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Chapter 2
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
Seemingly outside of time, Albert defines the first word in his dictionary: yarrany. He claims dictionaries contain stories, not just words. Albert used to read the dictionary like the Bible—front to back—before realizing he could skip around. He demonstrates this method by imagining a chain of words leading from Africa to colonialism to empire and back to the As for apartheid. When Albert reached the Ws in the Oxford English Dictionary, the Aboriginal word for “no” (wiray) wasn’t there. After this, he decided to write his own backwards dictionary beginning with Y. Yarrany is the word for a spearwood tree, out of which Albert once made a spear intended to kill someone.
Albert’s fascination with dictionaries displays his love of language. To him, each word contains the story of its origin and usage. His example of word association connects terms related to colonial oppression of indigenous populations, implying this concept is central to his own dictionary. Albert’s dictionary is composed of Wiradjuri words spoken by Aboriginal Australians, which traditionally aren’t included in English dictionaries. His work, then, intends to fill a gap in the general knowledge of the human experience.
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Themes
