The beginning of the end for the Titanic went mostly unnoticed for most passengers who were already asleep an hour before midnight. Even the lookout in the crow’s nest who had given warning about the iceberg only heard a faint scratching and thought that it had been a near miss.

Ironically, that scratch had exposed the weakness of the Titanic’s construction with surgical neatness. Had the ship hit the iceberg head-on, it would have been able to stay afloat as more watertight compartments would have been preserved. As the story went, the Titanic not only sank, but sank so rapidly as to take two thirds of its passengers down with it.

W. B. Bartlett’s Titanic: Nine Hours To Hell, The Survivors’ Story was published by Amberley. The author collected the existing eye-witness accounts of survivors while concentrating on passengers travelling second and third class on the ship as well as lowly crew-members. There are fewer accounts from them than from first class passengers. This is partly due to there being fewer survivors from the lower decks, but partly also to the news’ snobbery of finding only first class passengers interesting enough to get and preserve detailed accounts. You may observe the same bias daily on the news today.

Most of the third class passengers had been picked up on a stop-over in Ireland, many of them Irish families emigrating to the United States for a better life. The third class cabins were lost somewhere in the bowels of the ship connected with a rabbit warren of corridors of which many were dead ends. These dead ends would later hinder many passengers of ever reaching the deck. As an additional safety measure, barriers hindered the rabble from the third to enter the second or, God forbid, the first class.

Many crew-members and officers had premonitions of disaster before the maiden voyage of the Titanic usually when first seeing the ship. These premonitions had nothing to do with paranormal activity, but with human brains processing available data. A glimpse of the ship’s size and its available life craft would not have added up to any versed seaman’s brain. Without counting, none of them would have been able to put his finger on it, but in fact there were no boats for a quarter of passengers and crew.

Bartlett has collected all the stories into a fascinating eye-witness account with all the discrepancies that entails. The whole passage of events is presented in a thrilling and chilling way that makes you wish not have been there at the time. Collecting all these stories also sheds light on the fate of those that didn’t survive and whose fate has hitherto been in doubt.

Even if Bartlett has to work with second hand accounts, the book makes interesting reading for the Titanic aficionado and the mere film viewer both. Reading these accounts, you’ll understand why this particular naval accident has struck a chord with the public at the time and why it continues to fascinate us.

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Stripped down to human size, Antony shows up as the competent if unexceptional military leader he was, while Cleopatra tried to preserve Egypt’s part independence from Rome and her personal tax income. There was no trace of the star struck queen who lost her kingdom for love; quite contrariwise, she had chosen the two most powerful men of her time to make her the most powerful woman alive. She failed, though.

Cleopatra was queen of Egypt at the sufferance of Rome and that together with first one and then the other of her brothers. Her family history showed that personal survival was synonymous with political power; her forbears had murdered brothers, sisters, mothers, and fathers to consolidate power. Cleopatra was a chip of the old block.

Indeed, in the long line of Greek Pharaohs in the line of Ptolemy Goldsworthy’s book is an excellent guide through the muddle. He tried and mostly succeeded in making sense of all the conflicting information on parentage, murder, deposition, and deception that led up to Cleopatra’s reign. With all the help, don’t worry about still getting lost if you don’t have the list handy.

Antony on the other hand came from an old Plebeian family and entered into a triumvirate with the aristocratic Lepidus and social upstart Octavian. The power sharing soon conflicted with the ambitions of the members. After Lepidus was eliminated, it was time for the other two to face off in a decider. Antony lost and committed suicide, and Cleopatra would follow suit once she found that she was unable to negotiate with Octavian (later Augustus).

Cleopatra was a goddess in Egypt and the receptacle of all fears of a monarchy in Rome. Antony on the other hand had rock star status in Rome. It is easy to see why Octavian used the entanglement of Antony with Cleopatra to discredit him with the Romans prior to eliminating him. He then had a further 40 years to make the most of the rumours he started. It is rather ironic that Octavian’s obsession with discrediting Antony has made legends of two people who would have been marginalized by history.

Goldsworthy keeps an extremely matter of fact tone throughout his book. He also shows nicely why ‘historical’ sources should be mistrusted for several reasons; Plutarch and Cassius Dio both wrote 100 to 200 years after the fact; even if they had access to firsthand accounts (which is not proven), these accounts are unknown and might have been nothing more than Octavian’s propaganda.

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The Thin Red Line (1962) by James Jones, image courtesy Charles Scribner’s Sons

The Second World War, waged from 1939-45, has inspired countless novels through the years. Some were written during the war, others in the immediate years after, and still others are being published today.

The following is a list of the ten best American WW II novels. Many of them, not surprisingly, were written by the veterans themselves, with such ex-servicemen as James Jones (U.S. Army), Norman Mailer (U.S. Army), Irwin Shaw (U.S. Army), Leon Uris (U.S. Marines), Joseph Heller (U.S. Army Air Forces), Sloan Wilson (U.S. Coast Guard) and Thomas O. Heggen (U.S. Navy) among the literary elite.

The Thin Red Line (1962) by James Jones

The 1942 Allied campaign to take Guadalcanal comes alive in this gritty tale of men at war in the jungles of the South Pacific. Jones pulls no punches in his literary account of soldiers in combat, complete with atrocities on both sides, glory-seeking officers, war souvenir trafficking and drunken benders on Imperial whiskey, Aqua Velva and jungle-made swipe.

The Naked and the Dead (1948) by Norman Mailer

An American platoon is sent on a reconnaissance mission against the Japanese, with the story alternating between the present campaign and the soldiers’ past lives. Mailer, who was famously persuaded by his publisher to use the word “fug” in place of the f-word, brilliantly explores the tensions between enlisted men and officers in the steamy jungles of the Pacific.  

The Naked and the Dead (1948) by Norman Mailer

The Young Lions (1948) by Irwin Shaw

The lives of three soldiers, two American and one German, eventually cross paths in this big, sweeping novel of the Second World War. It begins on New Year’s Eve 1937, and ends at a liberated Nazi death camp in 1945.

Battle Cry (1953) by Leon Uris

A battalion of U.S. Marines endure the rigors of boot camp, eventually undergoing their baptism of fire on the bloody beaches of Tarawa and Kwajalein. Uris also paints a vivid picture of wartime New Zealand, where the marines find love among the locals.

Catch-22 (1961) by Joseph Heller

Black humor abounds in this wicked tale of U.S. Army Air Forces personnel based on an island off the coast of Italy and their seemingly endless missions against the enemy. One of the principal characters, a bombardier named Yossarian, is determined to stay alive at all costs, but the unwritten “Catch-22″ rule is standing in his way.

From Here to Eternity (1951) by James Jones

Set at Schofield Army Barracks in Hawaii in early 1941, Jones’ Army characters booze, brawl, whore and scheme in balmy paradise, not knowing that their peaceful existence will soon be shattered by the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. Jones’ characters are unforgettable and include Captain Holmes, the aloof officer who aspires to greatness; Milt Warden, the old-line sergeant who has an affair with Holmes’ wife; Robert E. Lee Prewitt, the rebellious southerner; Lorene, the Honolulu prostitute; and Fatso Judson, the sadistic, knife-wielding prison guard.  

Across the River and into the Trees (1950) by Ernest Hemingway

Colonel Richard Cantwell returns to Venice to reminisce on his life and Army career, including his days in World War I and II. Hemingway partially based his character on the life of General Charles Trueman “Buck” Lanham, a West Pointer he had known during the Second World War. Hemingway directs much of his wrath at “pistol-slapping” generals and the tragic 1944 Battle of the Hurtgen Forest, which he thought totally unnecessary.

All Night Long (1942) by Erskine Caldwell

Russian partisans engage in a brutal guerrilla war against the invading Germans following the launch of Hitler’s Operation Barbarossa in 1941. Caldwell’s description of war on the Eastern Front is memorable. In one scene, partisans capture a young, crying German soldier, debating on whether to kill him lest he give their position away.

The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1955) by Sloan Wilson

Tom Rath, a public relations man living in Connecticut with his wife and three kids, is still haunted by his days as an Army paratrooper in World War II. Wilson paints a grim portrait of combat, including one scene where Tom and another soldier knife a pair of German sentries, confiscating their warm winter coats in order to ward off the killing effects of the harsh European winter.

Mister Roberts (1946) by Thomas O. Heggen

A U.S. Navy supply ship plies the peaceful backwaters of the Pacific, with the tyrannical, by-the-book captain and the executive officer engaging in a testy battle of wills. Heggen’s hilarious story is full of wit, sarcasm and charm, with his sea-going characters among the most memorable of any WW II novel.

Honorable Mention:

• Whistle (1978) by James Jones
• The Big War (1957) by Anton Myrer
• A Bell for Adano (1944) by John Hersey
• The Caine Mutiny (1951) by Herman Wouk
• The Last Convertible (1978) by Anton Myrer
• The Americanization of Emily (1959) by William Bradford Huie
• To the White Sea (1993) by James Dickey
• The War Lover (1959) by John Hersey
• Slaughterhouse-Five (1969) Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• Tales of the South Pacific (1947) by James Michener

Cover of The Book of Night Women

Lilith, the main character in the book, takes us through a haunting, soul breaking journey of her life on a Jamaican sugar plantation during the 18Th century. Marlon James the author has written the book in the narrative form of a rhythmic Jamaican patois a stilted language of the slaves. The way the author has used this, adds to the interest of the book. The reader hears the voice of Lilith, the main character of the story, an understanding of her dialect captures the imagination.

As the storyline unfolds, so does the pain and the fear of the slaves. The power of the masters, their cruelty and weakness of character are portrayed throughout page after page. Oppression of the cruelest kind is there for the reader to witness, James writes with no apologies. Rape, love and punishment are described with feeling, the reader is taken on a roller coaster ride of life on the Montpelier estate.

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Negro women, use their bodies and have their bodies abused. They are tortured but remain strong, the bitterness grows within them and adds to their strength and cunning minds. Their African past is kept alive and houses so much hatred it spreads from plantation to plantation, slave to slave. No white master is truly safe as this powerhouse of destruction builds into an organised revolution.

Tragedy, joy and fear is rolled into the blood and destruction that follows Lilith and friends. Friends who are not loyal, those who have ulterior motives and those who find they cannot support her forever. A woman alone, yet surrounded by many. She holds the secrets of many; she is the secret of a few. The subservient women start an uprising with amazing and tragic consequence.

Image by *clairity* via Flickr

There are graphic moments and words in the book, however, if they were taken away, along with the sing-song language, the book would lose its personality. It is unique, powerful, a reminder of what slaves went through and will stay with you for a long time.

Such was the fate of Gertrude Savile, living first with her brother and later with her mother and aunt. Her home was her reticule and her diary, until one day she made an unexpected inheritance of such proportions to enable her to set up her own household. Tellingly enough, her diary breaks off at that point, but her housekeeping accounts were kept along with her diary for Vickery to piece together what kind of life she was leading afterwards.

A bachelor had no home either, with no woman to keep the place running he was lost. As setting up house was a costly affair, younger sons often ended up as bachelors whose life would be dominated either by a military career with the barracks as home, or as secretaries to important persons, again reduced to near servant status.

Amanda Vickery freely pilfers what diaries she could find in archives to recreate the feel of a Georgian home. While this proved quite easy with lot of materials found for the upper classes, finding her clues for the less fortunate was more difficult. But household books had survived there as well, and she manages to translate dry accounts into meaningful description. Getting through dozens of boxes of scraps and pieces from clerks rented lodgings to references and single letters that survived, she painted the grander picture of what home meant in Georgian times.

She is able to show how the house and home had become a stage set to receive guests not only for aristocrats but for the merchant cit as well. The accounts tell her what the latest fad in design was, like the yellow wallpaper bought by Gertrude Savile (and this unhappy penchant to decorate their houses in unflattering colours persists in England to this day). Or she may marvel at the aptitude of an alcoholic to write a coherent diary where he mentions the amount of booze he got through every day.

Sacrificing scientific precision for a flowing narrative style many a modern novelist would be well advised to copy, Vickery manages to produce an immensely readable book full of fascinating information about Georgian daily life. Behind Closed Doors: At Home In Georgian England was published by the Yale University Press.

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Perhaps best known from a mildly accurate movie with William Holden, “The Devil’s Brigade”, the group’s members derived their nickname from the Germans defending their lines in Italy against the Allied onslaught.  The movie makes them look like the friends of the Dirty Dozen. However, although numerous Army post commanders did use the opportunity to clean out their stockades, most of the people who made up the FSSF were tough guys, which the organizers were after. Lumberjacks, trappers, wilderness guides, very tough, very macho.

It is an axiom that the conventional army has always had trouble using unconventional units properly. That’s gotten some people killed through improper use.

Like most special forces units, the FSSF was misused after drawing attention for its one major accomplishment that utilized its special talents to the utmost. With their esprit, they tackled each tough mission as if it was something designed for their particular skills.

The big event was capturing a mountaintop defense position that was chewing up Allied soldiers working their way up the Italian boot. As depicted in the movie, the Black Devils climbed an unclimable cliff, went over the top and took the higher of the ridge-linked twin peaks, then moved on to take the second peak. It was a masterful accomplishment.

After that, they were plugged in at Anzio like regular troops to defend a line that a division would normally handle. There they earned the German nickname, Black Devils, by making up for their low numbers by nighttime raids to destroy enemy positions and creating a larger and larger buffer line.

The FSSF also spearheaded the advance into Rome, General Mark Clark (obviously not one of the author’s favorite people) anxious to grab headlines for conquering an Axis capital before the D-Day landings in Normandy took all the attention.

The FSSF was disbanded late in the war once the combat approach of mass armies with close air support made their specific type of contribution obsolete, in the eyes of the military planners.

The final chapter follows the Black Devils after the war, up to a poignant moment when an elderly Force veteran gets an unexpected call from another who is quietly dying in a nursing home. “We really took that mountain, didn’t we?” his friend asks.

A worthy account of the Black Devils. With a photo insert

Late spring 1909, Hubert Latham was breaking record upon record, flying higher, faster and farther than anybody else. He was fast becoming the favourite to win the £1,000 prize money put up by Lord Northcliffe for the first aeroplane flight over the Channel. Lord Northcliffe was proprietor of the Daily Mail and the Times, and he was convinced that flying machines would open up England to an invasion by the Germans. To prove this, he set out the prize to show that it was possible to cross the Channel. This happened before the Great War, and long before the Daily Mail became a Nazi supporting newspaper during the 1930s. The prize was part and parcel of a PR stunt spearheaded at the government and parliament to open their eyes to the German threat.

Latham was far from being a nobody; he was an accomplished sportsman and had a record breaking hot-air balloon flight from London to Paris to his credit as well. Within only a few months of starting to fly aeroplanes, he had become a notable figure in flying circles. Latham took aim at the prize and his preparation was meticulous. By end of June 1909, he and a mining engineer had completed a survey of the coast around Dover and Folkestone; he chose a patch of level ground atop the cliffs of Dover as a landing pad.

Latham’s family was well connected, and he himself had made many friends during his studies. They were all put ruthlessly to work for and help with the venture. He set up camp in Sangatte in disused buildings left there after an abortive English-French tunnel venture, and a radio link was set up between Dover and Sangatte. Northcliffe, impressed by the preparations being made, latched on to Latham as the epitomous Englishman, playing his English roots over the French family connections and keeping quiet on his German family links.

An Antoinette monoplane was designed and built by Leon Levavasseur and assembled on site in Sangatte. French naval vessels were assembled in Calais to provide a seaborne escort to the flight. And then bad weather set in. The fragile construction of airplanes at the time allowed no flying in every kind of weather yet. Everybody settled down to wait and the Daily Mail tried to keep up the hype by daily dispatches on technical data and gloomy weather forecasts.

On July 14, the weather cleared and Latham announced his intention of flying the next morning. At the same time in London, Northcliffe’s German spies had finally done their homework on Latham’s German family connections, and they couldn’t have been worth: He was directly related to the German Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg. In Paris, the leading French newspaper Le Monde received the same news at about that time. Having played the opposite game to the Daily Mail by downplaying Latham’s English connections and concentrating on his French family, they had set him up as the epitomous Frenchman. Both sides now found themselves in a major fix over the German connection, even more though as Latham was fluent in English, French, and German in equal degrees.

At Sangatte, the flight on July 15 was called off after finding that crucial parts to the machine had gone missing over night or were not functional if still there. The same day, the French vessels waiting for him in Calais were called back to their home port. Latham had to reorganise, and it was the 19th of July when everything was ready again. But immediately prior to the start, a mechanic noticed that the plane’s tank was almost empty, and new fuel had to be organised. With a short delay, Latham took off.

Halfway across the Channel, his machine lost all power and dropped out of the sky like a stone. Latham glided the plane onto the water, put his legs up to keep his feet dry and lit a cigarette while waiting to be rescued. Back in Calais, a wire was found that had intruded into the motor. Leaving the machine in Calais while going back to camp for the night, souvenir hunters disassembled the plane down to its frame over night, and a new Antoinette had to be brought in from Paris.

It was only now that Charles Blériot finally made his appearance on the French coast. A former business partner of Levavasseur until they had a serious falling out, he now had his own company. Setting up camp further along the coast near Sangatte, he also brought bad weather with him. It was July 24 by the time the weather cleared enough to allow flying. Latham and Blériot met the captains of the accompanying naval vessels and it was agreed that the first plane to fly would be trailed on water.

On that night, Latham failed to raise himself in time and was not wakened by Levavasseur either, who had been up. Levavasseur claimed heavy wind decided him against waking Latham as no flight would have been possible. Blériot on the other hand started from his camp and despite getting into heavy weather managed to crash-land barely on English soil.

Latham continued his flying exploits for a further two years, trained French pilots, was awarded the Légion d’Honneur and died 1912 during a covert mission to the Congo.

Walsh has a pleasant style in writing and brings to life the heady days of early flight. It seems right to remember Hubert Latham as driving force to cross the Channel, as Blériot had initially no intention of doing so and only entered upon the near success of Latham. But the book is irritating with all the dark innuendoes she makes as to foul play being used on Latham without either substantiating it or knocking it over as groundless slander. For anybody interested though, it is a good starting point to go investigating after a few conspiracy theories on their own.

Dover Festival July 25 to 26

Calais Festival July 24 to 26

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Now, lets fast forward to the year 1991 in Cambridge Massachusetts.  I know, these two time periods are centuries apart, but Katherine Howe magically puts them together.  So, let’s meet Harvard Graduate student, Connie Goodwin, her specialty is in colonial history.  She has been advanced to candicy and is writing her doctoral dissertation.

Except, her mother, Grace, wants her to clean up her grandmother’s house in Marblehead, Massachusetts.  Just so you know, this house is a complete disaster.  It doesn’t even have electricity, and it hasn’t been lived in for twenty years.  Different, right?  While Connie is cleaning the house she finds a name in a Bible.  The name is Deliverance Dane.  Connie, being the Harvard Grad student of colonial history, researches the name.  Deliverance was excommunicated from the church in 1692, meaning she was a witch.  This is very interesting, she’s living in a house where a ‘convicted witch’ had once lived.  Learning this, Connie researches Deliverance even more, and finds her infamous Physick book.  Only to find a history closely linked with her own.

This book is spellbinding!  I couldn’t put the book down.  Katherine Howe takes the past a present to make one story that is incredible.  This story goes through little snippets of people’s lives in the 1690s to about 1750s and applies it to Connie’s own story.  Katherine Howe gives a new look at the Salem Witch trials!

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Other male family members, bar an eccentric son, read the book and begged for more.  So I trawled the charity shops and found ‘Angels and Demons’ for a pittance.  Avidly they read, enthusiastically they praised, while I got stuck into re-reading the plays of Tennessee Williams.

Then, my darling Tom Hanks, a truly gifted actor whom I admire, took up that boring Langdon man’s role and lo – ‘Angels and Demons’ hit the cinema screen.  Oh, how it is making money, lots of money.  It was written before that Code book, and because of the hype and my love of Tom, I decided to try to read this book.  By the time I reached the bit about antimatter sitting on columns in bean cans, or some-such, I was fit to be tied.  So I slung it on the floor in a tantrum of literary despair and got out my copy of ‘The Prophet’ by Kahlil Gibran, to calm my soul.

A male birthday was looming and off I went, against my better judgement, to purchase the NEW Dan Brown.  Which is when I discovered the clever marketing that smells of greedy, cynical exploitation.  Nice money if you can get it.  The city bookshops are selling ‘Angels and Demons,’ it has gone to the top of the UK best seller list.  It has been titivated up, and now sports a posh new dark and mysterious-looking cover.  It is selling like hot cakes on the back of the movie.  The exploitative element lies in this: you can order a copy of the NEW Dan Brown for half price if you buy ‘Angels and Demons.’  Cynical or am I too innocent of the ploys of clever marketing?

The answer has got to be “Yes, I am!”  I am also a softie concerning the needs of the loved ones who actually enjoy reading tedious, boring, mind-numbing, non-eventful sludge that is a Dan Brown novel.  Yet even I did not succumb to this deliberate, cynical attempt to part me from my hard-earned cash.  I perused the shelves of those book stores and found an excellent volume of quotations from the great Winston Churchill and a book about bird watching by Rory McGrath.  Both these books have much more intellectual stimulation and entertainment value than any Dan Brown erroneously-described “page turner.”

I just know the NEW book will soon find itself a best seller, but equally quickly, will be found languishing among the bodice-rippers in many local charity shops, within weeks of publication, I expect.    At that point, I may buy it, not to line the pockets of the author, but to help the charity.  That way, the loved ones will get to “enjoy” what they like, I will have saved money, the charity will have benefited and MOST important, I have not paid full price for rubbish.  Am I alone with my criticisms and perspective?  Will there be demons coming for me? 

Crew challenges the ideology of the sanitized White patriarchal society through the ambiguous figure of the Father. The Father represses the truth through creating and changing history, recording names in a ‘great book’ and regulating life and death in New Canaan.

There were also those who believed that the Father kept a book, the great book, and in its pages he recorded the passing of their days. And not recorded only, some said, but created as he recorded, bringing their lives to be. (Prologue)

Although seemingly presented as a ‘God-like’ figure due to his white robes, this view could also have established due to the Father’s control over different aspects of life and parts of society by playing different roles.

Truly, this white Father was a being of many parts: king and priest, friend and confessor [though some said monster and liar, but not often or out loud]. A creature of uncertain origins, uncertain intentions and designs. (Prologue)

In the Father’s church, the central icon is a brass anchor with a grey eye at the centre with ‘vicious barbs’ (p.110) at the intersection of the cross, representing oppression. Crew additionally uses this icon as a contradiction to the biblical crucifix, representing salvation. ‘Thus the Biblical allusion is reversed in the antipodean setting’ (McKenna & Pearce, 2000, p.9) and he is to some extent an ‘anti-Christ.’ The icon portrays an authoritarian patriarchy through the anchor symbolizing the anglers and the grey eye as the omnipresent Father whom manipulates the community by retaining knowledge of the past. (p.110) During a discussion with Sam, Sarah refers to the Father as ‘Grey-eye’ and explains the nickname comes from a children’s rhyme:

Black-eyed beauty

Do your father’s duty,

Grey-eye greedy gut

Eat all the…world up. (46-47)

This clearly shows his form of patriarchic power over the town as selfish, destructive and greedy, representing the males as essentially immoral, bad characters. This is evident as the Father controls what the people knows as true, and therefore has kept the younger generation in ignorance about the truth of the history of New Canaan. Through the ignorance of the youth, the Father is represented negatively, challenging the patriarchal ideology.

Crew furthermore challenges the dominant view of Australia’s history by foregrounding the commonly silenced Aboriginal voice through the means of Sam Shadows.  Raised in an orphanage as a ‘white’ by the request of his deceased mother, he grew to be an intelligent, friendly and respectful wise young man.

Sam Shadows provides a prototype of the new progressive black who is profoundly aware of his black heritage and the white massacre, but who uses those features of white society (science and technology) to help him get on with his own life independently. (McKenna & Pearce, 2000, p.100)

The ‘Black Armband’ view is blatant through Sam perceived as a victim of the black massacre and racist government policy. His surname, ‘Shadows’ meaning ‘feeling incomplete,’ is a representation of the current generation of Aborigines who are seeking for answers from their past. In order to survive an old woman by the name of ‘Hibbert’ assists Sam financially and encourages him to remain positive and goal orientated; ‘Don’t look back. Always look ahead.’ (p.74)  Sam carries out Hibbert’s wise words through the study of archaeology and seismology in New Canaan, seeking for knowledge and answers to recover important Aboriginal history. Crew states, ‘He doesn’t choose some sentimental born black again spirituality. He chooses white science as his saviour.’ (McKenna & Nielsen, 1994: p.15) When unearthing bodies at the core, Sam demonstrates the ongoing link he has with his murdered ancestors through having a vision informing him of the truth of history.

From the darkness came the sound of many voices, shrieking and crying and moaning and there were limbs without bodies, crawling one on the other, rubbing one against the other, and hands, without limbs, reaching and grasping and clawing, and one rose up and opened before his face, its fingers flames, and in its palm was a single eye, and the eye was sightless, and cold as a dead moon…(VIII: p.179)

Crew uses  Sam’s coming to New Canaan as a way to foreground  the silenced Aboriginal perspective,  personifying him as the ‘black Christ,’ a Jesus figure who has the right to judge, forgive and prosecute; the process before reconciliation can truly take place.

Dominant ideologies of Australia’s past are challenged by the usually suppressed female voice, in this case represented by those of Rachel Burgess and Sarah Goodwin; both independent women who are well aware of the male patriarchal society yet chooses to be resistant towards it. Rachel, who is intelligent, hard-working, active and often described to be ‘almost the equal of a son,’ (p.14) is an evident threat to the Father and ‘his’ patriarchal order, therefore considered as dangerous and ‘in need of management’ by the Father. Sarah ‘does not allow the patriarchally determined notions of feminine petiteness to affect her self-confidence’ (McKenna & Pearce, 2000, p.103-104) but rather spends her time gaining knowledge through reading.  Her room consisting of books as well as poetry ‘suggests that through knowledge and art we can achieve freedom.’ (McKenna & Pearce, 2000, p. 104)The girls use this confidence and knowledge to confront the Father regarding the truth about the past, determination and curiousity to seek out the answers for themselves and wisdom to accept this tragedy with the intention of reconciliation. Their independence is a statement to the male patriarchal society as it proves that women are not just ‘wives, mothers and unpaid workers, as well as objects of sexual desire’ (McKenna & Pearce, 2000, p.120) but rather intellectual beings who will fight for freedom. Crew uses the voice of these women to represent the innocent generation of Australians who are discovering the truth of history, seeing the mistakes made and seeking for reconciliation with the Aborigines.

Through an antipodean setting, No Such Country is a clear paradigm of how the minority voices of Aborigines and women challenges a white patriarchal society. It demonstrates that this universal ideology of male dominance is not predominantly the wisest choice, as it does not feature the opinions of every individual, which may lead to future problems regarding truth and freedom. Lastly Crew demonstrates that understanding both the ‘Black Armband’ view as well as the ‘Three Cheers’ view is essential as that leads to reconciliation which is an important step in the hope to mend the wounds of Australia’s past.