Notes on mister pip
- 1. The language of 13 year old Matilda, is captured in the simplicity of sentences and descriptions. In the opening description of Pop eye she uses short, simple sentences and repetition to capture a girl's curiosity at an eccentric and unusual white man who becomes her teacher. "Some days he wore a clown's nose. His nose was already big." "His large eyes in his large head stuck out further than anyone else's. " The effect of this simple style is to get the reader to trust that Matilda is an honest storyteller who keeps to the facts as she sees them. When she speaks of the poverty caused by the war and blockade, the simple sentences and simple vocabulary stress her courage and optimism. " We had fish. We had our chickens. We had our fruits. We had what we always had. We had our pride". Her sense of ordinariness and child-like innocence is captured in the phrase "... us kids" This language technique is climax. Listing simple things and then linking them to pride. Despite her naiivety, Matilda can see the damage done to the island by the larger nations. The style shows irony and anti-climax in the sentence, "Port Moresby was dependant on Australian aid which came in many forms -teachers, missionaries, canned fish, and even the helicopters used to drop the rebels out to sea." There is irony in the thought that her island needed canned fish when their traditional fishing has fed them for generations. The use of anti-climax "used to drop the rebels out to sea" shows that outside aid has brought death. Her understanding of the greed of white people is evident in the simile that associates death with the mine, "there were white people crawling over Panguna like ants over a corpse." Later when fear enters the village from the soldiers' helicopters, her simple style of short sentences creates tension. "No one spoke. We waited and waited. We sat still. Our faces dripped sweat." When she sees the dead black dog, her style becomes more reflective "To stare at that black dog was to see your sister or brother or mum and dad in that same state." This reflection shows that her innocence is being eroded. It also acts as a foreshadowing of death to come later in the book. Her language begins to become figurative as she transfers her confusion and fear onto the natural world. "You saw how disrespectful the sun could be, and how dumb the palms were to flutter back at the sea. The great shame of trees is that they have no conscience." Matilda transfers her feelings of outrage and injustice to the natural world through the use of personification. It also shows her confusion or loss of trust in the adult world. While this seems child-like, the reader sees that Matilda is losing her innocence and is expressing the deeper idea of injustice and the isolation that war and fear brings. The horror of war is beginning to alter her enjoyment of the beauty around her. She uses metaphors from the natural world to describe the events of the story. She shows the power of the Redskin soldiers over the villagers when they arrive. "We were being pecked at -the way a seabird will turn over a morsel of crab with its beak." This image of predator and prey suggests the villagers' helplessness in the face of the soldiers. When the Redskins see the white teacher, Mr. Watts, Matilda uses the metaphor of the sea, "Once more we saw what a strange fish had washed up on our shore." When the soldiers leave she likens their movements to animals. "His soldiers followed like a pack of dogs after their masters." Later when they re-appear she says, "they came upon us like cats." Perhaps the similes and metaphors make it easier for her to face the inhuman behaviour of the soldiers. To make them like animals suggest that they have lost their humanity.To think of the soldiers as animals might explain some of their inhuman behaviour. It is too shocking to think that such behaviour could be carried out by humans. After all the villagers' homes and belongings have been burned, Mr. Watts encourages the children to re-construct the story of Pip. Matilda draws on the imagery of the villagers' livelihood of fishing to describe how essential this activity was to give them hope. "In the past when we still had our nets and lines we would divide up the catch on the beach. That's what we set out to do now with Great Expectations." At the climax of the story when Matilda's mother is killed, Matilda's style becomes very flat, blunt and emotionless. "They took my mum to the edge of the jungle, to the same place they'd
- 2. dragged Mr. Watts, and there they chopped her up and threw her to the pigs." She follows this description with a simple yet powerful reason for writing the story."I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories like these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on." Here is part of the author's purpose and that is to suggest that writing one's story is an important way to record significant experiences and to help make sense of horrific events. She follows this with a rhetorical question "would my rape have been such a high price to pay to save the life of my mum? I do not think so. I would have survived it." This also is part of the purpose of the book, to focus on survival and to examine what inner strength people have to survive violent experiences. The theme of sacrifice and true heroism is expressed in the account of Matilda's mother, Dolores, giving her life for her daughter. When Matilda is traumatised by her mother's brutal murder, she loses the will to live. The story then includes a storm which causes a flash flood in which Matilda is caught. This narrative device of pairing an emotional crisis with a physical crisis is a stylistic device to intensify the climax. The turmoil in the natural world reflects the turmoil within Matilda. The wind is described as "shrill, it went mad with a thousand furies.." .."heavy rolling thunder of such violence that you thought it would bring the skies tumbling down.".."rip of lightning".."a shiver passes across the sea..the raind ropped down like flung stones." The violence of the storm relfects the violence of her mother's death. "It could catch me and I wouldn't care. I wouldn't care because everything dear to me had been taken away..the flood picked me up as it had other bits of flotsam and fed me into the river." The storm is a symbol of the chaos of her own emotions. The flash flood symbolises her loss of hope and her loss of will to live. But the flood brings her a "Saviour" in the form of a log. She must ride out the storm to be rescued. Once she has made up her mind to survive the rescue,the narrative moves quickly with other minor characters stepping in to the story to take her away from Bougainville.