Mister Pip
Lloyd Jones
Extended Text - 24/02/2014
Lloyd Jones shows the suffering of a village through a girls eyes in his book Mister Pip. Matilda lives on a island in Papua New Guinea which is going through a civil war between the government (redskins) and the rebels. Matila, her mum and the other civilians in the village live in constant fear of both the rebel and redskin attacks despite the village having nothing to do with the war. In this seemingly unavoidable world of attacks, Mr Watts enables the village children to escape to 19th century England as he reads them Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.
When I read this text I felt shocked because of the miserable conditions these villages had to live in. Both rebels and “redskins” would demand unreasonable requests and actions and when the villagers could not comply, they would beat them and kill them. The villagers had nothing to protect themselves with and could only watch as their loved ones were killed. This helplessness over their fate is shown when Matilda says “‘This is what happens, you wait and wait. Until you wish the redskins would just come so that the waiting can be over”. This enabled me to think about how the pain of waiting can be worse than the act itself. I myself sometimes over analyze situations before had and find it to be more excruciating than the actual event. Sometimes its better to get it over and done with but Matilda has no choice but to wait for pain.
An idea which I found interesting was the idea of escapism which enables the children to be distracted from the ongoing civil war on their island. Mister Watts is the only westerner still on the island and he decides to educate them by reading them Great Expectations. Through this book the children become captivated and begin to live the life of Pip (the main character) on the island as if he were actually their as their friend. This is shown when Matilda says “I had found a new friend. The surprising thing was where I had found him...in a book.” This surprised me because a book set in 19th century peacetime England seems to connect and relate to kids in a modern civil war set in Papua new Guinea which is quite a contrast. The book Mr Watts reads and their current situation seem to show no similarities on the surface but Matilda begins to relate it to her experience on the island as shown when Matilda says “Now I knew fear as Pip had known it when Magwitch threatened to eat his heart and liver”. Though this book Matilda is learning about her emotions and she can deal with them because she can relate her experience to Pip and what he does. Matilda also relates the book to her current position in “I knew things could change because they had for Pip”. Even though the book is fictional, Matilda is given hope from the made up events in the book and this allows her to not give up. This relating of completely different worlds showed me that humans will adapt a story and a character to make understanding of what they were currently enduring even thought the idea may be different. Both Matilda and Pip are experience some form of conflict on different levels, Pips conflict of what is to be a gentleman, is nothing in comparison to whether Matilda is going to be alive by the end of the day. However, this conflict has enough similarity to relate her situation to Pips and essentially escape to 19th century England, even if it is only for a bit. This friend she finds in Pip allows her to make sense of her world when she is only a child and this understand means we never see Matilda break down until after she leaves Papua New Guinea. She learns how to deal with the conflicts she faces from Pip and she survives. Matilda not only escapes into Pips world, but also brings understanding back to her uncivilised world.
This was interesting to me also because it showed the power of books. In Matilda's physical and real world the most civilised thing is a fictional book written hundreds of years ago. This was interesting to me because it made me question if the closest we can get to proper civilisation is in fictional books. This made me question whether humans can actually achieve proper civilization or does moral corruption take over preventing a fully civilized society. In Matilda's world, Australian Mine companies brought money and civilization, but local powers become greedy and wanted more leading to civil unrest.
No comments:
Post a Comment