The choices we make show us what we value
(Also see “Encountering Conflict”)
Making the right or wrong choice: are they true reflections?
Samantha Appleby, Assistant Editor attends Roxby’s Writer’s Festival on behalf of The Roxby News
You may recall one of the stories that featured in the Roxby News last year referring to the amazing feats of Trooper Mark Donaldson who received the Victoria Cross in 2009. He was the first Australian soldier for 40 years to receive the medal – an experience that was extremely humbling for all concerned. Donaldson was honoured for his intrepid actions in Afghanistan. Braving an onslaught of enemy firepower, he dangerously exposed himself to enemy fire, enabling back up forces to recover the wounded soldiers.
As Arthur Miller states in his autobiography, “Timebends”, “a character is defined by the kinds of challenges he cannot walk away from. And by those he had walked away from that cause him remorse.”
Indeed in Donaldson’s case, such heroic acts show us what it is to be a true Australian. Under pressure, Donaldson had the courage of his convictions; he had the confidence in the Australian mission and was a true defender of Australian democratic values.
Are there parallels here, with Daniel Rooke?
Last week, I attended an interesting seminar on the Frontier Wars at the Roxby Writer’s Festival. Professor Donavon gave a thought-provoking presentation covering literature during the past 100 years and the representation of the conflict between indigenous Australians and the British settlers. He referenced books such as Thea Astley’s A Kindness Cup and Kate Grenville’s The Secret River and The Lieutenant.
The point of Donavan’s lecture was to focus the audience’s attention on the choices that one makes, and whether these indeed reflect our values. How do these choices impact on our dignity and our conscience?
On one level, he said, the white settlers perpetuate the myth of the “empty land” or terra nullius, in order to justify their land grab. Typically, Grenville depicts Rose Hill is an “untamed place” where “no rose has ever grown”. Those in power metaphorically reflect the gamekeeper’s views and values: their choice is power: their purpose is a violent grab for land; their attitude is one of cultural arrogance and entitlement, which they justify on the grounds that to violently and confidently appropriate Rose Hill will ensure that the “infant colony” will be fed. It will incidentally ensure that the governor receives his 15,000 pounds per annum.
Grenville, Donavan points out, focuses on the different types of language as a reflection of one’s mindset and hence one’s views and values. One’s choices. Their language reflects the mindset of conquest; New South Wales becomes the “possession of King George the Third”. Theirs is a violent narrative and the lieutenants are reminded that their weapons should be “loaded at all times”. The language of conquest is couched in terms such as “cooperation” but it is cooperation on the white man’s terms. Rather than “amity and kindness”, the white men see only obstruction, resistance, mutiny and challenge. The foreigners have “nothing but good will towards them”, as they seek to civilise the dirty “savages”, “look at the filth on them”. Yet the recalcitrant indigenous are blind to such largess. In this regard the governor expects the natives to “parley” with them; and if not to be “turned to account”. Brugden, the gamekeeper wears a gun “as easy on his shoulder as if part of his body”. “He would be an efficient killer”, and together with the two other prisoners, they, too, confidently believe that they can strip Rose Hill of game, which will undermine the indigenous lifestyle.
Grenville draws clear parallels between the choices that Brugden makes and his outlook on life with Lancelot Percival James, the son of the Earl of Bedwick. Albeit in reversal. The earl’s gentried and born-to-rule attitude is shored up by the gamekeeper who “protected the earl’s pheasants from those who might try to help themselves”.
Note the boot on the other foot, said Donavan, as he paused, and stared at the audience to reflect upon the myth of the peaceful settlement.
But despite the reversal in fortune, the same sense of entitlement is evident. According to Percival James’s logic, which is also Brugden’s and the governor’s, the British Empire would “collapse is slavery were abolished”.
If the choice of the powerful lieutenant-settlers is to tame difference and make the “strange familiar”, those like Lieutenant Gardiner and Rooke seek to “enter that strangeness and lose himself (Rooke) in it”. His special relationship with Tagaran is based on his desire to learn her language and understand. “He liked the ways she called him kamara”. Which suggested a certain intimacy. “The language of his feelings for her was beyond his reach. He could only step forward blindly, in trust”.
This Lieutenant appreciates the language of harmony and reconciliation. He seeks to learn the indigenous tongue as a reflection of his desire to understand and enter into their own cultural traditions.
Learning their language is as “astonishing as a star moving out of its place”. Metaphorically, learning the indigenous tongue reflects Rooke’s desire to understand a different rotation. Lancelot Percival did “not understand why the square on the hypotenuse was equal to the sum of the squares on the other two sides.” (9). Contrastingly, Rooke wishes to establish a blue-print for cross cultural relations. He imagines similarities with Galileo, turning his telescope to the night sky and seeing stars that no one had seen before” (163). It was like a dance between the two of them, or the voices of a fugue.” (He will discover the “basis on which the native language is founded.” (153) Daniel realizes that through their interchanges, “he was not simply learning another language. He was re-making his own.” A “boundary was being crossed and erased. Like ink in water, one language was melting into another”. (178).
And the more he melts into the other; the more words he learns, and the more he sympathises with their plight, he can no longer blindly follows orders, especially when it impinges upon his shared intimacy with the tribe.
But let’s hear the words of Professor Donavon, with his bushy eyebrows and pounding voice, encouraging the audience to consider whether Rooke could be considered a true hero, when considering the choices he made and the consequences. By his own admission he betrayed the Governor’s orders and undermined the settler conquest.
Like Gardiner, who is a marked man the day he did not “bow to orders”, Rooke knows that his days are numbered and he warns the tribe about the impending violence. It was always
He cannot remain the bystander and silently observe the violent appropriation.
In another presentation, on a completely different theme: “The Arab Spring: the right to earn a living” by Peruvian economist Mr Hernando de Soto, I was once again prompted to think of Fowler’s comments. He stated that fundamentally the Vietnamese just wanted to be able to eat rice and make a living. They wanted shelter and food. Likewise, Mr de Soto stated that the dramatic and desperate choices made by many protestors – often to burn oneself to death in the Middle East also conveyed similar values. For example, in 2010, Mohamed Bouazizi’s death was seen as the catalyst for the Tunisian overthrow and the “arab spring”. He appeared to make the ultimate sacrifice against injustice. And his death has since inspired 60 similar cases of self-immolation, including five in Egypt. It is not necessarily a quest for freedom; they just want the right to earn a living. He concludes: “It’s capitalism, not democracy the Arab world craves most.” The excessive bureaucracy and red tape mean that for many it is impossible to run even a legitimate market stall
But to finish on a more reflective and poignant note about true victims and dismal choices. What if we simply cannot find it in ourselves to value life?
The audience was particularly moved by Donavon’s reference to the collection of war poems, such as ‘Suicide in the Trenches’ by Siegfried Sassoon. Written in 1918, the poem tells the story of a young soldier, who like Fowler, crumbled under the pressure of adversity and acted quickly but simultaneously sacrificed their principles. Described as a “boy” who “grinned at life with empty joy,” Sassoon emphasises his young age and vulnerability. He seems to be free of worry and concern, able to “sleep soundly” and who is at the start of his experience of war. Yet, when the harsh conditions of war begin to overwhelm him, (lice, freezing weather and diseases), the once joyful boy “put a bullet through his brain” and no one “spoke of him again.” Evidently, during times of battle, many soldiers are mentally and physically unable to rise about the challenges of war. They subsequently succumb to pressures of the environment, and act in a way that opposes their character and their values.
Evidently, during times of battle, many soldiers are, unlike our heroic Mark Donaldson, mentally and physically unable to rise above the challenges of war. They subsequently succumb to pressures of the environment, and act in a way that opposes their character and their values.
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