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Patricia Grace Patricia Grace was born in Wellington in 1937. Patricia Grace is the first Maori women to publish a collection of short stories, Waiariki (1975). Since then she has published three other collections , four children’s books and several novels. Today she is regarded as one of New Zealand’s finest writers. At Teachers’ College, she began to seek out books by New Zealand authors, including Frank Sargeson, Janet Frame and Amelia Batistich: ‘when I first read some of her stories it came home to me [that] writing was a question of voice and truth, and of a writer finding his/her own way of telling. She began writing at about 25 while teaching in North Auckland, being published in Te Ao Hou and the NZ Listener, and continued to write while teaching, raising her family of seven children and moving to Plimmerton, near Wellington, where she still lives. What do you think this critical commentary is actually saying about Grace’s writing? Her work, expressive of Mäori consciousness and values, is distinguished also for the variety of Mäori people and ways of life it portrays and for its resourceful versatility of style and narrative and descriptive technique. Source: NZ Book Council
Grace on writing and finding a voice … ‘Yes, all through my schooling I had never read a book by a New Zealand writer. When I went to teachers college I read the works of Frank Sargeson and for the first time I realised what writing was. I realised that it started from your own personal experience background and surroundings, whereas before, during my school experience, writing had been the opposite to that. So I read the works of Frank Sargeson and started hearing the New Zealand voice for the first time in literature. And then I read the work of Amelia Batistich I realised that she had a different New Zealand voice. It reinforced the idea that writers had their own voices. It occurred to me when I read those works that I had a voice as well, and I thought that I would like to try that out.’
Grace on characterisation … ‘I need to explore characters and bend them, find ways for them to be seen in the way I want them seen.’ ‘I want to make them understood and known. The things they do and say might seem exaggerated sometimes, but through that they become real.’
Brainstorming • Maori perspective + attitude to land. • Difference between Maori + Pakeha relationships to land. • What does ‘colonisation’ mean? • Why do Maori spiritual beliefs favour burial over cremation?
Homework • Re-read the story • Analyse opening paragraph • Narrative perspective • Setting • Techniques • Characterisation • Tone/Mood /Atmosphere • Why is it called, Journey ?
Tasks for closer reading • What is the purpose of the old man’s journey? • To what extent did the officials listen to the old man? Find a quote that supports your point of view and suggest what tone the remarks are made in. • ‘And anyway Sir there’s no advantage do you think in you people all living in the same area.’ Why do the authorities think there isn’t any benefit to the family living close together? • ‘Why does the old man want to be cremated instead of buried? • How do the opening two paragraphs and the closing passage from ‘They were quiet wondering if he would say anything else,…’ reflect the Uncle’s changing mood?
Why do you think the story concludes with Uncle ‘looking at the palm of his hands’? • Grace employs a motif of blindness / sight throughout the story, why do you think? ‘Yes he knows all about those things, he’s not deaf and blind yet, not only by a long shot.’ ’…they’ve got the name of the canoes spelt wrong, his old eyes aren’t as blind as that.’ ‘His eyes are still good enough to look all over the paper and see his land there, and to see that his land has been shaded in and ‘Off Street Parking’ printed on it.’ • Why do you think Grace gave the ‘a’ in admiration a capital letter in this phrase; ‘..and roadways threading up and round the hills to layer on layer of houses, even in the highest and steepest places. He was filled with admiration. Filled with Admiration…but yes he was filled right to the top-it made him tired taking it all in.’?
Write at least two sentences on how the old man views the land and the way the Pakeha have ‘developed it’? Do embed a short quote into each sentence. ‘Funny people these pakehas, had to chop up everything. Couldn’t talk to a hill or a tree these people, couldn’t give the trees or the hills a name and make them special and leave them. Couldn’t go round, only through. Couldn’t give life, only death.’ ‘Then the rain’ll come and the cuts will bleed for miles and the valleys will drown in blood, but the pakeha will find a way of mopping it all up no trouble. Could find a few bones amongst that lot too. That’s what you get when you dig up the ground, bones. ‘Funny people putting their trains across the sea.’ ‘And up there past the cenotaph, that’s where they’d bulldozed all the bones and put in the new motorway. Resited, he still remembered the newspaper word, all in together. Your leg bone, my arm bone, someone else’s bunch of teeth and fingers, someone else’s head, funny people…And they’d put all the headstones in a heap somewhere promising to set them all up again tastefully’
Use the quotes below / overleaf, or others from the text and your knowledge of the old man’s character to write at least two sentences on what kind of person he is. Do include an embedded quote in each sentence. Out early today old man.’ It’ll be a sorry worm , young fulla, a sorry worm.’ ‘the sea’s turning over rough and heavy – Tamatiea that’s why…but who’d believe you these days. They’d rather stare at their weather on television and talk about a this and a that coming over because there’s nothing else to believe in.’ ‘It doesn’t matter about me because I’m on the way out, but before I go I want it all done.’ ‘Wanted to swing a heavy punch but he’s too old for it. He kicked the desk instead. Hard.
There are also lots of feet and leg images in the short story forming a motif, why do you think Grace has included them? • The narrative shifts perspective in Journey. ‘At times the old man seems to watch himself in action, to observe himself objectively before returning to a subjective expression of his feelings and knowledge.’ (a) Identify the objective and subjective parts in the passage below: ‘He better go to the lavatory because he didn’t trust town lavatories, people spewed there and wrote rude words. Last time he got something stuck on his shoe. Funny people those town people.’ (b) How does the shifting narrative affect your view of the old man? • What is your opinion on how Grace has structured the story: consider the physical journey, opening and ending taxi rides, and the reader’s journey. • In pairs act out the conversation the old man has with the authorities. You will need to cut out the interspersed train station observations, and work out the two speaking roles.
Summative Tasks • You are the elderly man write your thoughts as you sit on the edge of your ‘bed for a long time looking at the palms’ of your hands. • Construct an essay response to: Discuss the narrator’s character in ‘Journey’ by Patricia Grace, to what extent do you sympathise with his attitude to the land? or How does Grace make you feel about the elderly narrator in Journey?
Essay due today • Discuss the narrator’s character in ‘Journey’ by Patricia Grace, to what extent do you sympathise with his attitude to the land? or • How does Grace make you feel about the elderly narrator in Journey?
Essay topics • How the passage of time important • The significance of the clash of two worlds • How the conflict between the traditional and the modern is significant • The importance of the relationship between young and old generations • How man and nature come into conflict with one another
Essay topic sentences Traditional/ modern As society develops morals and values change causing fragmentation. Passage of time Our time is limited and we never know how quickly it will run out. Events flow in the Journey the problem of inequality is continuous. Young/Old Man/ Nature Open Boat = Oiler did most of the work and died – nature will eventually be the conqueror of man. Clash of 2 worlds The reason for the journey, Pakeha see the land as financial rather than spiritual. Obstruction and conflict between cultures and generations
SUMMARY • Patricia Grace’s first novel, Mutuwhenua, was significant in being the first novel published by a woman Maori writer, and she has become an important figure in Maori writing in English in New Zealand. Journey shows her interest in the Maoris’ traditional claims on land. • The rather dislocated narrative, with limited punctuation and no speech markings, creates the effect of creating the old man’s perspective, although the narrative is written in the third person. This old man’s perspective, with its old Maori wisdom, is shown to be out of balance with ‘these young people’, the ‘cars and railways’, the new housing and the growth of the city. His journey into the city makes him feel more and more alienated, and this is accentuated when the narrative is interspersed with the interview dialogue. The official and the old man cannot make each other understand. There is no comprehension on either side of the other’s view of how land should be used, and the story ends with frustration, violence and disillusion. In this story, Grace suggests that traditional Maori governance of land has no place in modern government and planning.
EXTENSION Wider reading • Mutuwhenua(novel) or The Dream Sleepers and Other Stories (short stories) by Patricia Grace • Playing Waterloo by Peter Hawes • The Bone People by Keri Hulme Compare with • The People Before by Maurice Shadbolt • To Da-duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall Online • Biographical and other information about Patricia Grace is available at: • http://www.artsfoundation.org.nz/patricia.html
