A Post-colonial frame for the Pacific
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NZ author (born in Wgtn, 1955)
Ex –journalist, consultant; well-travelled; interests –
sport and popular culture. Full-time writer.
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Has written short stories, novellas, essays, sports biographies, and
10 highly acclaimed novels (Mr Pip is 8th of 10)
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Awards: the Tasmania Pacific Fiction Prize 2003 and Montana’s
Deutz Medal for Fiction, Commonwealth Writers' Prize Overall
Best Book Award 2007, South East Asia and Pacific Prize for Best
Book, 2007 Montana Medal for fiction and Montana Reader's
Choice Award, shortlist of the 2007 Man Booker Prize, Creative
New Zealand Berlin Writers' Residency , 2008 Kiriyama Pacific
Prize for fiction, 2008 Prime Minister's Award for Literary
Achievement, 2008 Arts Foundation Laureate Award and an
Antarctica New Zealand Arts Fellowship 2008
Setting
Bougainville Island,
Pacific
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Bougainville is one of the Solomon Islands (geography, language,
ethnicity)
Historically – possessed by Germany
Strategically important island – occupied by Aust,German, US and
Japanese in WW1 &11
Australia given governance of B and Papua New Guinea after
WW1
Rich in copper (gold?)Aust mining1965
Papua New Guinea became independent from Australia;
Bougainville became part of PNG (1/3 PNG revenue from B’s
copper)
Locals became irate at environmental impact of mine and lack of
benefit to Bougainville; sabotaged and closed the mine
early1980’s
Bougainvillians wanted Independence from PNG. PNG fought back
with military support from Australia 1990 -97 (20,000 killed)
 In 1990, PNG
imposed a Blockade
on Bougainville, cutting off food, military and medical supplies
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Eventually, news of the violence and medical conditions for children
leaked out, pressuring Aust who were giving huge finances to PNG
NZ became involved, putting political humanitarian pressure-Aust Govt
NZ was pivotal - brokering a peace deal between the parties in 1997 (not
full independence but for Bougainville Autonomous Province (of PNG)
incl self-government)
KEY POINT - The setting for the novel Mister Pip is the period in the
1990’s when Bougainville was suffering from the blockade imposed
by PNG and Bougainville’s Revolutionary Army (BRA ‘Rebels’) were
fighting for Independence against the PNG Defence Force (‘Redskins’)
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What other texts have you read which use
a setting of isolation?
What other texts have you read which have
a setting which includes war or military
conflict?
This text can be linked with the movie
“Hotel Rwanda” in that both narrate the
stories of real events; atrocious violent
events which were largely hidden from the
public due to the isolation of peoples
Matilda, a bright thirteen-year-old lives on the South Pacific island of Bougainville
with her mother. When she was 11, her father left for Australia to mine and her
mother is bitter. The island has been blockaded by Papua New Guinea. The
villagers suffer economic deprivation, isolation and violence, as local Rebels
(guerrilla soldiers) fight against the Redskins (PNG army) for control of the island
and its valuable copper mine.
Most Europeans have been evacuated (incl. the teacher) but Mr. Watts remains.
Married to an Island woman, Grace, he is called Popeye by the islanders who
consider the couple strange. Watts, the only white man on Matilda’s island, takes
over the village’s school and begins to read Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations
to the children day by day.
Matilda’s imagination becomes entranced by the strangeness of GE, its new
vocabulary and the characters, especially Pip. The children turn to Dickens’ words
to escape the constant threat of unpredictably violent visits from the Redskins and
Rebels. The first visit from the PNG Redskins is punctuated by the violent slaughter
of the villagers chickens, goats and dogs as the villagers hide in the forest.
Matilda’s mother, Delores, a stubborn religious woman feels threatened by the
influence of Mr Watts and the GE. To her the novel represents ‘white man’s culture’
competing against her own cultural history and the most important book to her, the
Bible.
The conflict over competing cultural values, beliefs and influences develops until a
frustrated Delores contradicts her own Christian values by stealing the only copy of
GE. Mr Watts helps the children to “remember” and retell the story themselves,
adding in fragments of their own culture. Matilda finds the book, but from a dual sense
of shame and loyalty, never reveal its location, even when asked by the visiting
Redskins who burn the villagers belongings (unknowingly, burning the book also).
To save an innocent boy (Daniel) who has misnamed Mr Watts as Mr Dickens, Mr Watts
agrees and pacifies them, saying “Pip” is a fictional character; this proves later to be a
fatal error.
Meanwhile, Mr Watts wife, Grace and two of the village children die of malaria. The Rebels
visit the village and Mr Watts retells GE over 7 days to buy time, includes elements of
his own life and his marriage to Grace. Mr Watts tells Matilda of his plan to escape the
island and take Matilda and Delores along, but asks her not to tell her mother. Sworn to
secrecy, Matilda hints to her mother that change is afoot and can be unexpected using
the story of Pip’s unforeseen meeting with Mr Jaggers in the marshes. Without warning,
the Rebels leave.
Soon after, the villagers aid a wounded Rebel soldier known to them to escape; a third
more violent visit from the Redskins follows, after they take the Rebel hostage. This is
the climax of the novel and is very violent.
The Climax
The hostage Rebel names Mr Watts as “Pip” and the Redskin Officer, furious at having
been previously lied to, orders his Redskins to kill Mr Watts (by machete) and feed
him to the pigs.
The Officer leadingly asks who has seen this. The naive innocent Daniel says he has.
He and his grandmother are murdered in the jungle (Daniel is left strung out high
between the branches of trees in a crucifix type pose).
Delores, Matilda’s mother, tells the Officer that she is “God’s witness” to the killing and
refuses to back down. Delores is raped by the soldiers.
The Officer then threatens to rape Matilda, and Delores offers her life in exchange for
Matilda not being raped. Delores is chopped up and fed to the pigs also. When the
Redskins leave, the villagers kill the pigs and bury them, so that their dead can be
buried. Daniel and his grandmother are buried too.
Note: These violent events, seen and narrated from Matilda’s perspective objectively
(without emotional response) serve to heighten the realism of her experience of war
and emphasise the resiliency and strength of character.
That same night, walking alone amid a storm, Matilda is washed downstream in the swollen river.
Thoughts of drowning are superseded by thoughts of her father. She clings to a floating log,
naming it “Mr Jaggers” and is rescued .The next day she is taken to the hospital in Honiara, on
the neighbouring Solomon Islands.
Matilda is flown to Townsville, Australia to be reunited with her father after a 4 year separation.
She is surprised how much his clothes make him look like a white man. She attends High
School in Australia, rereading GE, and goes on to University where she does a Ph D on
Charles Dickens. The novel continues to influence the trajectory of her life.
Visiting Wellington, she visits Mr Watts first wife and discovers personal flaws she had not seen
and the amateur theatre role which had led to his meeting with Grace.
She then visits London and Gravesend, significant places in Pip’s journey, linking Pip’s migration
to the post-colonial experience of being an ‘emigrant’. She emerges from a period of
depression to write a testimony of her experiences – the novel “Mr Pip.”
Finally she visits Rochester, disappointed to discover that the life of Charles Dickens has been
cheaply commercialised.
The novel ends with her decision to return home (noting that Pip had never managed this).
A Cultural Tug of
War
Delores (mother) –
ancestry, traditional
culture, the Bible
Mr Watts/ Popeye (
becomes teacher) –
education, ‘white’ culture,
Great Expectations,
Matilda – narrator and
protagonist/ heroine
The short version
Influenced by Great Expectations Matilda grows apart from her mother & traditional culture
Mr Watts helps the children use GE to escape conflict (Rebels vs Redskins)
Delores steals GE. Matilda covers for her. Their belongings are burned by the Redskins.
Mr Watts and the children use imagination to reinvent GE.
Due to Mr Watts contradictory stories , the Redskins seek revenge:
Mr Watts is killed, fed to pigs.
Unable to be silent, Daniel is killed, crucified in forest.
Refusing to be silent, Delores is raped.
Delores bargains her life for Matilda not being raped and is killed.
Matilda leaves the island for new life and education in Australia.
She becomes a writer, to testify to what happened and plans a return to Bougainville.
 In
Mister Pip, literary interpretation and
values are placed in direct and
meaningful dialogue with issues of ethics,
morals, cultural narratives and personal
identity. This is a novel that challenges us
to think about ourselves and our own
identities, the texts and cultural
influences that have fed into who we see
ourselves as.
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novelty of Dickens—and of English
literature itself—to Matilda and the other
Bougainville students forces readers to
explore and re-examine assumptions about
reading and storytelling that are often taken
for granted. The novel helps us consider the
function of literature, the relationship
between reader and text, the cultural
expectations that may accompany certain
types of reading and writing, and the ways
in which literature can be reinterpreted—or
misinterpreted.
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By the time Mr Watts reached the end of chapter one I felt like I had been spoken to by this
boy Pip. This boy who I couldn't see to touch but knew by ear. I had found a new friend.
The surprising thing is where I found him . . . in a book. No one had told us kids to look
there for a friend. or that you could slip inside the skin of another. or travel to another
place“
"As we progressed through the book something happened to me. At some point I felt myself
enter the story. I hadn't been assigned a part - nothing like that; I wasn't identifiable on the
page, but I was there, I was definitely there. I knew that orphaned white kid and that small,
fragile place he squeezed into between his awful sister and lovable Joe Gargary because
the same space existed between Mr Watts and my Mum.”
"The sound of my name took me to a place deep inside my head. I already knew that words
could take you into a new world, but I didn't know that on the strength of one word spoken
for my ears only I would find myself in a room that no one else knew about.“
"Mr. Watts thanked Celia. Her comment, he said,provided us with an interesting insight
into the parallel world the reader develops from the words on the page." p. 128
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https://teachingmisterpip.wikispaces.com/Great+Expectations
Dickens' novel is about Pip's disillusionment with the benefits provided by riches
and patronage, and
that creates small-time
crooks like Magwitch and then prosecutes them to the full extent of the law. Matilda
is caught up in the violence of post-colonial conflict but her positive response to
Western education suggest
(not wholly positive nor negative)
The perspective of the two books –
is completely similar, though in Mister Pip there is more
foreshadowing and an ominous tone.
In many ways
characterizes it as a bad thing, though it
whereas it
. She certainly never
,
Some parallels can be seen between
, the man
who raised him, and
. Matilda describes
her village with a similar to how Pip sees his loved ones.
the characters, while revealing the values that they
share. Similarly,
.
that
it is he is interested in discovering.
in similar to the way
without being able to say exactly what
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Key difference highlighted by Matilda’ s narration in the epilogue-style
whereas
.
This suggests that
We could say that Mr Watts
. It is also symbolised by the chapter in which
to her.
so that she can select from this the values important
These features and thematic concern make it a “Post-Modernist Text”
1. Exotic Location
Bougainville Island
2. Distinct Dialogue (local voice)
Villagers’ stories; pigeon English;cockney
3. Technology vs. Traditional Culture
4. God vs. the Gods
5. Racial Images
Mine, choppers vs jungle, fishing
Bible, Devil & Truth vs GE & personal stories
‘Red’skins ;whiteness; white man’s clothes; naming
Postcolonial texts examine the continuing impact of colonialism
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Metafiction is essentially writing about writing or
"foregrounding the apparatus,” making the artificiality,
constructedness or fictionality of fiction obvious to the
reader
Metafiction is often employed to undermine the authority of
the author as the only one who creates meaning (reader is
central to meaning in a postmodern theory approach)
Metafiction may include unexpected narrative shifts or
breaks in the storyline, stories within stories, a sense of
emotional distance, and direct comments on the act of
storytelling.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postmodern_literature
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Intertextuality –postmodernism believes that individual works
can never be isolated creations, and postmodern texts highlight
this influence using intertextuality: the relationship between one
text (a novel for example) and another
Critics may see this as postmodernism’s lack of originality (to
postmodernism, originality is a myth)
Intertextuality in postmodern literature can be a reference or
parallel to another literary work, an extended discussion of a
work, or the adoption of a style.
Some have said Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea is a ‘post-colonial
revision of Jane Eyre’ – a rewrite of the original story to include a
new post-colonial understanding of themes and characters. Thus,
Jones’ Mister Pip can be seen as a postcolonial revision of Great
Expectations (a rewriting of Pip’s story using ideas we now think
about the world)
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Post-modern age is from WWII on; characterised
by technological change and changing identity
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A person in the post-modern era adapts, adapts
to change, creates themselves.
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Major theme in Mister Pip is Personal Change.
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Matilda, just like Pip, is shown to change, to
adapt, and thus like Pip, she recreates herself. In
the final chapter, Matilda compare herself and
Pip to emigrants seeking a new life in a new land
“Each is free to create himself anew”
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Where Jaggers & Miss Havisham influence Pip, Mr Watts is the major
influence on Matilda’s change. Matilda even tries to explain to her
mother, Delores, how unexpected things can happen and suddenly
change one’s life.
“...to tell her about Mr Jaggers’ visit to Pip in the marshes... The idea that
without warning, your life could suddenly change.”
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Until Mr Watts, the children’s world had been so narrow they had not even
imagined such change was possible for them.
“[Mr Watts] took us by the hand, taught us how to reimaging the world and
to see the possibility of change...” she says, looking back on her change.
Like Pip, education (and literature) is central to the changing identity and
status of Matilda – this is a familiar theme in Post-Modern Literature (the
way for self-improvement = education)
“Great Expectations is such a book. It gave me permission to change my
life” Mr Watts tells Matilda. Speaking of the school when he first begins
to teach, Mr Watts says idealistically, “I want this to be a place of light”
Matilda goes to High School in Townsville, then University where she
studies literature, completing a Doctorate on Charles Dickens. Later we
hear, she has become a school teacher herself, before she tells us she has
written her story “Mister Pip.” Clearly, the high level of education,
Matilda achieves would suggest that the author’s viewpoint on education
is positive and linked to personal change.
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Which characters in other texts undergo major
personal change?
What other texts show education as playing a
significant role in change?
What texts show other characters in mentor
roles – influencing change?
How do the other texts you have read reflect the
thinking of the era they were written in ( about
individual identity, social status and change )?
Which other texts are Post-Modern texts which
reflect PM thinking about the fluidity of identity
and how the PM subject reinvents themselves
(agency, selection and choice)
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Delores is angry at ‘white men’ for the destruction of forest near
the mine, and for luring her husband to the Aust mines – the
results of colonisation are shown to cause conflict and resentment
Mr Watts is appointed teacher because he is the only white man
left – whiteness = status. His possessions are the only ones not
burned by the Redskins – he is not seen as a villager, despite his
marriage.
“Above all” says Mr Watts “white is a feeling” –suggesting the
power relationships (superiority) associated with skin colour
which are remnants of colonisation. In the end, his whiteness is not
enough to save him
The Papua New Guinea soldiers are called “Redskins” – skin
colour is marker of identity and difference (Bougainvillians are
very dark skinned like Solomon Islanders in appearance)
Matilda is named for the famous Aust song “Waltzing Matilda.” The
Rebels model their image on “Rambo.” Traditional culture is
subject to the influences of Western colonising culture.
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Matilda is aware of cultural difference
“A black man is easily spotted in Townsville.”
Like her mother, Matilda feels betrayed when she sees her father
wearing western clothes: “His transformation into a white man
was near complete”
The villagers visit the classroom to imbue stories of cultural
knowledge – these highlight the way that Matilda (like all PM
subjects) is surrounded in multiple competing cultures which offer
competing narratives of belief, knowledge and values.
The chapter of Mr Watts and Grace writing their ancestry and
cultural knowledge on their daughter’s bedroom wall also
highlights this “post-structural process of identity” – selecting our
identity from multiple influences as a magpie building a
nest(bricolage)
“The forge was home: it embrace all those things that give a life its
shape....” Matilda recognises that although Pip’s home setting is
very different to her own, it has the same function –it gives him a
sense of identity, it shapes his life, it is a cultural context for him to
begin from and add to, to create a new identity
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3.
What other texts have you read which
include cultural or racial difference?
What other types of conflicting cultural
values have your texts shown?
Have any of your texts shown
colonisation or post-colonisation
relationships?
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Delores, Matilda’s mother, has been shown to be a very stubborn,
selfish, devout and proud woman throughout
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In the climax, we see a totally different side to her (char. devpmt)
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Her actions are ‘redemptive’ – they redeem her previous failings
In the face of evil, she shows physical and moral courage, saying
“Sir, I am God’s witness” (to the slaughter of Mr Watts and Daniel)
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She knowingly places herself at risk, and then, following her own
vicious rape, she sacrifices herself for her daughter’s safety. With
her actions, Delores epitomises Christian sacrifice – she is a
Christ-like figure in the novel, much like Simon in Lord of the Flies
Matilda later equates Delores’ sense of moral responsibility with
Pip becoming a true‘gentleman’ as she remembers Mr Watts
explaining that “to be human is to be moral, and you can’t have a
day off when it suits”
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What other texts show characters as
Christ like figures of sacrifice?
What other kinds of acts of moral
courage are shown in the texts you’ve
read or viewed?
Have any of these texts shown
characters who act “out of character”
with how they have been previously
portrayed? (thus showing character
development)