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Chapter 21
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Yield, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Colonialism and Exploitation
The Power of Language and Cultural History
Family, Identity, and Belonging
Collective Trauma, Memory, and Guilt
Human Spirituality and the Natural World
Summary
Analysis
In his dictionary, Albert writes that Greenleaf was the only good White gudyi (“medicine man, priest”). There are no more priests at the Mission, so Albert has written down the wisdom of his ancestral medicine men instead. He encourages the reader to form the unfamiliar Wiradjuri words with their ngaan (“mouth”), feeling meaning in the syllables. In the old language, ngayirr means both “mystery” and “secret,” emphasizing how little humans know about the world. Albert writes of the long years when the whirly-whirlies lingered at Prosperous House, during which he purchased a lottery ticket he never scratched, viewing it as “an easy fix.”
Albert’s charitable feelings toward Greenleaf suggest he is knowledgeable of the Mission’s history and at least to some degree, that he respects Greenleaf’s Christianity—if only because Greenleaf himself was respectful of Aboriginal spirituality. He wants his dictionary’s reader to not only understand Wiradjuri meanings but give the words physical manifestation by speaking them aloud.
Active
Themes
In later years, strangers began showing up at Prosperous, seeking closure from the childhoods they’d spent there. Albert spoke with them, perceiving their efforts to gulba-ngi-dyili-nya (“know oneself”) as important. In the entry for barrandhang (“koala”), he recalls the time he and Elsie hit one of the animals and drove it to a rescue center. The koala clung to Elsie like a baby until it was removed, biting her and scratching her back. Again, Albert alludes to the jag-spear (dhulu) he made recently. He remembers his mother drinking herself to illness (duri-mambi-rra). Albert looks out at the encroaching mines and wonders “what it is about us that riles the White man.” He feels everything is wamang (“wrong”).
