1. The Omen, one; Wooreddy is a child but a wise one since he often listens to the old men. He lives on the island of Bruny. One day he steps on a thing not of this earth, an evil omen from the ocean. He then realizes that he will see the ending of the world.
Two: he grows into puberty and has the burning ritual, while the men tell him the myth of the Great Ancestor. He wants to find a mate but it has to be a local one. Mangana hast lost his wife to num (ghost/white man). People accept this curse on their people, but W knows that it’s the ending of the world. He decides to leave this haunted island.
2. Seek Allies: Fire is important, it keeps Ria W away. W finds a village with friends of his family and stays there. He haunts for the old men in return for their knowledge. He gets married. He isn’t a man before he has killed a num who takes their land. Goes on an expedition, kills a num …show more content…
and bring back a panoine (dog) to his father-in-law. He wants to see his homeland, takes his wife and children.
Two: he makes a canoe which his wife then pushes across the river – only women can be in water. They watch a woman being raped on the beach and all the while W wonders why the ghosts’ dicks are white and about their grammar. The woman turns out to be M´s daughter. They proceed to the camp where W´s wife provides sea food while M tells of his loss of his 2nd wife. M tells W to have his daughter when he is gone. The daughter spends much time with the ghosts and gets tea, sugar etc. which M likes. M´s life has once been saved by a ghost and now he owns his life to them.
Three: they begin wearing clothes so they won´t offend the ghosts. The women of the camp spend too much time with the ghosts, Luuna too. W likes the tea and sugar but not the ghost food.
Four: A missionary arrives with a boat full of convicts, to civilize the Aborigines. W sees Mr. Robinson as an ally with whom he can stay and study until the ending of the world. W takes him into the forest but soon R takes the lead. Trugernanna speaks a little English and explains.
Five: Mr. R takes the remaining Aborigines to a num shelter. He wants to separate the children from their parents so they can become educated and not follow the ex of their heathen parents. W doesn’t like the fact that they are “children” and R is the “father”. R is glad to discover while speaking to W in some sort of pidgin that his primitive religion has a concept of good and evil. W decides he needs a wife and asks M for his daughter. M says that they are both foolish and spends too much time with the ghosts, so he doesn’t care.
Six: Mr. R´s first sermon is in ½ Bruny and ½ Ghost (English). R gets excited when he sees T and runs off, W runs after him and they talk. T sees her father watch a coal die, not knowing that he watches his people die. T and W enter into a 7 day wedding ritual; on the 7th day the have sex but T only having been raped isn’t aware of the different positions, she is indifferent to the sex. W accepts his marriage not to be for love but for survival.
3. Flight from the ill-omened land: Mr. R takes T to the city of Hobarton to show her to the governor, to show how good his project is going.
Two: R and T go to his house where he receives a cold welcome from his wife.
They came from London and she would have much rather stayed. R worries much about becoming a man of substance, try to speak Cockney.
Three: some ghost women come to look at T and are delighted and they dress her in London fashion. When the two returns to the island she tells W that they will soon be leaving. M dies and R conducts a Christian burial, but at night they dig him up and burn him the traditional way. T doesn’t cry and W is worried because he feels that in times like these traditions should be kept.
Four: everyone is loaded into the ship, but W notice how mean the ghosts are to each other.
Doctor Wooreddy:
Representation of people and how they look upon each other. The meetings of cultures and how they have theories on how they look upon each other. The Aborigines meet the colonizers, but to them it is humans meeting num (ghost).
Time line
Genre; historical fiction. An anthropological
study
Social status: a very different hierarchy in Aborigine society than in European. The Europeans considered the Aborigines low on the scale because to the Europeans they had no hierarchy/ no chief. The social order is very different e.g. women are important because they provide the tribe with seafood, the bear the children and can swim. The Europeans appoint Trugananna princess. The Aborigines had a social structure but not consisting kings and princesses. They had wise men, knowledge and history. Wooreddy is a doctor of anthropology/ philosophy because he speculates about European culture and social structure. Robinson´s goal is to rise in status in Europe which he does at the end. Knowledge in the Aborigine society is to have knowledge of history and the ancestors.
Anthropology of the Tasmanian Aborigines:
For a long time the A were considered the most primitive, even more primitive than the A on the Australian main land. There were differences between the two kinds of A´s e.g. the Tasmanian Aborigines refuse to touch fish, but they eat other seafood. They didn’t use stone tools and they were very isolated since they had no contact with the main land.
Land right. Compare to the Maori situation. The Maories were recognized as the original people of New Zealand, were as the Aborigines weren’t. The reason for that could be the way the Maories are high up on the racial family tree and the Aborigines are near the bottom.
Hard natives; they didn’t receive the British openly
Body is how they show their hierarchy; by the branding they get.
The story of Tasmania: settlement in 1803
1804 there were many battles where many died the Black Wars were where the first soldiers came to the country side.
1830 “black line” – 2000 men marched from the north to the south, while attacks continued.
The conciliatory (friendly mission) succeeded in the end – wanted to give up/ hand over the land.
Counter-narrative; writing against the colonizers and the tool used in this novel is irony.
Ria Warrawah vs. Great Ancestor
Ocean fire
Eveil/devil good
This is where women where men come from
Come from.
The women are strong
And can resist the evil
Women get the seafood men hunt in the woods
Mudroro wasn’t Aboriginal but half white, half African-American. Even if he was Aboriginal he could have been Tasmanian Aboriginal because they were all extinct; genocide. This caused a scandal. Is this authentic literature?
You can compare Mr. Robinson and Wooreddy because they both have a vision and that becomes their mission.