The Secret River
Plot
Sequence: chronological.
Climax: At one point it seems like the Thornill family tolerate and even create a mutual understanding with the Aboriginal people. But under pressure of fellow settlers and negative stories about them William Thornill turns on them and eventually even participates in a massacre against the Aborigines.
Conflict
Resolution: The European settlers are not willing to share "their" land with the Aboriginal people. They see them as dangerous and a threat to their families and land. The settlers come up with a plan to get rid off the natives by murdering them all. They execute this plan and from then on they can live on their land without constant worry or fear. Even though the natives have not all disappeared and still live quietly in the shadows.
Style and structure
Setting
Time: 1777 to the mid 1820s
Place: London, England and the penal colony of New South Wales, Australia.
Point of view: the story is written by from third person omniscent narrator point of view.
Figurative language
Author
Characterisation
Symbols and motifs
Reader response criticism
Theme
Racism: the Aboriginal people are an ethnic minority and the European settlers don't want to have anything to do with them.
Symbols
"The Secret River is the first book I have read of Kate Grenville, and I enjoyed it. I love the way Kate Grenville portray her characters. Kate Grenville did a great job in describing the life of her two main characters in England and Australia that engaged the readers of The Secret River and to transported them back in time. I also like the way Kate Grenville describes the interaction of the people along the river and the Aboriginal People. However, I did cry reading The Secret River especially the part about the massacre of the Aboriginal Community."
"I was moved and appalled and educated by this book ."
It was difficult to feel empathy for Thornhill and his fellow colonists. It is easy to think, while in the comfort of a 21st century mentality, that I would approach things differently. Given the mindset of the early 19th century about "primitive peoples" and how to subdue them was cruel. The harsh conditions and lack of formal education that were rampant, the brutalities against the Aboriginals - the book goes in details which paint a clear picture of how hardened these colonists were. The book was ok, just not what I was hoping it would be.
Born October 14, 1950, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Australian novelist whose works of historical fiction examine class, race, and gender in colonial and contemporary Australia.
In 2006 she captured the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and earned a place on the short list of Man Booker Prize nominees with The Secret River (2005).
Metaphor
Page 87: "The place ran on rum the way a horse ran on oats"
Rum: rum was the currency of all exchanges and promised consolation for the fact that everyone in the colony might as well be on the moon. Sal opens a rum bar.
Page 260: "That could wipe the smile right off a man's face"
Alliteration
Page 260: "... this was not the moment to take him to task"
Repetition
Page 265: "He agreed that the light was too harsh here, the days too hot, the nights too cold"
Simile
Page 266: "A person coming in from the leafy smell of the night was like to sufficate in the hot stink of men and rum"
Page 250: "From the lean-to Ned was snoring with a noise like a shuddering saw"
Parallel construction
Page 239: "When they picked up Thornill's scent they started to snarl and bark and hurl themselves against the end of their chains"
Assonance
Page 239: "... where the black sack-thing had hung"
Personification
Page 250: "The huge air stirred, full of hostile life"
This story is inspired by the writers own convict ancestor Solomon Wiseman. Many of the events of the novel are based on actual accounts of events from the era, and the Governor's proclamation allowing settlers to use violence against the Aborigines is transcribed word for word from the original 1816 proclamation by Governor Macquarie
Double perspective on settlement: on the one hand the destructive effects of cultures in collision, but also the beginnings of a mutual understanding, one that is ultimately destroyed by the lure of ownership of the land.
Motifs
the title "The Secret River", on the one hand meaning the Hawkesbury River, because its entrance from the bay is hard to find. On the other hand it refers to the genocide of indigenous people by the British colonisers and the subsequent silence about these events, as "the secret river of blood in Australian history".
Gun: when William moves to the Hawkesbury River he takes a gun, hoping it will keep him safe. In the end it turns out to be the object that not only kills the Aborigines, but it also kills any type of relationship or understanding that was there at that moment between him and the Aborigines.
Hope: the name of the Boat Thornill bought in NSW, but it's also Thornill's hope of starting a new life in Australia and Sal's hope of returning to England.
Egocentrism: The white settlers are egocentric. They feel superior over the natives and push them away from the land. Thornill is egocentric when he makes the decision to live at Thornill's Point, while Sal tells him she wants to go home, to England.
Prison: Thornhill has to go to prison because of stealing wood. In stead of being hanged, he is sentenced to the penal colony in NSW for the rest of his life. The penal colony is a prison to him as well. When he is finally a free man, Sal feels like a prisoner, keeping a tally of the weeks on a tree, counting the days until they will return to England. The native people feel like prisoners as well. They feel entitled to the land, but they are denied in every way, leaving them with nothing.
Fear: fear is often one of the primary motivators for the violence involved in the conflict between the English and the Aborigines.
Land: Thornhill senses even now that the Aborigines and the land are intrinsically parts of each other: the landscape is threatening because of the humans that hide within it, and the humans are scary because of their close relationship to the mysterious land.
Class: Thornill grows up extremely poor and works for the gentry, the upper class. There is always a distinction between the classes. In NSW the white settlers feel superior over the native people.
Individual vs society: Thornill grows up in a poor family and works hard to get out of that environment.
individual vs self: Thornill is in conflict with himself constantly. He steals to get out of his poor conditions, he is also in conflict when he is in NSW and feels guilty towards Sal about being convicted to the penal colony. He is in conflict with himself about the Aborigines: get closer to them or treat them the way everybody does?
Individual vs individual: there are many individual vs individual conflicts throughout the story, mostly Thornill vs other people. But also group vs group: the white settlers vs the Aborigines.
Cobham Hall: Cobham Hall is the villa that Mr. Thornhill builds on the hill on Thornhill's Point. It's modeled after Cobham Hall in London, where Mrs. Middleton worked before she married and had Sal. The building becomes representative Thornhill's strange success in New South Wales. T
he house rests on top of an Aboriginal drawing of a fish and Thornhill's boat. In this way, the villa also represents the erasure of the river's original inhabitants.
William Thornill: flat character. Even though he is one of the protagonists in the story, he doesn't develop throughout the story. If anything, he chooses to go along with the other settlers when they plan the massacre, even though he just started to create some mutual understanding between him and the native people.
Sal Thornill: round character. Even though she follows William wherever he goes and does what he wants, she eventually creates this role for herself in NSW.
Willy Thornill: flat character. He doesn't really develop throughout the story.
Dick Thornill: round character. He is William and Sal's son. He connects with the native people, plays with the children and learns how to make a fire. He doesn't talk to his father anymore after the massacre. He isn't afraid to go against the mainstream and makes his own choices.