Comparative Essay: Unaustralian Elements in Australian Literature

This essay critically explores the representation of foreign elements in Australian literature, focusing on Patrick White's "The Tree of Man" and Behrouz Boochani's "No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison." The essay examines how these works portray characters and settings unfamiliar to the average Australian reader, such as Con the Greek and the Manus Islands. It delves into the concept of representation in literature, highlighting how authors use foreign elements to signify meanings beyond the literal. White's novel depicts Con as an outsider disrupting the mundane lives of an Australian family, while Boochani's memoir uses the Manus Island detention center to represent the Australian government's policies and the experiences of asylum seekers. The essay argues that these foreign elements serve as a means to explore cultural identity, challenge perceptions, and offer insights into the complexities of Australian society and its relationship with the world. The analysis considers the impact of these representations on the readers' understanding of both the familiar and the unfamiliar aspects of Australian life and culture.

Running head: AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE
Australian Literature
Student’s name
University
Author’s note

1AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE
Literature serves as a window to look out in the great wide world, to things which one has
never heard of, to places where one has never set foot on, and to the people they have never met
before. It is a wonderland of new experiences, and of new information that makes a person
enrich and grow. Similar to world literature, Australian literature also consist of a great wealth,
giving the readers access of Australia’s rich heritage, along with a taste of the world unexplored
to them. The Aussie culture is quite a unique one, amalgamating the legacy of the colonial
settlers with that of Aboriginal history. It is the confluence of the two worlds that makes
Australia stand out among the world literature. And most certainly, literature plays an
instrumental role in acquainting people with their own culture.
However, in the contemporary timeframe, the country has developed its own flavour,
where many of the people are not directly aware of their European past; neither did they identify
the Aboriginal influence that has shaped their worldview in perceiving the outside world. With
the advent of globalization and development of information technology, the world has indeed
become a smaller place, where people easily get hold of foreign culture. Although to a limited
extent, literature still provides an opportunity to explore the world, and develop an understanding
about anything that is essentially “Un-Austrlian”.
The purpose of this essay is to explore literary representation of such a few items,
presented in the literary works of some stalwart authors, who introduced the Australia readers to
places and people beyond their regular lives, and take them to a world of adventure with new
experiences. There are several examples that could be presented in the given context. To start
with, the 1901 novel My Brilliant Carrier by Miles Franklin tells the story of a young girl,
Sybylla Melvin who aspires to go beyond her mundane life and become an author herself. In the
novel, there are certain problematic representation of the Irish nationality, where the authors

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somewhat stereotypes the characters she portrays and makes a stark distinction with an
Australian (Franklin 2007). Again, in Barracuda, Christos Tsoilkas tells the story of a young
boy, Danny Kelly, where he presents the city of Glasgow almost exotically. To an average
Australian, the life in the Scottish city is not a very familiar concept, and to his advantage,
Tsoilkas uses this lesser-known imagery to beautifully capture young Danny’s efforts to escape
his identity and his roots (Tsoilkas 2014). However, the most fascinating use of portrayals of
foreign images are found in Patrick White’s The Tree of Man, where he depicts the character of
Con the Greek against the background of regular Bush life in Australia; and further in No
Friends But The Mountain: Writing from Manus Prison, a captivating memoir of Behrouz
Boochani’s journey to Indonesia to Christmas Island that portrays Indonesia and Manus Islands
as a uncharted territory to the regular Australian readers. To explore the Unaustralian elements in
Australian literature, the present essay will critically explore the representations of such foreign
aspects, such as the Greek character and the setting of Indonesia and Manus Islands as portrayed
in the works of White and Boochani respectively.
It is essential to note that representation, in context of media and literature, is not
intended to provide accurate details of a particular object, place, time or people to let the readers
know more about it. Rather, representation essentially refers to the process of replacing one
element with another to signify a certain meaning. Representation in literature is important for
two main reasons, i.e. perception and inclusivity. Hence, the way a certain character or an object
is placed in a literary context, constructs the fundamental perception which the author intends
them to portray in (Patterson 2014). For example, the three witches in Macbeth does not
necessarily establish the prevalence of witchcraft or black magic at the particular timeframe,
rather it signifies the mystical, occult power of fate that drives Macbeth towards his destiny

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(Meek 2009). Similarly, in White’s portrayal of Con the Greek does not intend to share
information about Greeks, neither does Boochani’s account of Manus Island intend to provide a
description of the place. They both employ these elements as the symbol of something else,
something unknown to the readers.
To begin with, the Australian Nobel laureate Patrick White’s novel The Tree of Man is a
unique tale of the Australian life. The author takes up a daunting challenge to simply describe the
regular life of an Australian couple, living in the bushlands, where he most sincerely and
carefully paints a picture of their day to day journey. In the review of the novel, James Stern
from the New York Times asserts “The Tree of Man,' it seems to me, is a timeless work of art
from which no essential element of life has been omitted. A magnifying glass has been laid over
a microscopic world in the centre of which loom, larger and larger, man and woman, married,
bound by love, and from whom radiate the beauty and the tragedy of humanity." The novel tells
the story of Stan and Amy Parker, living a quaint life with their son and daughter. They pass
their lives with the ordinary joys and sorrows, performing all the necessary chores with an
apparent stoicism, yet with a desire to seek the deeper meaning of life. This is rather evident in
the section where White describes Stan and Amy adoring their newborn child Ray, whom they
rear with duty and care of regular parents, yet with a profound longing to comprehend
parenthood. White rights “The father and mother would sometimes watch the sleeping child, and
in this way were united again, as they were not when he was awake. Released from this
obsessive third life that they seemed to have created, the lives that they had lived and understood
were plain as cardboard. Affection is less difficult than love. But the sleeping baby moved his
head, and the parents were again obsessed by vague fear, the mother that she might not ride the
storms of love, the father that he would remain a stranger to his son.” (White 2010)

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Amidst their unvarying lifestyle, arrives Con the Greek. He was nothing like the people
that used to live around the area. He did not speak their language; neither did he understand a lot
of cultural references that went around him. Apparently an alien to their midst, people were
rather apprehensive of him. It was majorly due to the Parkers’ previous experience with the
elderly German man, who was there to help Amy when Stan was off to his military duty.
However, people laughed at Con, who could not utter a single word of English, only
communicated through signs and smiles, showing his eagerness to work for Stan and Amy.
Although it was difficult in the beginning, their anticipation died at last, when they discovered
that Con had adjusted quite well among the Parker household. Thus, the character of Con, was
that of a foreigner, an outsider to the unvarying lifestyle of the Parker family, who was nothing
like them. Eventually, he incited varying reactions among the family members, with young
Thelma growing an infatuation for him, and Ray considering him as his competitor, despising
him for an array of reasons. Con’s outsider status again is reinforced by the author through the
depiction of the elements of his little box. The small metal box, where Con kept all his worldly
possession—the pictures, the root of an exotic tree, the shiny metal knife and several other things
which he himself lost track of. Ray was also immensely inquisitive about the artefacts of Con’s
possession. Even Amy, who was generally a loving, nurturing mother, grew a deep fondness of
Con. She fantasized Con as her lover, although she never delved into it any further. Everyone at
the household was fascinated by Con, except Stan. He almost had an apathetic, stoic sort of
reaction to Con. Stan never showed any warm feeling or any kind of fondness to the Greek,
although he was not bitter. Nevertheless, he appreciated his help and paid him a little wage as
well. Moreover, when Con finally decided to leave, Stan was rather relieved than sad. (White
2010)

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Thus, Con the Greek was a complete outsider to the Parkers, as well as the area they lived
in. He stands out as a force of change, disrupting the Parker’s mundane lives. In a way, Con had
an impact on everyone in the family, and played a crucial part in unravelling the layers of the
central characters. This would not have been possible if he was an ordinary, local man, with
similar life and culture to that of the Parkers. Interestingly, the author depicts Con the Greek as a
simple, regular man, rather than being an eccentric. He just needed employment, food and
shelter, like everybody else, and enjoyed little happiness like going to the town and meeting his
friends. Eventually, he settles down with an elderly lady, just in his pursuit to have a regular life.
However, it is the unfamiliarity of Con’s language and demeanour, as well as his unknown past
that impacted the Parker family. Thus, White represents Con as the synthesis of known and
unknown, unveiling the contradiction embedded in the most usual lifestyle of an individual.
In contrast to The Tree of Man, Behrouz Boochani’s No Friend but the
Mountains:Writing from Manus Prison is an extraordinary story of the author himself,
chronicling his journey from Indonesia to Christmas Island, and the incarceration he endured in
the immigration detention facility of the Australian Government situated in Manus Islands.
Unlike Patrick White, Boochani is not an Australian, yet his memoir associates Australia as an
instrumental element of his journey. Here, in his autobiographical account, Boochani treats the
country as a political entity, rather than a geographical or cultural context. The memoir, both a
creative project and an act of resistance, deals with state violence, atrocities, exile, incarceration
and Australia’s border policy, along with the policy changes and the insidious strategies that
have normalised the identity politics in the mainstream Australian culture. The book, written in
both poems and prose, Boochani presents a detailed account of the violence and atrocities they
faced in the Manus Island prison, and reflects on the underlying structure that sustains and

6AUSTRALIAN LITERATURE
reinforces the oppression. He opines that the degradation and subjugation of the inmates, robbing
off of their human status, represents the colonial image of the Australian political culture and the
deep rooted xenophobia, which they still are unable to shake off as a sovereign distinct culture.
Boochani uses the term “Kyriarchal System”, a term used in feminist theory, to describe the
intertwined relation of oppression and subjugation. He states “Prison maintains its power over
time; the power to keep people in line. Fenced enclosures dominate and can pacify even the most
violent person – those imprisoned on Manus are themselves sacrificial subjects of violence. We
are a bunch of ordinary humans locked up simply for seeking refuge. In this context, the prison’s
greatest achievement might be the manipulation of feelings of hatred between one another”.
(Boochani 2018)
This is the significance of Manus Island in Boocahni’s memoir. It stands for the atrocities
and discrimination of the Australian government, and its oppressing policies. While this is a
lived reality for the people incarcerated in Manus Island, it is an unknown territory for majority
of the Australian citizens. They tend to believe in the sovereignty and the welfare-based nature of
their beloved country, where the oppression might seem as rather Un-Australian, just as the
description of the Papuan people Boochani presents in his account. Boochani himself opines that
prison is an ideololgy, which restricts the common people from knowing the lived experiences of
horror, systematic torture and violent atrocities that goes on inside the prison. (Boocahni 2018)
Thus, both Con the Greek and the Manus island prison is representatives of unknown,
presenting an opportunity of exploring the uncharted territory of human experience to the
readers. Both the accounts present something very unique, to which the average Australians have
no access. Thus, they essentially represent the “Un-Austrlain” elements of both the literary
pieces.

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References
Boochani, B., 2018. No Friend but the Mountains: Writing from Manus Prison. Picador
Australia.
Franklin, M., 2007. My brilliant career. Broadview Press.
Meek, R., 2009. Narrating the visual in Shakespeare. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd..
Patterson, M.R., 2014. Authority, Autonomy, and Representation in American Literature, 1776-
1865. Princeton University Press.
Tsiolkas, C., 2014. Barracuda: From the author of THE SLAP. Atlantic Books Ltd.
White, P., 2010. The tree of man. Random House.