Another Kind of Life
Correction
1. List of characters either present or only mentionned :
uncle Tu, old Hone Tawa, Hemi, Charlie (the narrator), Charlie's wife and 3 children,
a two or three-year-old child and his mother (a young woman), young nephew
Henare, grandpa, two middle-aged Maoris, the narrator's father, his teacher,
government people, Pakehas in general.
List of places : Waiari (the old marae, uncle Tu's house, a pub, a motor camp by the
beach), Auckland, metalwork factory in Pinewood, uncle Tu's cousins' house in
Rotorua.
2. a. The narrator's family tree :
old Hone Tawa
Charlie's grandpa
Charlie's father
Hemi ??
Charlie – his wife (« half a pakeha »)
2 kids in school, 1 baby
uncle Tu – wife (« auntie »)
Henare – his wife (« a young woman »)
a 2 or 3 year old boy
b. Charlie is the narrator of this short story. He is a Maori. His wife is half Maori half
Pakeha (white). They have three children, one of which is a baby. We can guess
they are in their mid-twenties or early thirties. They live in Auckland, where Charlie
is a bus driver. Charlie's family comes from a seaside village named Waiari,
although he has rarely been there. He knows a few words and expressions in Maori
but cannot understand or speak his ancestors' language. We notice he makes
grammar mistakes in English.
3. Charlie lives in Auckland with his wife and kids. Charlie's Maori family comes from
the seaside village of Waiari, where his uncle Tu, his cousin Henare (and his wife
and kid) still live. Charlie last went there to attend his grandfather's funeral when he
was a child. Uncle Tu used to have a farm in Waiari, but the government took his
lands to build big hotels for tourists, and he now works in a metalwork factory in
Pinewood. Uncle Tu sometimes visits his cousins in Rotorua.
One day Charlie decides to seize the opportunity of a stopwork/strike to go and visit
his uncle in Waiari. He goes to his house but doesn't find him, as he's working in
Pinewood, and has to spend a few hours there waiting for the bus to take him back
to the city. He spends time in the village and ends up in a pub.
4. a.b. Charlie the narrator uses both present and preterite to describe his visit to
Waiari. He uses strictly past tenses -preterite and past perfect- to describe past
family events. He uses predominantly the present to describe his thoughts and
feelings.
5. See text.
6. a. See annex.
b. See annex.
7. /
8. /
9. Acculturation was used during colonization. It was the process of trying to eradicate
native values, language and culture and replace it with the colonizing power's
values, language and culture by force.
10. a. The two cultural groups mentioned in this text are the Maori and the Pakeha.
b.
Maori
Pakeha
- the extended family is important : Charlie - everyday life takes over seeing the
wants his family (wife & kids) to go and visit extended family : Charlie's wife refuses to
uncle Tu, to do it the Maori way (l.12-17)
visit uncle Charlie because the kids go to
school and she needs to help at school etc
- the ancestral land and the ancestral
(l.12-17)
kainga (vilage) are important for them (l.51- - have lost touch with the land : they turn
60)
seaside towns into holiday places with new
buildings (l.25, 72-74)
- they live in cities and like going to hotels
- Maori liked to live by the sea,
and motor camps by the sea-side.
- life revolves around employment : « the
fish (for fish, « pipis » and mussles) and
stopwork, the factory shift, the overtime, the
farm the land
sack » (l.132-133). The stopwork is « a
Pakeha thing » (l.135)
- they believe in tapu
- they have a sense of community (they
- they don't like to live as a community (l.80 :
spend time together in the meeting house or « at work or shut up in their houses, like
by the beach l.80-84, Charlie thinks the two pakehas »)
men in the bar are never alone because
they live in a community)
- they believe their culture is superior to
Maori culture (l.108-110) and during
colonization wanted the Maori to adopt their
lifestyle (l.124-125)
11. The two groups have very different original lifestyles. The Maori used to live in
small, close-knit, rural or seaside communities. They were originally rural people
who were attached to their land, the sea and their « kainga » (village). For example,
Charlie woner about « the chance of (catching) (…) pipis and mussles » (l.19) as
soon as he arrives in Waiari, which seems deeply rooted in his natural habits. He
alos remembers Uncle Tu being « happy on the lad, his own boss » before « the
governement took his land » (l.73), which shows that it was natural for a Maori to
farm the land, unlike working in a factory like it is the case now. They also have a
sense of belonging to the maori community, which is like a big, extended family.
When Uncle Tu and Charlie met at the Queen's birthday races, Tu expressed his
fears that Charlie, like other maori youngsters, was going to forget his family in
Waiari and encouraged him to « come down and visit the old folks » (l.5-6). It seems
natural for Maoris to visit their extended family. Charlie, in this text, wants to take his
wife and kids to visit his family but se refuses. Charlie is annoyed because « it's not
the Maori way » but the pakeha way to visit the extended family bringing your
spouse and children (l.15-16). The Charlie talks about places where maoris used to
meet, like the meeting house where the community gathered for his grandfather's
funeral. It also shows that maoris particularly respect their elders and ancestors.
Maori life therefore seems to revolve around the ancestral land (the « kainga »), the
extended family and the community.
The Pakeha on the other hand mostly live in cities and like going to the seaside on
holidays. They don't have the same relationship with the land. Their life revolves
around employment and everyday life, and around a small family circle.
12. a.b. It is ethnically quite clear the most of the characters are Maori. Charlie
considers himself a Maori at first, as well as his cousin and his wife and of course
uncle Tu. Only his wife is half-maori half-pakeha. Yet he comes to realise that they
are culturally more pakeha than he would want them to be. He himself speaks only
a few words of Maori, while his cousin's wife cannot speak their ancestral language
at all for example. Uncle Tu has given up the Maori lifestyle and adopted -although
reluctantly- a pakeha life.
13. The narrator was probably born and bred in Auckland. We understand that he just
came to Waiari to visit his family or go to funerals when he was a child. He hasn't
been back since his grandfather's funeral. He therefore has a city lifestyle and a
Pakeha's life. He doesn't live off the land but drives buses for a living. His wife is
half-pakeha and we understand that they live like Pakehas. He can speak only a
few words of Maori but doesn't understand his ancestors' language (we can see
that when he fails to understand what the two men are speaking about in the pub).
His dad never tspoke to him in Maori or taught him how to speak his native tongue,
as he himself was forbidden to speak it. His Pakeha school teacher even strapped
him to a chair and washed his mouth with soap to force him to stop speaking the
« dirty Maori language ». At the end of the text, he feels like a stranger in a place
that is no longer maori anyway.
14. Uncle Tu started off as a real Maori, living a Maori life by the sea, but the
governement took his lands and forced him to adopt a pakeha lifestyle. He
symbolically represents the evolution of the Maori community, who have gradually
lost their identity.
15. At first Charlie seems excited to go to Waiari, although he is cross with his wife for
not coming with him. When he arrives and realises that he doesn't recognize the
place and his cousin's wife cannot speak a word of Maori, he starts «wondering »
(l.46) about their real cultural identity. When he starts realising that things are « not
the same » (l.61 & 74), he leaves and feels « sad and lonely » (l.78). He wanders
around the village but starts feeling « quite cold » (l.86). He goes into the pub to
cheer and warm up, but « the beer doesn't cheer or warm » him up (l.94). He feels
even colder and sick (l.95). He gets sadder and sadder and even starts getting
angry when he doesn't understand the Maori men in the pub (l.102). He tries to
blame it on the « sad beer », but deep down he knows he's feeling that way
because he's realizing that he is not a Maori. Here in his family's village, his « home
kainga », « this Maori place » (l.104-105), he feels ashamed not be able to
understand his ancestral language. As a result he feels colder and colder (l.116),
which contrasts with the warm and friendly relationship the two maori men seem to
have. « The'yre never cold in that place where the words warm the heart » (l.119120), unlike him. At the end of the text, he doesn't even want to stay in Wairi any
longer : he wished the bus was here (l.134)
16. Waiari has changed with the times, like maori have changed with the times. Maori
places and people have slowly turned Pakeha. Now nothing or no one really seems
Maori. Places reflect the slow death of Maori culture.
17. 18. Funerals, Charlie, seem to be the only thing that can bring city Maoris, or horis,
back to their ancestral land, but even those who still live there, like Uncle Tu and his
family (Henare, his wife and their child) « live another kind of life in that old place »,
which in fact Pakeha and corresponds exactly to what Charlie « had left behind » in
Auckland : « the stopwork, factory shift, the overtime, the sack » (l.130-133).
Funerals represent the death of ancestral Maori culture, which slowly died with the
British colonization of New Zealand,especially since the treaty of Waitangi, which
according to Charlie made the Maoris lose everything, lose things they mourn and
tangi because they have lost them forever (l.125-129) : their culture and identity.