Swallow the Air Chapter Analysis

Swallow the Air Chapter Analysis Chapter 17 Mission Chapter name: Mission – title of the chapter foreshadows the bleak and dull missionary May goes to in search of her family. This chapter reveals the real truth of the lives of Aboriginals living in missionary. Chapter summary: This chapter is centred on the lives of many Aboriginal people since the white settlement in Australia. Winch describes the landscape of the missionary to reflect their loss of understanding spiritually and ambiguous background which leads to the obscurity of identity. We learn how the Catholic Church and the government affect the ‘young fellas’ through the conversation with Graham. May is directed to Betty’s daughter, Jo, who gives her a ride to the rest of the Gibson’s family. Identity - ‘Land seemed lathed bare…starkness’ draws to the lost of connection to the land spiritually. This lifeless, dull description is restated by the short elliptical sentence ‘Dead Land’. This links to the description of the bad spirits ‘with red eyes like desert peas’, the use of colour description furthers our understanding that the ‘entire place is gone’. - ‘Looked down the rusty track to its petrol-fumed end’ conveying the uncertainty of Mays fate of finding her identity. Or is it suggesting that the unclear fog represents the people’s ambiguous identity? - The personification of the church’s wall as it ‘flakes off its old salmon skin, revealing the ashen wood beneath’ crystallises the idea that the town is lifeless inside but the fact is hidden by the rich colourful facade of paint. Winch mentions ‘salmon’ a fresh water fish that contrasts with the novels title ‘Swallow the air’. Maybe it suggests that many aboriginals don’t want to face to their painful loses and rather submerge in water and hide from the facts. - ‘Sign blinked in the distance, black on white. “Mission” it read’. Winch’s first impression of the missionary is the distinct barriers between Aboriginals and the White people. This is conveyed through May’s vision of the sign with the black coloured words on the predominant white board. Does this imply the unsuccessful conformity of the two races? Or does this suggest the feeling of rejection Aboriginals have in the missionary? - ‘A hasty construction of identical walls, devoid of emotion, shuffled off to the new suburb like secrets in pockets’. Implying that conformity changes our individual identity? It was as if it were ‘someone’s idea of fancy concentration camps’. Understanding - Significance of Graham asking if May was a Christian. Suggesting a way (characteristics) to group others? Graham reveals that the missionary is taken over by Catholics and they ‘took it out on the little fellas’ with their ‘bad spirit’. He believes that ‘other people don’t understand’ what harm this ‘bad spirit’ could do. He gives his inside knowledge of how the ‘bad spirit… stays in the family’. - Significance of Grahams perspective of the government’s relationship to the people of the missionary. He recounts the many typical consequences of silenced Aboriginals, all of which ‘just go drinking… to loosen anger’, when all they need and want is to ‘talk’. Not

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only are they taken the opportunity of support from the government, but also many assumptions are made and these eventually contribute to the many factors why Aboriginals in Grahams view are in ‘prison’. The motif of the antithesis of remembering and forgetting. ‘Those governments just put another number… so they don’t have to think about it, about people’s problems.’ This is furthered explored by the contrast of ‘crops and rape’. Denial about the truth ‘I wish someone would just tell me I’m wrong’ Interesting line from Graham, ‘If you interact with them, you become them’. The fear of forgetting how it felt to belong clearly is stated. The use of second person involves the audiences to empathise with Graham. Winch is giving an inside look into the feelings of Aboriginals like Graham.

Belonging/ Not belonging - Emphasis of the industrial production destroying the land and connection, ‘when the dirt turned to bitumen houses began to line the emptiness of daylight’. - The racist concern. People treated differently ‘second rate person…. Still can’t treat our people right’. Non-acceptance of their people. - Graham: Man that ‘is so black, the blackest skin’ contrasting with the ‘worn-out cowboy shirt and a big Akubra hat, black jeans, bare feet.’ - “I sit half in the shade and half in the sun…If ya get too used to the shade ya don’t ever want to get up. And I don’t want to get used to anything!” - An ‘un-itchy medium, trying to prise off the boundaries’ - The loss of association with the land when it is no longer such an importance with the replacement of the ‘water tanks instead’.