cast a
purplish haze around him.
“Father,” Andrew called, and the old man looked up.
“Andrew!” he said warmly. “I haven’t seen you for while. How have you been getting
along?’’
“Fine. Good. School’s really good and everything.”
© Amanda Kaye
 “Good to hear.”
“Father... I was sitting outside thinking ... and do you mind if I ask you a question.”
Father Wilenski put down the prayer book he had been holding. “Go ahead.”
“Just say you were able to go back in time in some new machine that had been invented.
As a priest, would you go back to when Hitler was a child and kill him? You know ... so that all
of those other people didn’t die.”
Father Wilenski’s face clouded over for a moment and the lines on his face seemed
etched a little deeper. After a moment he smiled weakly. “I don’t think it would be necessary.
The rabbis would all get there before me.” He then saw the look on Andrew’s face, and the
fragile smile faded. “I am sorry,” he said. “It is just that that is a very difficult question to ask
an old Polish man.” He paused. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m interested,” said Andrew. “I think it’s important.” I’m going to kill someone
tonight, and I want to know if it’s okay.
The father touched his fingers together. His eyes seemed a long way away. “No,” he said
eventually, “I don’t think I would harm Hitler. What he has done has already happened. Who
knows what would come to pass if I started interfering with what already has been.”
“But if you were standing there at the Kindergarten that Hitler was at, it wouldn’t
already have happened. It would be thirty years away. And then you could CHOOSE whether it
happens or not because of what YOU do.” He leaned forward. He was so close to Father
Wilenski he could smell his mouthwash. “So if you know what is going to happen and you don’t
try to stop it ... wouldn’t you be as guilty as Hitler?”
“Perhaps what happened would have happened with or without Hitler.” The Father
paused. “There is a... a heart of darkness ... in many people that makes us able to do what he
did. And I think we should not allow ourselves to take even the first step down that road, no
matter how just it may appear at the time. So... I would not kill Hitler. ”
“But what is killing somebody? Isn’t letting somebody die when you could easily have
stopped it just the same as sticking a knife in somebody?”
“I don’t think so. It is one thing to fail to prevent death. Whenever I spend ten dollars on
a meal instead of buying a packet of instant noodles and sending nine dollars to famine relief in
Africa, I have perhaps failed to prevent a death. But that is not the same thing as actively taking
a life.”
He paused for a long time, and stared up at the stained glass Crucifixion. The back of his
eyes were replaying things he had not seen for half a century. Finally his voice ground into
motion.
“When you take a life you stand at the gates of Auschwitz.”

Questions:
PART A
a) What do you think the Father means when he says that ‘when you take a life
you stand at the gates of Auschwitz’?
b) How did Father Wilenski’s views compare and contrast with the views of
the class when they had the Hitler discussion?

PART B
c) There were nine drafts of Doppelganger. This scene was cut out at draft
three. Why do you think it was deleted very early in the writing process?

© Amanda Kaye
 d) Authors sometimes speak of the difference between ‘showing’ and ‘telling’
in their writing. How does this comment relate to this section?
e) Look at what Andrew says on pp255-6. Do you think it makes the same
point as this section? Does it do it better or less well? Should the section on
pp255-6 have been included?
f) Can you notice any stylistic differences between this section and the
published book?
g) Would you have included or excluded this scene in Doppelganger? Why?
h) All books have many scenes that were cut out as they were written. (For
example J.R.R. Tolkien’s son has put together several volumes of material
that was cut out of The Lord of the Rings and published them). If such
scenes are reasonably well written, do you think they should be published
somewhere such as a website? Or should the author hide them away, never
to be seen.
i) If ‘cut’ sections of a novel were published on a website, would this affect the
meaning of the original book? What if these cut sections changed the ending
of the book?
j) At what point can you say that a book is ‘finished’? The standard answer
would be when the print goes off to the publisher. But there are grey areas
before and after this time.
i. Is Draft Seven (for example) of Doppelganger a finished book?
ii. Is what the publishers accepted (before they suggested changes)
a finished book?
iii. If the author decided to publish a later version of Doppelganger
with more violence and a different ending, would the copy you
are studying now be a ‘finished’ book? Would it still be the
finished book?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 9

DOPPELGANGER AND YOU

a) How did you choose your own friends? Are you still in touch with some of
the friends you made at the beginning of Primary School? Have they
changed? Do you have different feelings about them now? (answer this
carefully if he/she is sitting next to you right now)

b) If you found yourself in a society as decayed as the parallel Sydney, what

would you do? Do you think you would avoid doing the things that the
Hallboys did? Explain your response.

c) Andrew constructs himself largely through contrasts to other characters and

heroes, like ‘a super-spy from MI5 or a rogue Terminator-style action hero’
or ‘Tin Man in armour.’ Getting drunk on Scotch at Josh’s party, Andrew
identifies his most unheroic quality when he constructs himself as a super
hero called….? (see p.98 too) If you were sarcastically inventing your
superhero identity, who would you be? Write the voiceover television
introduction to your superhero.

d) Like all good literary heroes Andrew changes. As the story progresses he
becomes stronger and develops his understanding of strength and weakness,
and good and evil. What features of Kurtz do you notice in Andrew? Put
yourself in Andrew’s place. Where do you think you would have acted
differently to him? How? Would it have made a difference to the way that
the story evolved?

e) Look at Rosemary Dobson’s poem JACK. What is her purpose in using the
Jack in the Box? Do you think jacks are better kept in or released? Is
Dobson’s use of the image different or similar to Parker’s? How?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 11

THE WRITING OF THE

BLURB.
Below is the email correspondence that went on between the author and the publisher about the
blurb in the course of a morning. Read the final blurb on the cover of the book and then read the
email correspondence.

As you read over each email in class ask yourself the following questions:
a) Why was each word choice change made?
b) Is the new version better than the old?

By the end of the discussion, you may see how what seems to be the simplest of word choices
turn out to be the result of quite a bit of discussion and polishing. (There were one or two more
changes made after this email correspondence, but they were conducted over the telephone.)

----Original Message-----
From: Alesich, Christine
Sent: Thursday, June 01, 2006 7:16 PM
To: PARKER Michael
Subject: Doppelganger blurb

Hi Michael,

I have put together a blurb for Doppelganger, which I reproduce here for your comment.

A black tunnel began to form around me and my room started to spin. I desperately tried to cry out
‘help,’ but I couldn’t make a sound, and there was no one there to hear me. And then, like shattering
glass, I crashed straight through the tunnel and out to the other side.

Forcibly propelled out of his safe, peaceful world, Andrew finds himself in the midst of a desolate city,
torn apart by a brutal war between rival gangs. Here, the rules of survival are simple – you follow the
pack, or you die.

Then Andrew discovers a connection between this world and his that could mean the death of many
innocent people. He has no choice but to undertake an almost unthinkable task, in an attempt to sever
the connection forever.

If he fails, hundreds will die. But if he succeeds, will he ever be able to live with himself again?

I look forward to hearing what you think…

Christine
Christine Alesich
Commissioning Editor
Books for Children and Young Adults
Penguin Books Australia
250 Camberwell Rd
CAMBERWELLVIC 3124

From: PARKER Michael

Sent: Friday, 2 June 2006 8:00 AM
© Amanda Kaye
 To: Alesich, Christine
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

Dear Christine,

Thanks for this. First impressions are that I really like the way in which you hint at the moral dilemma without giving
too much away... it's something I have wrestled with without success.

On a minor note, can we get rid of a few words like 'help', and 'innocent'. I know that these are words that I have
used in blurbs before, so it's really a critique of myself. I think a fourteen year old might think them a bit lame (i.e
would any respectable hero say 'help' and who cares if people are 'innocent'?) I'll try it out on a class today and
see what the response is. Is it okay if I get back to you early next week?

Thanks again. Looks good.

Regards

Michael

-----Original Message-----
From: Alesich, Christine
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 8:09 AM
To: PARKER Michael
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

Hi Michael,

Thanks very much for your response. I am so pleased you like most of it! It is a tricky book to talk about without
giving away the best parts of the plot…I see what you mean about ‘help’ and innocent, though, and I think we could
pretty easily remove or replace them…

I’m really sorry to put you under pressure, but we have just found out that the costs (based on the quantity of
Doppelganger we plan to print) allows for embossing and silver foil on the cover – which is brilliant, but means the
cover has to go to the printer a little earlier than we had planned. Which is a very long-winded way of saying if you
could get back to me later today I would be extremely grateful!

Thanks again,

Christine

From: PARKER Michael

Sent: Friday, 2 June 2006 8:11 AM
To: Alesich, Christine
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

Okay. Should be able to do that.

I have done some prelim tweaking. How does this look?

Cheers and thanks.,

Michael.

DOPPELGANGER BLURB
A black tunnel began to form around me and my room started to spin. I desperately tried to cry out but I
couldn’t make a sound. And then, like shattering glass, I crashed straight through the tunnel and out to
the other side.

© Amanda Kaye
 Propelled out of his safe, peaceful world, Andrew finds himself in the midst of a desolate city, torn
apart by a brutal war between rival gangs. Here, the rules of survival are simple – you follow the pack,
or you die.

Then Andrew discovers a connection between this world and his that could mean the violent death of
hundreds of people – including those he loves the most. He has no choice but to undertake an almost
unthinkable mission, in an attempt to sever the connection forever.

If he fails, hundreds will die by the end of the day. But if he succeeds, will he ever be able to live with
himself again?

-----Original Message-----
From: Alesich, Christine
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 8:17 AM
To: PARKER Michael
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

Brilliant! Much better… I really like mission instead of task, and the ‘end of the day’ bit is a very nice touch…

I can get Adam to set it on the cover, then send both you a jpeg of the back and front together. Does that sound
okay?

Christine

From: PARKER Michael

Sent: Friday, 2 June 2006 8:38 AM
To: Alesich, Christine
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

A few people here have done some more tweaking (they had problems with the third paragraph and were confused
with the double use of connection) so I think it's looking better again,

This is what they have suggested.

There is a good Year 11 class I am seeing 9:30 today to get their feedback.

Cheers

Michael.

DOPPELGANGER BLURB
Propelled out of his safe, peaceful world, Andrew finds himself in the midst of a desolate city, torn
apart by a brutal war between rival gangs. Here, the rules of survival are simple – you follow the pack,
or you die.

Then Andrew discovers a frightening truth, a truth that could mean the violent death of hundreds of
people – including those he loves the most. He has no choice but to undertake an almost unthinkable
mission in an attempt to sever the connection between the two worlds that face him.

If he fails, hundreds will die by the end of the day. But if he succeeds, will he ever be able to live with
himself again?

-----Original Message-----
From: Alesich, Christine
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 8:49 AM
To: PARKER Michael
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb
© Amanda Kaye
 I like it, but I am not sure if ‘truth’ is quite strong or dramatic enough, and I am concerned that the ‘two worlds that
face him’ is perhaps a little confusing…How about this?

A black tunnel began to form around me and my room started to spin. I desperately tried to cry out but I
couldn’t make a sound. And then, like shattering glass, I crashed straight through the tunnel and out to
the other side.

Propelled out of his safe, peaceful world, Andrew finds himself in the midst of a desolate city, torn
apart by a brutal war between rival gangs. Here, the rules of survival are simple – you follow the pack,
or you die.

Then Andrew discovers a secret plot that could mean the violent death of hundreds of people –
including those he loves the most. He has no choice but to undertake an almost unthinkable mission in
an attempt to sever the connection between the two worlds forever.

If he fails, hundreds will die by the end of the day. But if he succeeds, will he ever be able to live with
himself again?

Though maybe secret plot is too Famous Five-ish… Let me know what you think,
Christine

From: PARKER Michael

Sent: Friday, 2 June 2006 9:22 AM
To: Alesich, Christine
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

We're playing email ping pong here. I agree about 'secret plot' and have played around with it a bit (including a
reference to the gang wars affecting both worlds, cutting the 'those he loves the most' and swapping 'brutal' and
vicious to avoid a tacky sounding alliteration..)

Cheers

Michael

Propelled out of his safe, peaceful world, Andrew finds himself in the midst of a desolate city, 
torn apart by vicious battles between rival gangs.  Here, the rules of survival are simple – you 
follow the pack, or you die.  

Then Andrew is dragged into one gang's brutal takeover campaign that will mean the violent death of 
hundreds of people  – in both worlds. He has no choice but to undertake an almost 
unthinkable mission in an attempt to sever the connection between the two worlds forever.

If he fails, hundreds will die by the end of the day. But if he succeeds, will he ever be able to 
live with himself again? 
 
From: Alesich, Christine
Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 9:31 AM
To: PARKER Michael
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

I like this MUCH better. I was beginning to worry about not reiterating the connection between the two worlds, and
this solves that problem nicely… I also think it is good to take out the ‘those he loves most’…

Thank you!

Christine

© Amanda Kaye
 From: PARKER Michael
Sent: Friday, 2 June 2006 10:41 AM
To: Alesich, Christine
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

Here it is with the 'seal' of approval from 11E1. A few changes are
a) that they thought 'almost' should be cut from 'almost unthinkable'. When I suggested that it is a contradiction to
undertake a mission you can't even think about, they howled me down as a pedant. (They also howled me down
as a pedant when I asked what they thought about a second sentence (dragged) that started with a subclause.)
b) They thought 'both' in paragraph four should be italicised.
c) There was also some worry about 'safe, peaceful' being a bit much. I also worried about that. How would 'safe,
ordinary' sound?
d) I have changed 'undertake' to 'embark' so that we don't have 'undertake an unthinkable'... too many 'uns'.

(Note; there has also been concern in the staffroom about the 'dragged' sentence being too long. But the guys
seemed not to be worried by this).

DOPPELGANGER BLURB
Propelled out of his safe, ordinary world, Andrew is caught in the midst of a desolate city, torn apart by vicious
gang wars. Here, the rules of survival are simple – you follow the pack, or you die.

Dragged into one gang’s brutal takeover campaign, Andrew has no choice but to embark on an
unthinkable mission in an attempt to sever the connection between the two worlds forever.

If he fails, hundreds will die by nightfall- in both worlds. But if he succeeds, will he ever be able
to live with himself again?

From: Alesich, Christine

Sent: Friday, June 02, 2006 11:06 AM
To: PARKER Michael
Subject: RE: Doppelganger blurb

Thanks for this!

I like ordinary much better than peaceful. And embark works well, too. I’m with you on the almost, though, and I did
like the escalation of ‘almost unthinkable’, but I have canvassed opinion here and everyone thinks it’s fine.

The only thing is the italics of ‘both’ – I just feel it is maybe overworking the point, so I’d prefer to leave it as roman,
if that’s okay with you…

Adam is working towards getting it to you for 1:30 so we’ll see how we go – and it would be good to get student-
reactions to the whole design, too!

Christine

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 12

PITCH A HOLLYWOOD
FILM

PART ONE: PITCH

You are a small Hollywood production company that has bought the film rights to
Doppelganger. Now all you have to do is get a big Hollywood studio (aka your
teacher) interested in giving you $100 million dollars to film it. In groups prepare
the following for a presentation to your teacher.

PITCH: A sixty second pitch in which you get enthusiastic about why people
would come to see a film version.
DESCRIPTION: Sixty second description of the premise of the story,
highlighting the most visual sections.
CAST: Who you would cast in the major roles and why.

PART TWO: EXTRA SCENE

The producers say that they like the idea, but they want the film to finish in
OUR world, not the parallel one. They want you to write two scenes that finish the
story. They suggest that a scene between Josh and Andrew would be good.
Write these two scenes. They should go for between two and four pages.
Use proper script formatting to write these scenes. An example is overleaf:
A good site to use to format scripts (and more) is www.celtx.com.

© Amanda Kaye
INT: CLASSROOM: DAY.

MR SMITH is writing on the blackboard. Standard teacher clothing. His

chalk breaks and he goes to the desk for a new piece

SMITH
rummaging for chalk.
As I was saying, you have to be very
careful when formatting the last scene
for ‘Doppelganger’. Characters and
actions are all formatted differently.

He gives up searching for chalk and opens a book in front of the desk.

In fact, there is an example in this book

about how to do it properly.

PART THREE: CHANGE IT AROUND.

A cigar chewing exec tells you one of the following.

a) ‘Okay, we like the ideas and all, but we’re looking for a big space adventure
right now…like Star Wars or something. Bring Doppelganger back to us
looking more like a big space picture and we’ll give you stacks of money.’

b) ‘Okay, we like the ideas and all, but we want to do Romantic Comedy. You
know, ‘lovey dovey, smoochy roochy, guy gets girl, guy loses girl’ sort of
thing. Bring Doppelganger back to us as romantic comedy and we’ll give
you loads of money.

c) Okay, we like the ideas and all but all these men everywhere getting aggro is
just boring. We want to do an all female version – and that’s complete with
female character reactions and everything- don’t just change all of the boys
names to girls. Bring Doppelganger back to us with all women and we’ll
give you a truck of money.

d) Okay, we like the ideas and all, but we’re into time travel at the moment. We
want Andrew to go back in time. Bring Doppelganger back to us as a
historical time travel story and we will give you more money than you can
stuff in a Texan’s hat.

Choose one suggestion of the cigar chewing executives. Change the story on the
basis of their suggestion.

PART FOUR:
Assess how you worked together as a group. Was it always harmonious?
How were differences resolved? What would you do differently next time?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 13

DOPPELGANGER AND THE

BIG ISSUES

PLOT BASED.
a) Is the end of Doppelganger optimistic or pessimistic? What is Andrew’s attitude at the
end of the book?

b) What does Doppelganger say about human nature?

c) In several cases in the ‘real’ Sydney, Andrew stands by and lets Josh get away with acts
of intimidation and bullying. Is Andrew as guilty as Josh? Is there any such thing as ‘guilt
by association’?

d) Andrew kills a boy whilst on drugs that he did not take himself.
• Is he guilty of the murder?
• What if he had taken the drug voluntarily but had not known what its true effect was going
to be?
• What if he did take the drug knowing its effects but didn’t care?
• The law says that to murder someone you must have ‘intent’. Do drugs reduce intent?
• In our own society, should people be morally guilty of crimes they commit whilst ‘high’ on
drugs?

e) Should Andrew have shot Hoeg at the end? Why did he decide not to?

f) Doppelganger was written in the 1990s and early noughties, and published in 2006. What
fears and anxieties of our society do you think the novel expresses?

GENERAL
a) Do you think there is any such thing as ‘evil’? If so, what is it? Are any of the following
characters ‘evil’?
• Josh
• Andrew
• Kurtz
• Dr Hoeg
Is there a difference between ‘evil’ acts and ‘evil’ people?

© Amanda Kaye
b) Can ‘good’ people do evil acts and still be good? Can ‘evil’ people do good acts and still be
evil?

c) Should people ever be morally ‘judged’ on the basis of what they are capable of doing
instead of what they have actually done? Can you ever really work out what they are capable
of, if they do not actually do it?

d) When a war criminal is judged should any account be taken of what they would have done if
s/he had lived in a peaceful society such as contemporary Australia?

e) Do you think yourself, your friends or your neighbours could have been guilty of atrocities if
they were born in a society such as Nazi Germany or 1990s Rwanda? Is this a fair question to
ask?

f) To what extent can the breakdown in society be blamed on the people who retreated into the
Estates? Should people have stayed outside?

g) Does our society have an equivalent of ‘Estates’? If so, what are they?

h) Read the views of the following philosophers. Link what they say to Doppelganger. Do you
think Doppelganger supports or opposes their views?

i) Thomas Hobbes: Hobbes wrote that without an ordered ‘society’, all people would live
in constant fear of being killed by each other, no matter how smart or strong they were.
This state was called the ‘state of nature’. In this state of nature, people had the right to
everything, including the right to kill each other. In this world life would be ‘nasty,
brutish and short’. However, Hobbes thought that most people would not want this right
because it came with too much danger. Instead they would want to come out of the ‘state
of nature’ into a society that can protect them from being killed. In order to do this they
would have to give up to an authority the right to act in any way they want (e.g. the right
to kill other people). This state Hobbes called ‘The Leviathan’.

j) John Jacques Rousseau: Rousseau held that humans were good when left alone in a
state of nature. This sort of person he called a ‘noble savage’. However, he felt that
modern society destroyed these good tendencies and corrupted humankind. He believed
that society forced people to compare themselves to each other which caused fear, envy
etc. This in turned caused people to take pleasure in other people’s pain. He wrote the
work ‘Discourse on Inequality’ about this.

k) Hannah Arendt. This philosopher covered the trial of the Nazi war criminal Eichmann
for the New Yorker magazine. In it she claimed something revolutionary – that evil was
not radical, but instead was banal. Banal means ordinary, everyday and average.
Eichmann was a terrible man who had organized the death of millions of Jewish people-
and yet at the same time he was grey and ordinary. He claimed no dislike of the people he
killed, but said he was simply doing his job and obeying the law (which was true). Arnedt
said that the habit of ordinary people to follow the mass opinion and obey orders without
thinking about the action itself created evil if that ‘ordinary’ society was somewhere such
as Nazi Germany. This opens up the possibility of other ordinary people in our society
being capable of ‘evil’ if the society is right. She wrote a book on this called Eichmann
in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil in 1963.
© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 14

MAKE YOUR MASK

DO ONE OF THE FOLLOWING.

a) Kurtz says to Josh ‘to get people to adore you as a leader you have
to come to them with thunder and lightning’. (p.139) Design (and
possibly make out of paper mache) a mask that Kurtz could use in
his Startday and Enday ceremonies. The purpose of the mask is to
create both adoration and fear. Write a brief explanation explaining
how your design achieves Kurtz’s desired effect.

OR
b) Masks can conceal information about us but can also reveal
information. Some of this can be deliberate, but other times it is
unintentional. Design a mask, split down the middle, that
represents both Andrew and Kurtz.

At the end of the mask masking, ask yourself how, if at all, this process
helped in your understanding of Doppelganger.

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 15

THE JERRY SPRINGER

SHOW

Background: Jerry Springer is a confrontational and trashy American interview programme. In

it the host (Jerry Springer) picks a sensational topic such as ‘Gang Widows Speak Out against
Gang Leaders’ or ‘I Divorced My Husband Because He Was Just Too Fat’. Then he interviews
major players in front of a studio audience. The interviewees often get verbally aggressive with
each other (e.g. when a gang widow confronts a gang leader). The studio audience get to ask the
interviews challenging and confronting questions. It all makes for controversial viewing.

Host a Jerry Springer Show with the title “I tried to kill my best friend, but I’m still the good
guy”.
This will take a lesson of preparation and a lesson to conduct.

Step One (if possible): watch ten minutes of a Jerry Springer show that has been
recorded by the library.

Step Two: Select characters you will need:

a) Jerry Springer.
b) Andrew
c) Kurtz
d) Josh from our world
e) Josh from gang world.
f) Melanie (from our world)
g) Skinner
h) Bowie
i) Mrs Swain
j) Dr Hoeg

© Amanda Kaye
Two people should be given each character. They can prepare together for the show.
Then one of the two people can actually play the character in the show. As Jerry Springer
himself has the biggest job, more than two people can be given this character to prepare.

Step Three: Get the characters to prepare their roles. This can include
i) Writing questions that they could be asked.
ii) Revising of the things they did, their attitudes, views etc. Making mind
maps of these elements.
iii) Rehearsing being asked and answering questions.

As the show goes on, Jerry Springer does not need to ask all of the questions. For
example Skinner could ask Josh a question, and so on.

Sample questions:
‘Josh, can you explain to us why you wanted to get control of the Metsin factory?’
‘Andrew, why did you feel you were responsible for the death of Derek Thomson?’
‘Kurtz, do you think Andrew is just like you?’

Step Four: Put on the show. It should be improvised LIVE in front of a studio
audience.

Step Five: Analyse how you all went. What made some performances effective?

Criteria for judging performances:

a) How well you show a conceptual understanding of broad issues in the text.
b) How well you know the text in detail (this could include direct quotes from your
character).
c) How well you speak and get into the spirit of a Jerry Springer show.

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 16

DECONSTUCTING DOPPELGANGER
(a little)

There are certain structural factors which affect the writing and reading of any book.
Doppelganger is not immune to this. Consider the following issues. How have they
affected the writing (and your reading) of the book?

RELIGION: Parker was brought up a Catholic. He states that the

Christian narrative and the Catholic concept of ‘guilt’ affected him
considerably as a boy, and still motivates him to actions now.
How are these concepts manifested consciously or unconsciously in the
story? How, if at all, does this knowledge affect your reading?

GENDER: The two major characters in Doppelganger are male. How, if

at all, would the book be different if the narrator was female? By making
the major characters male, is the author making any unconscious
assumptions about gender?

RACE: The makeup of the characters does not reflect the multicultural
makeup of most of Sydney. Did you notice this as you were reading? Is
this a flaw in the book? Should the writer be obliged to put a racial mix
into the novel? Parker defends himself by stating that he wrote this book
whilst working at quite an Anglo Saxon based school and it reflects the
makeup he saw. Is this enough of a reason/excuse, or is it insufficient?
Reread page 128. Does this affect your opinion? Publishers of children’s
fiction in the United States regularly insist that there has to be a balance
of races in their novels (black, white, Hispanic) and books will not be
published without it. Do you think Penguin Books should have asked
Parker to make one of the characters (e.g. Skinner, Melanie) Asian or
Middle Eastern?

© Amanda Kaye
 GENRE: A decision was taken by Penguin to market the book as a
thriller instead of a science fiction text. This affected its design, layout
and publicity.
How, if at all, does this affect your reading of the book? Would you have
reacted to the book differently if it had had a Science Fiction style cover
and blurb?

AUDIENCE: Like almost all young adult books, this book was, by
necessity, written with two audiences in mind. The first and foremost was
teenagers. However a subsidiary audience was teachers and librarians
who usually buy books for teenagers. These two audiences are quite
different.

How do you think the book would have been different if it had been
written 100% for teenagers? How would it have been different if it had
been written for adults who buy for teenagers? Can you find areas in
which you suspect a tension between writing for these two audiences?

CLASS: All of the characters in the real Sydney are middle class. How
would the message of the book change if the characters in the real
Sydney were
a) Underprivileged?
b) The children of multimillionaires?

POST COLONIAL: Parker wrote some of this book when living near
London. He says he was tempted for a while to set the book in London.
How would it have affected your reading of the book if it had been set in
the United Kingdom? Would it still have been ‘Australian’ fiction if it
had been set in London? Does the book have a particularly ‘Australian’
sound? As someone who has spent almost his whole life in Australia, did
Parker have any cultural responsibility to set this book in Australia?

© Amanda Kaye
 BLM 17

EXTENDED RESPONSES
QUESTIONS

a) Parker has stated that the core lines in the book for him are ‘some
people get lives that let them do things. Other people get lives that
make them do things. You got lucky. I didn’t.’ (p281)
Write an essay that analyses how Doppelganger explores this concept.

b) What do we learn from reading Doppelganger?

c) The P+C at your school has decided that Doppelganger is an

inappropriate text for teaching at schools due to its pessimistic vision,
drugs and violence. Write a speech in which you defend the book at
the P+C meeting. Your purpose is to persuade the parents to leave the
book on the curriculum.

d) Who is morally more questionable, Andrew or Josh? Explain your

answer.

e) What is your final assessment of Andrew’s character? How, if at all,

has he changed?

f) Write a dialogue in which Andrew visits a psychiatrist on his return to

Sydney in order to sort through everything that has happened to him.
Be sure to concentrate on what he had learnt, not just a retelling of the
story.

© Amanda Kaye