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.