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Chapter 39
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
On January 2, 1916, The Australian Argus newspaper publishes Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf’s obituary. His death comes shortly after the same newspaper published his serialized letter to the British Society of Ethnography advocating for the Aboriginal residents of his Mission. The letter was smuggled out of the internment camp, where Greenleaf allegedly died of natural causes. Its readers were moved by the reverend’s passionate plea, though his words angered the Anti-German League. The Argus’s editors speculate that Greenleaf died of a broken heart and remember him as “a British subject and a soothsayer of our turbulent age.”
Miraculously, Reverend Greenleaf managed to get his letter to Dr. Cross publicized from the confines of prison. His words called attention to the atrocities committed by White settlers, though it is unclear whether this resulted in any institutional change for Aboriginal Australians. Nevertheless, the newspaper applauds his efforts to tell the truth and paint him as a hero. In the end, Greenleaf used his voice and privilege to do what he could, though it was arguably too late.
Active
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