Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The 7 Stages of Grieving, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Oppression
Memory and Family Trauma
Feeling vs. Numbness
Aboriginal Identity, Pride, and Resilience
Summary
Analysis
The Woman addresses the audience. She speaks the words wreck, con, silly, and nation aloud, stating that many people she knows would write the word like this. What does the word mean, she asks, when people can’t read or write it? The word RECONCILIATION is projected on the stage, replacing the four smaller words. Reconciliation, she says, shouldn’t be something one reads or writes, but something one does.
The Woman uses this scene to point out the fundamental flaws in the concept of Reconciliation. When the people that the process of reconciliation are supposed to help can’t even spell the word itself, the Woman suggests, the system and the nation espousing such a plan are too broken to possibly deliver on their promises.
Themes
The Woman looks around the performing area, declaring it a mess. She picks up the suitcase. She packs the word RECONCILIATION into it and locks it. “Everything,” she says, “has its time,” repeating the phrase twice.
The Woman packs the word Reconciliation into the suitcase, which is where her family puts mementoes of people who are dead. This symbolically suggests that the whole idea of Reconciliation may also be dead; she and her people are not yet—and may never be—ready for Reconciliation. Though the Woman places the idea of Reconciliation in the suitcase to deal with later, inside the case it will only become a heavy burden she must bear.
Themes
