The Center

The Center

The Center is all about power

using colonialism and

Binary opposition

who is the master and who is the slave

who rules who.

“[H]e says: you are ignorant.” (Tawali)

The Center tries to justify

imperialism

and colonialism

by claiming to improve lives

of the “lesser.”

“You are killing me. You are destroying my traditions. I hate you Cross.” (Leomala)

The Center maintains control

using neocolonialism to enforce

socio-economic

and political forces.

“Rule New Zealand by oppression, independence gained through loss and depression.” (Maiava)

The Center keeps their control

from the destruction

from colonialism

but psychological control remains.

“I'm sick and tired of my people always thinking they belong at the bottom of the food chain – brown brother.” (Iosefa)

The Center losses it's definite position

it is a new world

with cyberspace

and globalisation.

Now

listen to the people

of a world different

than your own.

Migration

Migration

(This is based on spoken literature.)

we must become a melting point

of culture

not seperated by our

identity

which tells us

who we are

not that we can identify

ourselves

find a safe place

where not your

ancestors

name

cultural practice

location

can

or can't define you

you define you

because

you

are you

and even if it may feel like

you are alone

or no one is like you

even if they are

looking

judging

we all understand

and

they are like us

they don't want to be

identified like that

and

maybe

they haven't been yet

they have not been brave

enough

to step into

a different world

a world

where

not everyone understands us

the way

our families do

the way our land does

a world

which

can be harsh

and cruel

but

it can be incredibly sweet

and bountiful

a world

where

we live

and

we try to understand

but even if we don't understand yet

maybe

one day we will

because

I identify with you

and

others understand you

because everyone

migrated from somewhere

at some point

and

all those people

they understand

they understand

what it is like to feel like they don't belong

or to feel questioned

Critical Analysis of Sons for the Return Home

Fine Line between Samoan and Papalagi

At the very beginning of Albert Wendt's novel, Sons for the Return Home, there is a distinct clash between the Samoan culture and the New Zealand culture. This is first apparent when the father notices two gay men having sex on the ship to New Zealand and he is immediately taken aback by how different the world is because of this first impression. Through out the novel, there is conflict between the protagonist's identity and whether he is Samoan or Papalagi. Wendt draws in many themes and conflicts seen in most Post-colonialism literature, including loss of Identity, Personal versus Universal lifestyles and Traditional versus Contemporary life.

Even though the conflict of identity is not apparent at first, it is easy to see once the protagonist begins to see the papalagi girl. In the first chapters of the story, we see that the protagonist very much identifies himself as Samoan:

'I can compete with the best of them in the class as well. I speak their language, their peculiar brand of English, as well as any of them. They have to pretend I'm their equal, that I'm a New Zealander […]' (13)

This passages shows how the protagonist differentiates between himself, a Samoan, against the papalagis with great distinction. He does not want to be part of their socio-economic grouping even if they accepted him. Though this mindset changes slowly over time, the protagonist still sees himself as mostly a Samoan until the end. Due to the papalagi girl, the protagonist begins to slowly accept her as he falls in love with her. However, there is still some resentment from being treated differently and he shows that to her by letting her learn as she joins for the church dance. As time progress, his identity shifts further as he wants to marry the papalagi girl and raise their “half-cast” child. This is a big step which is displayed as he is telling his mother that he wishes to marry the girl:

Forgive me, he wanted to say, but didn't. There was nothing to be forgiven for. Loving a papalagi girl was not a crime, a sin, a betrayal, even though his mother and most Samoans saw it that way. (134)

It displays his slow transition as he is no longer rejecting the papalagi world as most of “his” people do. After, the papalagi girl leaves him – per request of his mother's wishes – he begins slowly falling back into the Samoan culture; he returns to Samoa and tries to be happy there with his family and learning about the history. However, he is not content with their lifestyle and misses the papalagi world. During the fight with his mother, he realises that though she preached the Samoan ways, she never believed in them and had her own selfish, individualistic motives that he was living by. In the end, he returns to a fairly luxurious hotel and remains until he can return to the papalagi world which he wants to be a part of even without the girl.

The next conflict within the protagonist is the conflict of individualism against the family. As explained in the book and in lectures, Samoan culture is very much based on the needs and desires of the family and that these aspirations are expected to be put before one's own goals. At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist is seen following these standards while he is very successful in school, despite despising his classes and his classmates. He only remains involved to keep his parents happy and doing the best he can for his family – which is earning a diploma and receiving a valuable degree at university. However, as he falls more for the papalagi girl, his aspirations change and focus more on him. One example of this is that he wants to marry the papalagi girl against his mother's wishes. His mother holds the traditional values of Samoa too close that it is selfish. Later, the pattern reoccurs at the end of the novel after the fight between the protagonist and his mother. The fight represents his old lifestyle and trying to keep his mother and his family happy and follow the ways of his culture; however, the selfishness of his mother takes away from that because of her, her son is no longer happy, in this case, the mother did not do what was the best for her family, but what was best for her. The individualism of the mother's character shows her society had changed, especially when she shows the pride of living in New Zealand. The protagonists change comes about when he realises this. He allows himself to transition to an individualistic lifestyle that he had been rejecting for so long because of his Samoan family virtues.

Finally, there is also a clash not only seen within the character, but also the author. This clash is the contemporary against the traditional. By looking at the style and craft of the book we can observe these differences. At first, his craft seems very traditional and Westerns. It is a novel and it flows similar to most books, the way Wendt tells his stories flows the same way. However, there are two subtle differences that make his writing more contemporary. The first mark of contemporary craft is very distinct, it is the absence of nouns by leaving out character names and simple referring to people based on their relationships or by using nouns such as he, she, the girl, the boy, et cetera. This could possibly be an influence from the traditional Pacific Island literature, as the stories were passed down through generations orally and some names were left out. One example of this is The Legend of the Turtle and the Shark where the man does not have a name in the story “the name of the man has long been forgotten,” this story only refers to the man with nouns and not pronouns. The second mark of Wendt's contemporary craft is the flashbacks to the protagonist's predecessor's history. Though alone this may not seem out of the ordinary, due to the absence of nouns in the story, this makes it much more complex. Almost as if he is trying to unite his characters by using craft. The novel displays a clash between traditional and contemporary worlds.

 In conclusion, the novel displays various concepts learned in lectures about how the new generations are adjusting to the post-colonialism world. The division is not only displayed in the protagonist and how his identity is conflicted as he is growing up as a first-generation Samoan immigrant in New Zealand, but also, how the author is conflicted by the two worlds and their differences in contemporary and traditional through his craft and style.

Sorrowful Society -Response to Seminar texts, Kidnapped, A book and a Pen, and to Son for the Return Home-

I'm in a sad slipping way

It's a bad shipping day

To board a boat, get on

Sailing waters afloat.

Battling treacherous seas

Facing terror biting fleas

Walking new land, on foot

The shores smooth the sand

Put in itchy material

The force is more than real

Sitting in a bus, inactivity

Is not my way. I fuss

Demanded into lines

They gave my parents fines

Observing the grounds, looking

For familiarity, in silent sounds

The knowledge I received

Makes me feel deceived

Gazing and pondering, thinking

About the sorrowful society, and wondering...

Fast Talking Kiwi-Creative Response-

I'm a fast talking Kiwi,

I'm a kai loving,

the iwi

I'm a skinny dipping,

Dip the chip and chug the L&P

doing Kiwi

I'm the one believer

of directions to get right,

That's a reliever

I'm a freedom fighter

of blacks and the whites,

The hope to make the world much brighter

Fast walking

Fast talking

Praying and stalking

And firm weedier

Us Kiwi's dare

To supplant seaweed

Of dark waters we feed.

To make things fair

It's everyone's right

To join the fight.

Make way for neighbours,

To walk graciously into the light

To progress forward

We must chuck out the garbage,

No longer shuffle backward.

Because Equality is dawning in the next age.


Inspired by the spoken poem, Fast talking PI.
I created a lesser version of it. Short and sweet.

Brief 2-Son for the Return Home

   It was my first time reading a novel of Pacific Literature. Especially a novel like Albert Wendts published work of Sons for the Return Home printed in 1973. For a man of pacific background it would have been a great achievement to get published, as he does have some sensitive areas in which many people like to dismiss on a regular basis, like racism, sexism and in some respects violence in various areas of life. Son for the return home brings across the normals aspects of human life and more, by the fact that it is in a pacific persons view, the author, and the perspective of the pacific protagonist(s), the Polynesian and more specifically, the Samoan view of the world.

   There were some things I already knew about the Samoan culture, but some ideas and views surprised me. One was the fact that Samoans supposedly held themselves higher than other polynesians, including Maori.
 
   In the beginning of reading Son for the Return Home, I found it difficult to read. The writing style seems quite old school compared to what I was used to. And the story swung from the past to the future on the odd occasion. The way in which is was written was from a third person perspective to an omission type perspective. The use of names was not present, and if it was, hardly ever used. There were supposedly multiple protagonists in the story and it swung from one to another, but because identifying the individual characters was difficult, their stories seemed to merge as one.

   My first impression of the storyline was good and well, but the world in which the author has created did come across as a male dominated society. It may be because I was not in that age of the immigration period and I was not a part of the Dawn Raid movement that the world of Son for the Return Home seemed brutal in some aspects.
   There was a lot of sexual intercourse and the characters seemed to have this idea that fornication was a huge part of relationships. One of the questions I had was; where does the protagonist find all these women, palagi women too, to had sex with? And they were all strangers too.
   It did bring across the idea that women were things just to be F***ed. The business party for example. Where the protagonist at the time sees his stranger colleagues wife gets taken away by a group of Polynesians and the character was not sure at the time if it was rape or not. Then he sees the husband crying, then we are told by the narrator that they did not come back to work. So then the protagonist takes over the job of the forklift, I think.

   One of the interesting things about the story was how the protagonist saw discrimination against other Europeans excluding the British, which was delivered by the British. Like the old man by the creek staring out into the distance, and how the polynesian character and his friends saw other white boys mocking and beating on the old man that was from Europe. The view of the character and seeing this showed how the Polynesians see Pakehas.
   Then there was the Samoan view of Maori's and how the Samoan thought they was dirty and dumb, which alined with the British view of all Polynesians. And the character even saw the irony in this. The stereotype that his 'people' had on the Maori's was the stereotype that was put onto his own. It was fascinating to see that the Samoan character/protagonist later gets over this prejudice of the Maori's as he starts to befriend them in some way and associate himself with them more.

   The story has a lot of perspective and how it has themes of right and wrong, assimilation, racism, sexism, violence, and family issues of honour and obedience.
   It shows how the road of getting a western education but keeping to the Samoan values and culture is very difficult. The character even looked down upon a Polynesian who was well engraved into the western culture and accepted.

   A novel that gets you to think and read between the lines of it's complicated themes of Society.

Brief 2 - Critical Response

Dinner with the cannibal - Witi Ihimaera 

Witi Ihimaera is a popular and highly acclaimed New Zealand author. He has published many works, including short stories, novels, and poems. His work centers around cultural clashes between Maori and Pakeha viewpoints, and changes in Maori life.

Dinner with the Cannibal is about a man who goes to dinner with another man and is surprised when he discovers that he is the main course. The poem is a metaphor for European settlers and Maori people. The invitation to dinner is a representation of the signing of the Waitangi treaty in 1840. “Dinner”, the eating process symbolizes the robbing of land, power, language and culture of the Maori people by Europeans. Witi believes that the taking of all these Maori assets is as cruel as Cannibalism. A Cannibal can be defined as a person with no basic humanity. This metaphor is very strong because Witi does not say the European settlers are “robbers” or “killers”, but “Cannibal”, this means they don’t just rob or kill, they rob, kill and then devour the killed people, they have no primary humanity. The Cannibal eats the narrator in a specific order: this is legs, arms, heart, liver, kidney and eyes. “The legs” represents Maori land, as legs are the fundamental structure of the person, land is also the home of Maori, the production areas of Maori. Once land was taken away, Maori lost homes. 

Theme (Dinner with the cannibal):
•Nostalgia for Maori life-In the seventh stanza he speaks of his people’s grief for what has been taken from them

•Oppression of Maori- The poem uses cannibalism to symbolise the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi. The British violated many terms of the treaty, and so Witi considers it to be a vicious savaging of Maori, rather than a fair agreement between two cultures. Just as the narrator was hoaxed into going to dine with the host, the Maori were enticed in by Britain’s promise of a brighter future.

•Loss of land and culture- The writer has used the loss of limbs to symbolize the loss of independence and choice Maori felt when their land was taken away from them by the British. “A landless man may just as well be limbless”. The cannibal eats the man’s legs first and from there he eats his internal organs and tongue. This is representative of the loss of culture Maori experienced, along with their language being forbidden in schools. The last thing to be consumed was the eyes and this signifies the European government withholding the fact that they had reneged on the terms of the treaty.

•The sacred and the profane- The dominant subject matter in the poem is cannibalism and there is occasional referencing to Christianity. This is a huge disparity between religious suggestions such as “eat and drink the body and blood of Christ” and the unmentionable subject of cannibalism. It is interesting that the British should view Maori as being savages, and yet the acts of savagery they carried out on Maori were equally as savage.

• Other themes are regret at the fatal impact of colonization and disempowerment of Maori.

Structure and analysis
Overall the poem has a clear structure to it, it is quite orderly and has set stanzas. The tone of the poem is one of sarcasm. Witi uses irony- The cannibal’s impeccable sophistication is actually opposite to his behaviour. So within the poem the host begins eating the guest. He first eats his legs and then moves onto his other limbs. When the host is breaking the guest’s arms, it portrays that the power of the people is being taken away. Arms are used to fight back and protect, and without them we are defenceless. The heart is at the centre of the human being and hold’s a person’s joy, sadness, grief and hope. When the heart no longer functions, the human will fail.

“Ah, there it is,” he said, impaling my heart with his fork
And lifting it from its protective cage
I wept to see its pulsing beauty”

These are powerful words, showing polarities within the poem, the harsh language of ‘impaling my heart with his fork’, followed by a softened ‘I wept to see its pulsing beauty.’ This polarity is witnessed again before the cannibal eats the legs, arms and heart, which are extremely violent acts; he actually asks quite gently “You won’t need these, will you?” The Europeans professed to be kind and polite, but were very cruel toward Maori. The treaty has come under much speculation and scrutiny ever since it came about. It has resulted in Maori having a sense of insignificance in their own society, and being stripped of their possessions.

“Cruelly, he left my brain intact to wonder
Why I had ever accepted his invitation to dine
150 years ago —“

Witi agonises over how his ancestors were deceived so shockingly by these intruders and how detrimental and devastating the treaty has been for his people and culture. His use of language is fascinating and holds the reader’s interest. He has been so clever placing formal and polite language alongside such venomous deeds. He has purposefully eliminated the use of full stops in this poem to represent the ongoing struggle that Maori people endure and have done since 1840. The use of –at the completion of the poem is illustrating that there is doubt about whether the cycle of anguish will continue. This poem shows the critical impact that colonisation can have on natives and in this case Maori.

NOBLE SAVAGE - Reverend Mua Strickson-Pua  

Noble Savage is about the struggle that Maori and Pacific Island people encounter and the stereotypes that come along with it. This poem is powerful, emotional and confrontational in nature with a rawness to it based on social injustice. Through his craft Strickson-Pua is able to unleash anger, pain and his feelings towards the injustice of racism.

Analysis 

The structure of the poem is neat and at the start of every stanza there is sort of a title such as “Romantic Notions” and “Alas the noble savage”. The title Noble Savage in itself is contradictory however the majority of the poem is full of stereotypes such as “the noble savage works factory floors,” and “civilized man hunts the concrete jungle,” the first quote is a stereotype of Maori or Pacific Island people and the latter represents white people. The poem portrays Maori and Pacific Island people as not quite human in the second line when the poet says “sub human species”. Whereas in the second stanza white people are portrayed as civilized and even more than human when Strickson-Pua says “becoming a god to himself.” This created a huge contrast between the different nationalities. This poem has a mocking tone to it because of the stereotypes placed within it. The last stanza is important as it has a sense of resignation and at the same time freedom when the poet says “return to the shadows of imagination now gone savage to be noble and free.” This acceptance is like the poet is coming to terms with his cultural identity and it is a powerful ending to the poem. 

Comparison 

I originally thought that the poems were quite similar but upon further inspection I realised they were quite different. The similarities are that they both deal with Oppression within culture and disempowerment of culture. Also both poems have a barbaric tone to them in different ways such as Dinner with the Cannibal is barbaric in its subject matter whereas Noble savage is barbaric in the way that Maori and Pacific Island culture is stereotyped.

Personal Response 

 I feel as if I related more to the first poem, Dinner with the cannibal. Firstly, because I too have felt oppressed by "white" people and secondly, because I found it hard to understand the meaning or what 'Noble Savage' was about. Now when I say oppressed, I don't mean literally oppressed by white people. When I say that I mean metaphorically. I found it really hard to 'fit in' in Fiji when I was constantly being judged by the colour of my skin. If I were to claim that Fiji was my home, I would immediately be put back in my place with a quick remark like, "Whatever Peta, you're white".  So therefore, speaking in a metaphorically sense I have been oppressed by white people but instead by the white in me.