Silence in Contemporary Australian War Fiction
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Silence in contemporary Australian war fiction Tessa Kathleen Wynn Lunney A thesis submitted for the fulfillment of the degree of Doctor of Creative Arts The Writing and Society Research Group School of Humanities and Communication Arts University of Western Sydney 2013 ii Acknowledgements First and foremost, I wish to thank Professor Ivor Indyk and Associate Professor Sara Knox for their supervision of this thesis. I particularly wish to thank the people who spoke to me in the course of my research: photographers David Dare Parker, Stephen Dupont, Kate Geraghty, Ed Giles and Tim Page; tuberculosis specialist Dr Vitali Sintchenko; author Evie Wyld, and the men and women who wish to remain anonymous but without whom I could not have written the novel. Lastly I wish to thank my family for their unstinting emotional and financial support since the project began in my Masters. iii Statement of Authentication The work presented in this thesis is, to the best of my knowledge and belief, original except as acknowledged in the text. I hereby declare that I have not submitted this material, either in full or in part, for a degree at this or any other institution. Signed: ____________________ On: __23_/_08_/_2013_ iv Abstract Novel: Home Leave Exegesis: Silence in contemporary Australian war fiction This dissertation consists of a creative component, a novel Home Leave, and an exegesis exploring silence within three contemporary Australian works of war fiction, The Great World by David Malouf, The Wing of Night by Brenda Walker and After the Fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld. Silence within fiction sits uneasily between what is known, what is unknown and what is unknowable. Present in both content and form, it encompasses a) literal silences, where secrets are kept, actions are hidden, and information is lost or missing, b) characters’ silences, where they don’t speak to each other, they speak indirectly, are traumatised or otherwise abandoned in states of unknowing, and c) formal silences, where silence is embedded in the writing through syntax, imagery, and structure. In war fiction, these silences are the consequence of each individual’s war experience and its impact on their family and community. The exegesis derives this interpretation of silence from a variety of sources, including history with Jay Winter’s essay “Thinking about silence” from Shadows of War: a social history of silence in the twentieth century, seminal trauma theory texts Testimony: a crisis in witnessing by Shoshanna Felman and Dori Laub and Unclaimed Experience by Cathy Caruth, literary criticism on silence with Literary Silences in Pascal, Rousseau, and Beckett by Elisabeth Marie Loevlie and Language and Silence by George Steiner, psychological text Memory, War and Trauma by Nigel Hunt, and literary analyses Trauma Fiction by Anne Whitehead and Bernadette Brennan’s doctoral dissertation, “The Wounds of Possibility: Reading absence and silence in some contemporary Australian writing”. This understanding is used to demonstrate how silence is an integral component of the three works of war fiction selected for study. Malouf explores the silences around masculine intimacy and the prisoner of war experience in World War II. Walker explores the enduring power of grief and trauma from World War I, and how it is both bound up with, and healed by, the v Western Australian landscape. Wyld investigates silence in the connections between intergenerational trauma, war service in Vietnam, masculinity and landscape. The novel covers two weeks in the lives of the Talbot family in Glebe, Sydney, leading up to Anzac Day. Kate Talbot, a soldier coming home on leave from Afghanistan, discovers that her brother Ben, also a soldier deployed in Afghanistan, is missing. When Kate arrives home she meets her uncle Greg for the first time in seven years. He is a photojournalist and has photos of Ben in Afghanistan, but he has no memory of where or when he took them. Kate and Greg search for Ben, using Greg’s photographs as a starting point. They delve through their contacts, through the family history of military service, and through Greg’s traumatised memory. In their pursuit of any leads about Ben, Kate uncovers family secrets, and Greg partly recovers his memory, and both gradually come to understand the secrets they have been keeping from themselves. Ultimately, Ben is not found, but Kate finds out enough to be sure that he will not come home alive. Table of Contents Abstract................................................................................................................iv List of Figures....................................................................................................... 2 Silence in contemporaryAustralian war fiction ................................................ 3 Silence in contemporary Australian war fiction: an explanation of the critical framework.................................................................................................................... 4 A personal introduction to my research.................................................................... 4 An outline of silence................................................................................................. 7 A definition of silence from literary theory and historical analysis ....................... 12 The Great World by David Malouf.......................................................................... 28 The Wing of Night by Brenda Walker .................................................................... 53 After the fire, a Still Small Voice by Evie Wyld...................................................... 72 Concluding Discussion ............................................................................................. 92 Home Leave ........................................................................................................ 95 Chapter One: Monday April 11th ............................................................................ 96 Chapter Two: Tuesday April 12th.......................................................................... 108 Chapter Three: Wednesday April 13th.................................................................. 124 Chapter Four: Thursday April 14th....................................................................... 137 Chapter Five: Friday April 15th ............................................................................. 148 Chapter Six: Saturday April 16th........................................................................... 161 Chapter Seven: Sunday April 17th......................................................................... 175 Chapter Eight: Monday April 18th ....................................................................... 179 Chapter Nine: Tuesday April 19th ......................................................................... 193 Chatper Ten:Wednesday April 20th ..................................................................... 203 Chapter Eleven: Thursday April 21st .................................................................... 224 Chapter Twelve: Friday April 22nd ....................................................................... 235 Chapter Thirteen: Staruday April 23rd ................................................................ 240 Chapter Fourteen: Sunday April 24th ................................................................... 250 Chapter Fifteen:Monday April 25th ...................................................................... 264 Bibliography..................................................................................................... 265 Books, Chapters, Papers, Theses, Reportage......................................................... 265 Newspaper articles................................................................................................. 275 Film and Television............................................................................................... 285 Reference material from the Australian War Memorial collection....................... 286 Websites................................................................................................................ 288 Appendix I ..................................................................................................................291 2 List of Figures Figure 1: Photo of 1943 log of HAS Disney 5 3 Silence in contemporary Australian war fiction 4 Silence in contemporary Australian war fiction: an explanation of the critical framework A personal introduction to my research My English grandfather had a long career with the Royal Air Force. This was never spoken about in my presence at family gatherings, and it was only after his death that I learnt what he had done in World War II. The discovery was not through stories or diaries, or even through photographs, but through his logbooks. The entry dated May 30th 1943 reads, ‘Pilot: Self. Duty: Periscope bombing.’ Was his mission successful? Was he bombing through the morning, or late in the afternoon? Where was he flying? How did he feel about the bombing? Did feelings even come into it? I had to look up ‘periscope bombing’, as I was initially unsure what the phrase meant. His logbooks are a tantalising record, where what is written competes with what is left unsaid. My grandfather logged his actions but there is only the bare minimum of information – who, what, where and when. None of the text reveals in any way the quality of the experience – it is not a war story. Yet I can hardly help