Distinctive voices distinguish individuals’ unique backgrounds and circumstances and further humanity’s understanding of the world. The interplay of distinctive voices in texts allow the composers to explore the complexity of human experience. Joanna Burns criticises modern society in particular its lack of compassion and empathy for the community and society in her poems “Kindling”, “Australia” and “Public Places”. Similarly, The Perks of Being a Wallflower and Nelson Mandela’s address when he was released from prison in 1990 also observe the idiosyncrasies of human experience and the psychological and emotional worlds of the characters through the interplay of imagery and language techniques.

Distinctive voices has the ability to explore and criticise modern society’s behaviours and actions. This idea is explored in the poems “Australia” and “Kindling” in which Joanna Burns criticises the media’s lack of emotion and empathy. Australia explores the media’s clinical and desensitized response to a woman’s tragic and accidental death. In the first stanzagraph, the woman is described as snorkelling for “soft fleshy scallops” and “warm dreamy Sunday nights” and this use of soft sounds and vivid imagery establishes the poem with a tranquil and calm tone. However, this is juxtaposed with the sudden change of tone in the second stanzagraph which suddenly reports that “there had been a splash, she had been bitten in half” and the repetition of “had been” in passive voice highlights the detached and unsympathetic tone of the media article. In the third stanzagraph, Burns further explores the lack of compassion in modern media through her description that “the newspapers were full of figures” and the use of the word “figures” reduces her identity as a mother and wife and human being into a mere statistic.

Similarly Kindling also portrays the lack of authenticity from the modern media, and in particular satirises the way that media personalities attempt to connect to their audience through exaggeration. The poem is written in a patronising tone and this evident when the personality on television is described “as bursting with hints….frothing at the mouth with rapid wisdoms” and this use of hyperbole in “bursting” and “frothing” and sarcasm with “wisdom” portrays the persona’s disdain for the presenter’s approach to creating rapport with her audience by treating them as incapable and infantile. This image is continued throughout the poem as the presenter is described as while she “claps her hands with glee” and refers to her audience as “gang” and this imagery creates a caricature of her as an over enthusiastic presenter with a lack of genuine opinions and thoughts. This reinforces the ability of distinctive voices to critique and explore modern society’s behaviours and experiences.

Distinctive voices have the ability to teach us about the diversity of human experience in particular the loss of privacy and identity in modern society. This idea is explored in “Public Places” which portrays a woman who is suffering from disability as the result of her obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) through the two distinctive voices of the persona and the poet. This is evident when the persona states “there’s so many weird people walking about in these troubled times” and the reference to “troubled times” portrays Burns commenting on the darker side of the modern world and its reliance on technology and social media. The persona also refers to her “plans dreams visions… I wouldn’t want anyone to steal them” and this litany of adjectives creates a simplistic image of a checklist mentality that highlights the abstract nature of her thoughts and her increasing paranoia. Furthermore, she justifies her actions in the end of the poem that “you never know whose history you could end up wearing” and through this metaphor, Burns is commenting on the dangers of an overreliance on technology through the distinctive voice of a persona that suffers from anxiety when she considers the consequences.