Short Story Tiri By Phil Kawana

In the short story “Tiri” written by Phil Kawana, Tiri went through a lot, he had many problems in his life, he’s done some pretty bad things too. The challenge i will be writing about is Tiri always being alone, he had no one to turn to when he did something bad/good but all of this are the results of him always being alone.

Tiri didn’t have the best childhood. He was alone, he had no one to go and tell his problems to. He was always being bullied for being dark “my skin colour wasn’t the same as theirs” and “the other kids would laugh at me and call me the black beggar” was it his fault he was dark? And when he had enough he used to fight them “we always stopped at the sight of blood” but then for that too he used to get abused by his dad, it wasn’t Tiri’s fault he picked a fight, In my opinion, I don’t think he should have been treated this bad from his dad because the dad should understand what he’s going through, getting bullied about your skin colour isn’t easy especially at a young age but all the dad did was see Tiri’s mistakes not the societies. It made me understand Tiri better because people have different ways of dealing with situations and
He had nowhere to go so he stayed on the streets for 3 months until social welfare put him into foster. When he was 16 and got smuggled into Sydney by a takapui merchant seaman in return for a blow job each night of the trip. I think it was a bad idea since they got caught on the first night of the trip, got arrested and got deported back. “And always the darkness wrapped itself around me” no matter what Tiri does, something bad just has to happen. It made me understand Tiri because he was just looking for place to fit in, his past ruined him. If I was him I’d act/be the same because there wouldn’t be anyone telling me what’s right or wrong, I’d just have to make the decisions myself and that’s what Tiri is doing for himself right