Australian Literature - Book Report/Review Example

Tile] Australian Literature Introduction The Australian alter the traditionalview of Australian people, representing tabooed areas of experience. Aboriginal philosophy is a guide for living in the Australian environment, for the preservation of the species and the natural world, for minimizing the tabooed conflict in human relations and for ensuring the continuation of the conditions for survival. In the Australian literature concepts are presented quite clearly, in this kind of literature the aboriginal or post-colonial writers tend to strongly portray the tabooed areas of experience. The two novels which I will use to portray how Australian writers use tabooed conflicts as their central theme are "the wild cat falls" by Mudrooroo and "The Solid Mandala" by Richard white. Analysis Wildcat falling Mudrooroo (2002) is famous for his novel Wild Cat Falling which was published in year 1965 and reviewed as 'a remarkable piece of literature expressing the dilemmas and conflicts of the young Aborigine in modern Australian society with memorable insight and stylishness, This novel has succeed in portraying the taboos present in the Australian society. The book was important, both for its literacy quality and as well as the first attempt by someone of Aboriginal Blood to express himself in this form. Even though the forward of the novel has helped to understand the tabooed events in the narrative, it has also made the readers appreciate this novel as a whole because of its significance to Aboriginal people and their recount of events which portrayed how the whites in society treated them. . Throughout the narrators life he has been posing as something he is not so that he can over come his illicit conflicts, conflicts that could be labeled as being taboo in the backward society. He was told to act and think white as not thinking that he was white would be against society; however he was never accepted as a 'normal' white youth. He was not able to associate with the noongar mob at a young age, even though they accepted him for who he was. When he got older he had to fake his attitude in order to fit in with the bodgie group in which he never did feel a part of. "In jail I graduated in vice and overcame my last illusions about life. Now I know hope and despair are equally absurd." (Mudrooroo 41) The narrator sees life as hopeless and filled with anguish as he can not over come his conflicts and it is the demand of society that he does so. This could be the major reason in which he has adopted this, "so what" attitude so that society would accept him, even though he has a strong believe that there is nothing to look forward to as society seems to turn every conflict into a taboo. "To disapprove of something means I must approve of something else. It means that I must believe in right and wrong, but I don't. Both are illusions". (Mudrooroo 91) Secondly the narrator feels that he is disadvantaged and unaccepted into some parts of society because of the taboo that seems to prevail in society that is because of his skin colour and heritage. The narrator also states that he has been affected by this factor and his life is simply a pose. "The prison warped my mind, that when I first went in I still had some vestige of childish faith. Or I can put it down to my colour, being born under the curse of Ham and all that jazz" (Mudrooroo pp41-42) Towards the end of the novel the reader begins to realize that the narrator does care about his identity. "Sorry brother "(Mudrooroo p129) the narrator apologizes to the lizard. This shows the narrator has understood his connection with his Aboriginal heritage and no longer has to pose the way he feels in society , even if society thinks his identity is a taboo, he must accept his identity even if society does not. He has become aware that he had an obnoxious attitude which was mainly due to the fact that he was never able to practice his true identity. The title of the book Wild Cat Falling could suggest many aspects of the narrator's so called tabooed life. The first part of the title, "Wild Cat", is a pun. It can be translated into two meanings. The first one being, the wild cat could be the narrator or it could be the aboriginal society as a whole. The Narrator may feel like a Wild Cat when he came out of gaol and had no-where to go and no-one who cares enough about him. The narrator could feel like a wild cat because he does not know where he stands in society, because he has no idea of his identity as he was told to be an aboriginal and denied his heritage which he was born with, only because accepting his identity would mean that he would be accepting a tabooed way of life. "....but that side of my heritage must be kept from me at all costs. I must live white and learn to think with a white mans mind." (Mudrooroo p122) The other meaning which wild cat could be translated into was all aboriginals are wild cats. This is a more general translation and focuses on the fact that Aboriginals are wild cats which are not cared for. They have no say in the white community and are not given a second look or chance by the white-Australians. Secondly, the other half of the title falling is the deterioration of the main character. The narrator is constantly losing hope and self esteem as society is making feel tabooed and is not attempting to charge his attitude or behavior to get back onto his feet. This shows that he is his life is going downhill and he is not making an effort to reintegrate into society. "It could also mean the whole aboriginal culture is "falling" apart. This may be caused by the pressure to assimilate into the white society and force them to forget their aboriginal heritage, culture and traditions just because they are different from society and are known as a tabooed culture. "( Ryan p 16) Overall the title, wild cat falling could be translated into many forms and has significance to the events which arise in the novel. According to Mudrooroo (2002) The return to gaol by the main character was predicted because of his past and present actions. He is already labeled by society as an outcast, some one who has un resolved conflicts; conflicts which the society calls tabooed conflicts. The novel is structured as a cyclic narrative. It is not just a story about one aboriginal male, Jessie Duggan's boy, but of most of aboriginal males. Even though one character may change their behavior and attitude the rest of the aboriginal males will not change and that is inevitable. Even though the main character may have realized his identity and where he stands in society, it was too late. This story may symbolize poor, aboriginal males. It is a cycle which cannot be broken unless the majority of people change which is not going to happen for sure as they all fear society. The impending return to gaol by the main character was unavoidable because he has committed a crime which is severe. Even though he may have found who he really is on the inside and regretted his action, it is not acceptable to society. Value to Areas of Experience Not Previously Written About I believe this novel is written very nicely in order to portray the aboriginal lives. It outlines a lot of issues which affect the aboriginal community which have gone on and on as unsettled for years. An example is the narrator's identity. He is constantly unable to assimilate into white society because he feels unaccepted. This has made him unsure of where he stands in life however he eventually finds his aboriginal heritage in which he was denied as a youth. Mudrooroo's work is extremely good for the reason that it enhances the readers accepting of aboriginal people and their action, attitudes, as well as their feelings. The author, Colin Johnson has made this narrative an effective one because it deals with issues which are concerned with the aboriginal youths. The impending return to gaol was a great way to end the novel because it truly showed the difficulties faced by aboriginals to behave well as they are an oppressed class and to be like them is considered wrong by society. The novel clearly portrays the attitudes, actions, believes as well as feelings of aboriginal people. It also contrasts aboriginal culture with white culture in a few words making the earlier couture look wrong and one that is not well liked by society. Solid Mandela Patrick White (1994) satirizes the narrow Australian mentality which condemns what it considers unusual and, hence, threatening and at times even considered as a taboo. His consistent establishment-bashing has won for White (1994) the enmity of many Australian critics as well as the admiration of readers in other postcolonial cultures where there are similar conflicts between a stiff, British past and the immense freedom a new land offers. The novel depicts the tabooed conflicts of both twins, and how one fears society while the other does not. Analysis The novel is based on Arthur and Waldo Brown, who are fraternal twins, and are born in Australia to parents who were transplanted from England. George and Anne Brown preserve some grandiose ideas about life, and so Waldo and Arthur grow up in the un-noteworthy suburb of Sarsaparilla in an otherwise average house made unusual because of its incongruous classical pediment. Arthur is the strong, sturdy son who is slow but also sensitive and kind. Waldo, by contrast, is physically weaker than Arthur but clever enough to become a dry, unemotional librarian. As they mature, it becomes clear that Arthur considers himself Waldo's protector, while superior Waldo resents having to admit to his dull-witted dill of a brother. The action of The Solid Mandala is divided equally among Arthur and Waldo Brown. The first and last sections of the four-part novel, narrated from an omniscient third-person point of view, describe events before and after the climactic moment in the Brown brother's lives. The two middle sections are narrated from each brother's point of view; both recount in different ways the story of their lives up to the fateful climax of their relationship. Arthur, the more appealing brother, is a modern version of the noble primitive or God's fool. Patrick White invokes the stereotype in order to satirize provincial Australian values; because Arthur is good, humble, and incapable of hypocrisy, he stands out as eccentric, even inferior. Except for Dulcie and Mrs. Poulter, both atypical Australian women, the suburban populace (represented by the appropriately named Mrs. Dun) regards Arthur with distaste and fear. Suburbia's values are entirely materialistic and do not permit acceptance of any person or thing which exists outside their narrow, prescribed standards of conduct. The author represents Waldo as the more pathetic of the two because he attempts to conform to the community standards, even though he despises them he fears that his conflicts and desire are too tabooed. He too, is a stereotypical White character: a dry, bookish academic who lacks imagination and humanity. Waldo remains a prisoner of his own tortured, frustrated emotions; unable and unwilling to understand how much a part he and his brother are, he denies the truly symbiotic, even psychic connection between them and thus also denies love. Arthur and Waldo are two characters but also one. Each is represented by the author as half of the other; neither is complete without his other self. While Arthur realizes their special status as twin brothers and strives toward unity, Waldo rejects his brother and the proffered mandala, thus also refusing wholeness. In keeping Arthur at arm's length, Waldo prevents either of them from enjoying a complete life. The fact that both Waldo and Arthur are derived from tabooed stereotypes given by society's limits their development into fully rounded characters; especially Arthur's seems too disingenuous. Waldo remains more realistic yet more flawed. The Brown brothers are opposites in every way, yet, taken together, they can be seen as the good and bad, or light and dark aspects of the human soul, both of which are necessary and mutually dependent. The Solid Mandala is collapse or regression into an undifferentiated condition, it has tried to reconcile: Waldo Brown's dead, in addition to his non-identical twin Arthur being, sent to a mental institution, and keeping just one of his four solid mandalas. The conflict never affected their relationship as Arthur said at one occasion I'll kill," Arthur continued to bellow, "the pair of you bloody buggers if you touch," he choked, "my brother."(White p45) But this did not make them not fit into society and thus he was sent to mental institution. Another essential element of White's (1994) novel is the double vision of man and reality There is another world, but it is in this one. This epigraph could preface all of White's work. White's imitation of "this world," what he calls the "actual sphere" at the end of the solid mandala, reveals both delight and disgust. White's attitude toward the physical, phenomenological world of sense and feeling -- the world of "tables and chairs," to take up a typical metaphor of the author -- is ambivalent. There is a Dionysian celebration, an ecstatic rendering of the natural world, whether it is the Australian outback, the countryside, a suburban garden, or a garden in the South of France. The author takes pleasure in natural description and imitates the Romantic idea of showing man as an integral part of nature. As White (1994) plunged his intellectual, religious, and artistic roots in a distinctly European tradition, future Australian writers have the choice of following such a post-Platonic, post romantic tradition of Austrian history, or finding their inspiration in less Eurocentric modes of thought. The seriousness and consummate skill of White's art provide an unavoidable model and a storehouse of language for any later writer living in the society White knew and imitated in his fiction. Modern secularism, the championing of the mediocre in Australia, the small canvases which content most contemporary novelists of this country, the obsession with the irrelevant paraphernalia of living -- all vindicate White's (1994) achievement yet foreshadow the difficulty of finding another Australian artist to match the master. Words, too, come to be seen as mere objects, stones in the mouth of someone such as Arthur, who can communicate so much more effectively without language. White is well aware of the irony in his position as artist dependent upon the very medium he deplores. The Solid Mandala provides an ongoing metafictional commentary on the inadequacy of language to convey the essence of life Australian life. Thus, White (1994) turns to a bowl of moldy mutton fat or to the look in a dog's eye in order to say the unsayable about the loathsome and the divine-both equally requisite aspects of Australian life. Both men, however, appear asexual. Arthur realizes and accepts this ambiguity in him, but Waldo is what the Australian society would call an outcast. Waldo rejects what he does not understand and what he knows society finds abhorrent; hence, his furious reaction to Arthur's casual revelation that he has witnessed. White believes that each self is composed of both male and female parts and that permitting dominance over the other results in distortion and imbalance. In this way the author is reflecting how the Australian society in the past was so complex that most people secretly wished to go against it. White Patrick (1994) presents a bound together in conflict; Waldo and Arthur represent duality in totality. Separate yet whole, the brothers symbolize the two opposing halves of the self. White advocates the need for both parts as well as for balance between the two. For example, Arthur's insight-his almost visionary capability-is too otherworldly for this one: In the end, he is sent to a lunatic asylum. Still, White elevates Arthur's life-affirming stance over Waldo's philosophy of denial and his reliance on the intellectual faculty. They render him equally unprepared for living among other human beings: Except for Arthur, Waldo is essentially alone. The themes of twin hood and mandalic wholeness pervade the novel, as do other associated themes such as connection and communication. These opposing halves are what describe the Australian society of the past. Which mean that the society consisted of two kinds of people, that hated society and that were slave to society Because Patrick White (1994) develops a distinctive, individual voice for each brother, both emerge as memorable characters, although Arthur Brown is an especially compelling creation. The style of the two middle sections varies according to which the brothers narrate: Arthur's chapters are more impressionistic and poetic, while Waldo's are more straightforward and prosaic. Whereas the prevailing tone of Waldo's version is one of anger and resentment, Arthur's story is warm and generous. Waldo presents dry recollections because he filters everything through his intellect: Arthur's memories, by contrast, are visceral as well as emotional and imaginative. Both styles are realistic in method in the sense that the brothers, their dogs, and their house are evoked in all of their shabby, unattractive detail, but the narrative also relies heavily on symbols such as the mandala as well as on the allegorical implications of the twins. New Representations Not Experienced Before In Literature Arthur re-creates many of the same events from his own perspective. Considered backward by most of the society, Arthur leaves school early to work first in a store, then in a garage. He builds intimate, meaningful relations with Mrs. Poulter and Dulcie because he is so utterly honest and open. Arthur's simplicity sometimes results in his saying and doing disconcerting things, but both women value his innate wisdom and goodness. Both Dulcie and Mrs. Poulter come to think of Arthur as a kind of shaman: Dulcie names one of her children after him, and Mrs. Poulter considers him her savior. Because Arthur lives by intuition and instinct, he knows much about people, dogs, and things that Waldo never learns this makes him more acceptable to society then his brother. Arthur, despite his lack of intellect, harbors sophisticated tastes: One shameful incident has Waldo discovering old Arthur in the library reading Fyodor Dostoevski's The Brothers Karamazov (1879-1880) and ordering him to leave the premises as if he were a stranger. Forgiving as always, Arthur attempts to reconcile with his brother, but his efforts only enrage Waldo all the more. God in this novel is usually symbolized by objects which are most precious to Arthur is his collection of glass marbles, of which four in particular are solid mandalas, the mandala being a symbol of totality and also the purported dwelling for a god (Peter p 23). According to White, a kitchen table is love, is God, even, if one could get to know it, this kind of thinking is considered as tabooed in society. Because Arthur lives close to the things of the earth, he does come to know them, although for him it is a purely intuitive process this is where the author fails to project experience. White's (1994) investigation of the relationship among the symbolic and the real, nonetheless argues that this novel, related with the artist's exploration for meaning in a world that is completely demythologized. Praising the "openness" of the worlds of Shakespeare's plays, the author asserts that this quality is "at the heart of moral life as well as of artistic life aware that reality always escapes from language, the author continues to struggle for accuracy within what the author calls "self-conscious realism," a mode that is valued because it leaves space for thinking minds as well as feeling bodies. Conclusion Thus it can be said that Australian literature has always had a way of the exploring tabooed areas of experience. The two novels analyzed above the solid Mandela and the wild cat falling both seem to explore the tabooed areas of experience in the Australian society. . Work cited Folklore, Vol. 98, No. 1 (1987), pp. 16-27 J. S. Ryan; Wild Cat Falling": A Totemic Man Who Sought His Dreaming . Mudrooroo (Colin Johnston) ; Wild Cat Falling. Angus & Robertson Classics (2002); p 41- 129 Peter Wolfe; Critical Essays on Patrick White (Critical Essays on World Literature). G K Hall, (1990) p 23. White Patrick; the Solid Mandala. Penguin Twentieth Century Classics, (1994) p 45 Read More