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.
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