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Chapter 1
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Terra Nullius, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Human Nature
Colonial Violence
Freedom and Bondage
Homeland
Hope
Summary
Analysis
Jacky wakes early the next morning, aroused at least as much by his hunger pangs as the sunrise. It’s uncomfortable, but he’s been hungry before and he knows he’ll survive a few more days without food. Putting space between himself and any pursuers is the most important thing, so he concentrates on running. Unsure how much of a head start he has or whether his pursuers will employ a skilled Indigenous tracker, he tries to find a balance between speed and covering his tracks. He doesn’t stop moving until sundown.
The Settlers’ mistreatment of Jacky has habituated him to near-starvation levels of hunger. This quietly adds to the growing evidence of the Settlers’ brutality. The significant advantage Jacky has over his pursuers when it comes to navigating the terrain pointedly suggests that he belongs to this place and that it belongs to him in a way it does not—and perhaps cannot—to Settlers.
Active
Themes
Around noon the next day, Jacky has a stroke of luck. He stumbles on something he recognizes from his trip between the school and the station: a large rock shaped like a horse’s head that sits next to the road. Jacky realizes that if he follows the road—not in it, but alongside it hidden in the trees—it will lead him to the school. And he might find a clue there about where he came from. For the first time he can remember, Jacky feels a flash of hope. The terrain around him suddenly becomes beautiful, suffused with the power of his hope, even though he knows his chances of freedom are slim.
