Community and Insularity Theme Analysis

Because of the isolation of the settlers’ community in the Australian wilderness, each family is heavily dependent on their neighbors for protection and provision. However, when Jock finds that he morally disagrees with his neighbors and does things that they disapprove of—like protecting Gemmy from the white settlers’ wrath—it affects both his social relationships and his family’s safety. Jock’s plight suggests that although a small, isolated community might be closely knit and interdependent, it can also be difficult to dissent from the consensus of the group, even when the group is acting irrationally or immorally.

The McIvors and the other settler families are pioneers, living in isolation, many miles from the nearest established town. Because of the dangers of the Australian bush—with no amenities or medical help nearby—and the perceived threat of the roaming Aboriginal tribes, the settlers depend upon each other for their mutual aid and survival. What’s more, the few settler families also form the entirety of each other’s social relationships, since they rarely see anyone else. Of his closest neighbor Barney Mason, Jock reflects: “Under the hard conditions of life up here neighbors were important, and over the last years he and Barney had become more than that.” Moreover, Barney’s wife is Ellen’s best friend and his children are the McIvor children’s closest playmates. Such closeness and mutual dependence underscore how, in such a small and geographically isolated community, the members of that community often grow close out of necessity, effectively constituting each other’s entire worlds.

As isolated and few as the settlers are, they are easily worked up into a frenzy by Gemmy’s presence and their fear of the Aboriginal Australians, demonstrating how such a small community, though supportive, can also be particularly susceptible to rash fears and actions. Although Gemmy is ethnically European, his dark tan and adopted customs of the Aboriginal Australians unnerve several of the settlers, since he seems to be proof that Aboriginal people are always nearby, even though the white settlers rarely see them: “[Gemmy] made real what till now had been the fearful shape of rumor.” Such fears are compounded by a recent rumor that nineteen settlers were killed by Aboriginal tribesmen in a neighboring settlement, although no one knows whether the rumor is true. In light of such fear, violent sentiments are easily stirred up by individuals such as Ned Corcoran, a settler who is convinced that the only way to handle the possible threat of the Aboriginal people—even though the settlers have never actually had an altercation with them—is to form a raiding party and exterminate every one of them they can find. Although in a larger community the presence of cooler heads might stop such reckless ideas from taking root, in such a small and fearful community Ned wields considerable influence and goes largely unchallenged, demonstrating the manner in which such an insular community can be stirred into a frenzy. After one of Barney’s farmhands spies Gemmy briefly speaking with two Aboriginal men, he relays the sighting to the other settlers and embellishes the account to make the strangers more mysterious and threatening. In response, several of the men of the settlement—the McIvors’ own neighbors—abduct Gemmy from the McIvors’ house in the middle of the night, beat him, and hold his head underwater in the nearby creek until Jock arrives and chases the men away. Once again, the sudden and unmerited act of violence committed by the other settlers illustrates the rashness with which people in a small, fearful community can act, even against their own neighbors.

The hostility that the McIvor family experiences for protecting Gemmy while the rest of the settlement wants to get rid of him exemplifies the difficulty of acting against the consensus of one’s insular community, even when one knows that the community is wrong. Although Jock rescues Gemmy, he is tortured by the fact that his own neighbors, whom he trusted and considered very highly, would endanger his family in the middle of the night and attack Gemmy, whom they have taken as one of their own, “while the men who had done it—neighbors!—were creeping home to crawl in beside their own wives, safe in bed.” Jock’s intense reaction suggests that more than simply the attack, it is the notion that it has been perpetrated by some of the few people he trusts and depends on that haunts him. The animosity is aimed not only at Gemmy, but also at Jock and his family. A few days before the abduction, their neighbors slit the throats of several of their geese—which were the children’s pets—and later smear one of Jock’s sheds “with shit.” As Jock looks at the defaced shed, he thinks, “Some man had done this. That was the real abomination. Someone he knew. Someone whose eyes he had looked into, and recently; maybe at the very moment he was planning the thing.” The neighbors’ harassment of Jock and his family powerfully illustrates the great difficulty of acting against one’s own small community, even when that community is acting reprehensibly.

Although the closeness of a small, isolated community is perhaps vital for survival in a situation like the settlers’ and it arguably has many benefits, Jock’s experience of betrayal by his stirred up neighbors reinforces the pain of defying one’s only friends and fellows. The fact that such acts were committed by people Jock knows and once trusted—leaving him now with no one to depend on—seems even more painful than if the acts were perpetrated by an external threat such as Aboriginal Australians.