voices & storytelling Flashcards
C = novel in which traditional separation between History and stories does not hold – not because
of any postmodern narrative playfulness (ever since Hayden White’s The Content of the Form, 1987,
or even work by JF Lyotard at the end of the 1970s, see too Canadian critic Linda Hutcheon,
early 1990s, it has been a commonplace to interrogate the ways in which narrative shapes History
as much as story – question of mediation, agendas etc.).
But
overlapping of History & story in C has to do with Indigenous Australian ways of being and
knowing, and of passing that knowledge on from one generation to the next.
Storytelling, in the context of Aboriginal Oz, and of C, is in actual fact the way in which History and memory are
preserved.
Oral narratives
do not sit still – they are constantly on the move, wandering off in numerous directions and
digressions, shifting from the mundane to the spectacular, morphing from comedy to tragedy
and back again. Writing (as opposed to telling) stories
fixes/immobilizes them, preventing them
from evolving over time, turning some stories into “classics”
Unpredictability of storytelling (including length – sometimes over several days/weeks) replaced by teleological drive to find out what happens, how things end – focus on resolution. Furthermore, in oral storytelling, the teller
always alert to
the audience, shifting gears in response to murmurings, responses, facial expressions and general body language. No such shifting possible with written text
unpredictability and time lapse
See p461 when Will is overcome by “memories of the old people”:
“if you sat long enough, looking closely into their eyes, you saw aglow the amazing world full of stories they told in competition with each other. No my boy, listen to me first. It wasn’t like that old fool told you. Never listen to him. He is only number one for a pack of lies. It was like what I am telling you because I saw it from the start to finish and he only know what I copied for him. Old stories circulating around the Pricklebush were full of the utmost intrigues concerning the world. Legends of the sea were told in instalments every time you walked in the door of some old person’s house. Stories lasted months on end, and if you did not visit often, you would never know how the story ended”
Passage captures fabric of Aboriginal life: perhaps with exception of origin story, there is no one story, & it is in
listening to variety of (potentially contradictory) stories that History & memory passed on (“intrigues concerning the world”). Note how responses of listeners also involves looking – full sensory experience. Note also how stories expand to literally fill space, taking on agency of their own (“Old stories circulating around the P”), reinforced in fact that “stories” and “legends” are subject of last 3 sentences. And, most importantly, stories appear endless, or at least unbound by Western expectations of getting to end of story in one sitting. Storytelling is means of ensuring community interaction (“if you did not visit, you would never know”), & is the preserve of the “old people” whose role is therefore central (as opposed to marginal) in community.
As soon as we try to read for plot/story, we are
thrown off track as characters wander in and out and the text appears to start over and over again (we think it
“begins here”, p. 1, and in a sense it does with the creation story, but even in opening chapter we move abruptly from an introduction to Norm to a not so obviously relevant story about the Afghans and their camels, to the decision to change the river’s name to Normal and finally to Uncle Mickey’s collection of bullet cartridges).
In opening chapter alone, one central character is
placed on same level as the Afghan brothers and Uncle Mickey who never reappear. Narrative hierarchies are upset from the outset and digression is foregrounded as the main storytelling tool. Stories, and the voice(s) which tell them, are therefore central to our understanding of this rich and complex novel. The aim of this lecture will be to interrogate the relationship between voice(s)
and storytelling, then to analyze the ways in which stories are presented as central to survival for
Aboriginal communities, and then finally to consider how C itself is a telling story
first paragraph relating origin story, page 1
First sentence starts out with awe-inspiring sentence supported by seemingly omniscient narrator’s affirmations which place action beyond the confines of the earth. The serpent is ancient (“ancestral”), larger than life (“larger than storm clouds”), and other-worldly (“came down from the stars”) and exists regardless of humans as there is no reference to time or place which would help situate this story or understand its relevance.
When, in next sentence, narrator actually does mention “you” (generic or individual?), it is to align “you” with a bird and to let us know that what seemed like the kind of omniscience we associate with deities was in fact simply a different perspective – that of a bird, and so we move from the massive scale of omniscience to the tiny scale of “the eyes of a bird”. So, from outset, multiple perspectives at play, & sort of constant uncertainty regarding scale (epic/intimate).
When paragraph 2 begins, it is to enjoin us to “picture” this “creative serpent”, and the use of the imperative form here asserts the authority of the narrative voice, a strategy that continues for the first few pages (“Imagine”, p2).
It is in this way that the hallmarks of oral storytelling are inserted into the text, oscillating between
historico-mythical affirmations, deictics and the present tense which situate the action here and now (but also in an indeterminate spacetime), calls to the imagination and assertions of non-human agency (the snake, the rivers etc.).
We move between the epic and the intimate, just in the manner of oral stories, and AW therefore immediately creates an illusion of orality which will continue right through the novel.
Narrative voice: who is narrating this story?
An Indigenous voice (although this same voice often imitates, with great humour, non-Indigenous voices and attitudes – see below) as “the inside knowledge” (referred to on p3) makes clear. This Indigenous narrator is:
- disembodied & genderless, the repository of “a particular kind of knowledge” (p3) which is
simultaneously ancient & sacred, and also quite particular/mundane & sometimes just basic
gossip.
The Indigeneity of the narrator is foregrounded in the frequent insertion of non-English
or Waanyi words
without providing a translation or even glosing the meaning.
See eg. p9 when the Indigenous people at the re-naming ceremony “mumbled Ngabarn, Ngabarn, Mandagi” (bring/carry, carry the white man) while Norm utters “a fruit salad full of abuse” – all of which the non-Indigenous townsfolk remain oblivious to, just as they are oblivious to the inside
Indigenous humour since “the river only had one name from the beginning of time, and that was Wangala” (p3). Here the insertion of Waanyi words provides humour2 and undermines the colonial obsession with naming and re-naming (form of claim-staking), but much later in novel, insertion has v different function, as when Will communicates with Joseph Midnight (p452) one
last time. A solemnity is conferred to this final leave-taking, and although some words are glosed in the text (“Najba ngambalanya nanangkani karrinjana – There is a man standing there looking at us”), the English meaning is either approximate (words literally mean: see/look, us, that one, while standing – see CNED book) or, later in that same passage, inexistent (“Warawara yajna ngawu ninya lajib” = keep talking, I you hear – suggestion that Midnight and ocean are one).
it is not just these non-English words which create a barrier between non-Indigenous reader and this text
Will and Midnight also communicate
through signs (“‘What are you doing there?’ he asked Will with a flick of his wrist” / “‘Going
home,’ Will replied with sign language”, p452). As in passage where Midnight imparts Dreaming
routes to Will, so here the actual signs made are not described, ensuring that some aspects of
Aboriginal languages, communication, and culture remain hidden from Western reader
While in some passages narrator creates parallels between Indigenous and Western customs and cultures
(see commentary of passage in cave pp419-21) and therefore adopts a didactic approach to telling
this/these story/ies, in other places the sacredness of Indigenous knowledges and cultures is
safeguarded from the Western gaze.
Inextricability of voice(s) & stories obvious from outset in opening passage. Already commented on: which nation in “A nation”? and who is “We” in “we know your story already”?
Although some critics have suggested that the words could be uttered by either non-Indigenous or Indigenous characters, it is hard to imagine that AW has any truck with idea that non-Indigenous are in business of silencing anyone in contemporary Oz. It is because the narrator is such an accomplished storyteller, mimicking non-Indig ways of talking, knowing & being that voice is so central to the narrative (& foregrounds oral storytelling mechanisms – imitations, digressions,
mythologies etc.)
Use of imperatives throughout novel foreground this voice as an authority –
see p146: “Listen to this. The talk was all over town. He did not? He did. Will Phantom of all persons mind you had abandoned, flown the coup, walked. Walked where? Walked to Eastside. What did Norm say, his son and all? He swung the axe”.
The imperative here creates an illusory sense of intimacy when coupled with the deictic “this”, and rhetorical Qs & short answers mimic the lively, interactive exchanges associated with orality, as do colloquial expressions such as “mind you” or “his son and all”.
Illusion of many voices channeled through one narrator. (FOR THIS SEE ESPECIALLY p391 – “we”, vernacular, conversational tone, capitalization for ironic oral
emphasis etc., pp392-3 also.)
This cacophony of voices is also suggested in narrator’s mimicking of non-Indigenous conversations and expressions.
See for instance p125 where first derogatory comment on Mozzie Fishman & convoy (“a blot of strange-looking blacks appeared like an eyesore on the horizon” is classic example of narrator slipping into non-Indigenous focalization (not attributed to any particular character – more a general doxa).
Followed by second derog comment, more of a Q (“Who knew why there were boongs squatting down on the river-bank?”), this time attributed to a group of “maddened men” (adjective & alliteration here poke fun at them, especially since their reaction is to “defend” their “boggle-eyed kin with rifle fire” – mixture here of more mockery & extreme violence which we will examine later in the course). The racial slur here italicized so as to mark narrator’s distance from it.
Same process in later para, same page: “The words about dirty people and whatnot, which travelled like wildfire, spread down the bush telegraph: Of seeing them hordes of blacks on the road again”. Or “All we want to do, the residents chimed to each other behind
locked doors in a mighty big hurry, is to guard the decency of clean-living people. They had a respectable place and there were Aboriginals travelling foot to mouth. Worse than even…? What? A bandwagon of politicians”.
Italicization of racist comments one way for narrator to emphasize her distance from them, & also means of offsetting them against her own ironic comments/descriptions of those who utter these words: the racist, non-Indigenous folk are referred to as “residents”, thus foregrounding their disconnection with Country, unlike the Indigenous inhabitants of Oz as represented here by Fishman & crew.
The opposition between “a respectable place” (the white residents) and “travelling foot to mouth” (Fishman et al), & implicit hierarchy set up, mocked by narrator who ironically describes siege mentality of local
residents (“behind locked doors”).
Also, even more ostensibly even-handed responses of whitefolk, signaled by shift into normal typography (“They had a respectable place and there were
Aboriginals travelling foot to mouth”), betrays offensiveness in use of “Aboriginal” as noun
The narrator reserves her most acerbic irony for the reaction of Uptown inhabitants to
Truthful’s naming of the 3 boys accused of murdering Gordie.
(Whole chapter in fact interesting for confrontation of opposing stories and ways of knowing, but will just focus on a few ex here.)
The “wisdom of the elders” (p306), their incredulity towards Uptowners (“Who bloody knows what kind of traditions people have, who say they came from nowhere and don’t believe in their own god anymore” p307) are opposed firstly to Bruiser’s rhetorical performance (“sticking to his script”, “feigned innocence” p311) and then to the malaise caused by the naming of Aaron Ho Kum (unlike the two others, sons of Fishman and Angel Day, his father is barman Lloydie): “A penny for your thoughts now, big, righteous Uptown” (p316) says the narrator, who goes on over a page and a half to imitate justificatory discourse for going after him (“Nevertheless, black was black” p317). Ultimately, Bruiser’s voice shouts the loudest and “the townsfolk were in awe” (p314). In this way, AW provides strong indictment of Uptown’s violent racism
