Herbie Archie weller

Transcript of 'Herbie' By Archie Weller
Colour Symbol Image 'Herbie' by Archie Weller Colour, Symbol, Image By Samuel Beech The colour black is very symbolic in the story “Herbie” by Archie Weller, the colour black is associated with dark, sinister and contentious acts as is apparent is this morally challenging piece of text. The text challenges our values as a young boy is bullied until he falls to his death out of a tree he is forced to climb. The fact that an indigenous writer has written this text from the point of view of a racist young white boy, suggests that he is trying to get young white boys to see the damage they can cause . Black in some cultures is seen as the work of the devil and in some as the colour of mourning and a representation of grief. The darkness of the colour black helps bring forward one of the key ideas of racial superiority. “Herbie was the only boong to go to our school. Perhaps this is why we taunted and teased him,” this quote backs the key idea of racial superiority. The ‘whitefellas’ in the town regard Herbie and his family as outcast and they see themselves as racially superior. This comes about because of naturalised assumptions developed since 1788 when the European sailors saw the aboriginals still running around in there loin cloths and with no apparent form of Literature. Since then the naturalised assumption has been strengthened by many different things, the white Australian Policy being one of them. When the Australian government stopped non-whites immigrating. The colour black is symbolic of the white suppression of the indigenous in Australia. The colour could also be symbolic of a cultural genocide against Herbies family and his culture.