War and Race in C. K. Stead's Talking about O'Dwyer Maver, Igor
Journal of language, literature and culture (Australasian Universities Language and Literature Association),
12/2015, Letnik:
62, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
C. K. Stead's novel Talking about O'Dwyer is a complex narrative mixture of realistic and metafictional elements on several levels. One of the narrative levels of the novel refers to World War II, ...when Donovan O'Dwyer as a Pakeha-a white New Zealander-and commanding officer in the 'Maori' battalion of the New Zealand division, loses one of his men in the battle for Crete. The Maori Joe Panapa dies in unclear circumstances, which causes his family to pronounce a curse-a makutu-on O'Dwyer. The novel is important as an indictment of war per se, showing it to be a collective madness having consequences for the life destinies of every single individual caught in it. World War II and the independence war in Croatia in the 1990s are minutely described and juxtaposed: both brought to the people, as all wars do, suffering and death, and have radically changed and marked their lives and relationships.
Margaret Atwood's provocative recent book of non-fiction contains many literary references, which help to effectively highlight her points about such a topical matter as debt, debt as a ...philosophical, politico-economic, religious, and historical issue over the centuries. In the central chapters of the book she looks at the Protestant Reformation and the introduction of interest on loans and in this light analyzes the novels by Dickens, Irving, Thackeray and G. Eliot. Her final statement in the book is, however, about the ecological debt we all have to pay to Earth in order to ensure our existence.
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