Secret's out

With so many people recommending I read The Secret River it is unsurprising I enjoyed the book as much as I did. But, at the risk of going overboard and exposing myself to the harsh ridicule of cynical peers, I think the book was a profound and compelling tale, destined to attain the status of Australian classic (calling here for lists of people’s top 5 Australian novels). Gita, being in this instance an aforementioned cynical peer, would no doubt argue that my love of the story has as much to do with my parochial attachment to this country’s history than the novel’s inherent qualities, but I think it goes beyond that. In The Secret River, Grenville manages to explore complex themes and issues (the idea of ‘home’, loss and grief, difference, hierarchies, group mentality etc) using a fast-paced, intriguing plot, believably simple yet descriptive language and realistic, well developed, characters.

One of the more interesting aspects of the novel was the detailed exploration of human agency, the idea of collective vs individual guilt/blame and the corresponding ethical questions. At what point does a person (ie Wil), shipped off for the term of his natural life to a harsh and exotic land, become responsible for his imposition and detrimental impact on the inhabitants and eco-system? At what point is he (Wil again) in control of his actions and able to exercise agency? When does justifiable ignorance become negligence and when does it go beyond wilful negligence and become active malfeasance?

I found it a particularly poignant moment when Wil went to collect ‘his’ convicts from the wharf only to feel the weight of his own story come crushing down on him as his dishevelled and contemptible superior treated him with such blatant disdain. With his servants, Wil then opts for the authoritarian approach insisting on the formal ‘Mr’ and, from an ethical point of view, goes downhill rapidly. He enjoys the power but in many ways the decision was a spur-of-the-moment tactic: How he had seen others behave, the ‘normal’ way of doing things etc. Wil’s motives in the book are, like others’, invariably multifaceted and rarely singular with justifications tending to follow rather than precede actions. As is written somewhere, with one foot heading down the wrong path it is easier to keep going than to admit defeat and start again. So, beginning with passive complicity Wil eventually joins in the mass murder with men he largely despises, and yet despite this I never really lost sympathy for the Thornhills. The impression is carried throughout that he just did what he thought neccessary and suffered his own psychological consequences in silence. And that’s the tension: he’s both the hero and the villain and not very good at either.