Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in White Spirit, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Multiculturalism, Authenticity, and Appropriation
Racism and Prejudice
Selfishness, Selflessness, and Connection
Bureaucracy and Systemic Inequality
Summary
Analysis
On a Tuesday afternoon in an unnamed Australian suburb, the narrator talks with Mandy and Jake, two artists she has commissioned to design a mural for the public housing centre she works for. The mural will go up on a wall in the centre’s gym and will depict the community who lives at the centre. The narrator observes that Mandy’s fashion choices stick out from the way the residents of the community dress. The narrator also remembers that she needs to take photos of the artists working with the residents to create the painting as evidence for the mural’s grant funding.
It’s immediately clear that the mural project is not going according to plan. The mural is supposed to depict the community of people who live in the centre—and be a product of interaction between the artists and that community—but the community is notably absent from the creation of the piece, so much so that the narrator is coming up with ways to stage photos, making it appear as though the artists and the community are actually working together in order to fulfill the terms of the grant that funds the mural. The narrator also sees the differences between the residents of the centre and the artists, and understands that this difference is the reason why the two groups are not sharing the same space.
Themes
The narrator points out that Mandy and Jake have made a mistake in the mural, inaccurately painting four children with a basketball instead of a soccer ball—soccer is the sport they actually play. Mandy and Jake are surprised by this information but agree to paint over the basketball design, turning it into a soccer ball. However, they also decide to leave the basketball singlets (i.e., jerseys) in the painting as is.
While Mandy and Jake are supposed to be painting an authentic representation of the community, they reveal their lack of actual experience with the people living in the centre. Their knowledge of the resident community comes entirely from documents they received from the centre staff, old photos of past centre events, and library books. The artists have not actually gotten to know the people living at the centre at all. Further, while The narrator corrects their mistake about the basketball here and Mandy and Jake agree to make the change, they remain largely unconcerned about inaccuracies in general, as they decide not to change the basketball jerseys. The artist’s commitment to accurate representation only goes so far.
Themes
The narrator reflects back on Mandy and Jake’s interview for the job. At the time, the two had described similar artwork they had done for past jobs and had spoken of their desire to work collaboratively with the resident community, saying they wanted to celebrate the diversity of the different cultural groups at the centre. While this is what they said in their interview, the narrator notes that in actuality they are very removed from the residents of the centre, who avoid the gym while they paint in it. The narrator herself feels awkward being around them, like something in their plan for the mural has gone wrong.
The narrator notes the difference between what Mandy and Jake said they would do during the mural project, and what they are actually doing. They had said they wanted to foster actual relationships with the people living at the centre, but they are not putting in the effort to do so. Whether the artists’ initial statements were heartfelt or cynical, in practice it doesn’t change much. The outcome is that they primarily benefited themselves—they landed a job—by saying the “right” things about this “multicultural” project. The narrator’s sense of the mural as having gone illustrates her own burgeoning sense of guilt at the way the mural project is failing to represent the residents in the way it is supposed to.
Themes
The narrator confirms with Mandy and Jake that the mural will be finished by Thursday. She thinks again that she will have to get some of the elementary school children to come paint some of the mural—all for the chance to get a photo of the residents working alongside the artists. She worries, though, that she will have to bribe the children to get them to help paint without causing all sorts of chaos and trouble.
The narrator here shows that, at this point, the mural’s message of diversity, inclusion, and collaboration, is more important to her than its actually being any of those things. She is concerned with the opening event on Friday being a success and with their being evidence that residents of the centre participated, even if that participation was forced. She also here has a moment of prejudice as she assumes that she will have to bribe the children at the centre to not make a mess when painting, suggesting that she believes they will behave in a chaotic way, even though she has not yet even asked them to help paint.
Themes
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The narrator goes to her office to get money to buy material for the women’s fabric-painting class that she leads at the centre. She grabs her own money even though she is supposed to use the centre’s for this cost, deciding it is just easier for her to pay out of pocket instead of going through the complicated process of requesting money from the centre.
The narrator’s justification for using her own money on her class, rather than the centre’s funding, shows the way that the obstacles put in place by bureaucracy actually harm those they are supposed to benefit: she’s supposed to be able to use the centre’s money, but the centre puts so many controls in place to make sure the money is used properly that it is easier for her to use her own. At the same time, she does use her own money, showing some selflessness toward this class that she runs.
Themes
The narrator next drives to the store to get supplies for the fabric-painting class. On her way out of the store, she sees a parking inspector who is about to give her a ticket. She pleads with him to not do so on the grounds that she’s only two minutes late. When he is unsympathetic, she tells him that “I’m buying stuff for a class. For a group of refugee women.” She thinks to herself that she hates “trotting that out,” but then justifies to herself that she had to do it to protect her own money. The inspector does end up letting her off and, as he walks away, the narrator thinks to herself that, based on his job and how he looks, he likely grew up in the centre himself.
This scene captures the way that white characters can simultaneously be acting in a way that is selfless and selfish, trying to build multicultural understanding while benefitting personally from that effort in ways that are low-key racist. Here the narrator is selflessly using her own money for the materials for her painting class, but as soon as it is more convenient for her, she shows off her “goodness” and uses the refugee women in her class in order to force sympathy from the parking inspector in order to get out of a ticket. In suggesting this to the inspector, the narrator also implies that the women in her class are pitiable people, dehumanizing them. The narrator even recognizes that what she’s doing is wrong, but justifies it based on her own needs, when of course that is an insufficient argument for using and demeaning another. Finally, the narrator makes an assumption about the inspector himself based on his job and appearance. This final assumption both further highlights the narrator’s own tendency to make biased assumptions and indicates the systemic inequality that permeates Australian society. The narrator makes this assumption about the inspector because she knows that many people who grow up in the centre end up in predictable socioeconomic situations as they get older—that society is fundamentally unequal and leaves people stuck within their class differences.
Themes
Later, at her fabric painting class, the narrator asks the women in her class if they would like to help paint the mural, as she and the artists had initially intended (and hoped) would happen. The women in her class say no. One woman, Nahir, comments on Mandy’s tongue piercing, making the rest of the class laugh. The narrator wonders why the experience of making the mural has differed so much from what she pictured, and considers that she might not have done enough research into the actual wants of the community before commissioning the mural. She also worries that Mandy and Jake’s appearances may be pushing the rest of the community away.
The women in the narrator’s fabric painting class are some of the only residents she has a real connection to, which is made clear by the fact that she actually knows and refers to some of them by name. Still, she feels obligated to try and convince them to participate in the mural for the sake of appearances, even though they have not shown interested in doing so. Nahir’s comment about Mandy’s tongue piercing seems to indicate how visibly different the artists are from the rest of community at the centre, and how unwelcome and alienating their sudden presence at the estate is. When the white Australians in charge at the center think of “diversity” they think of themselves as “normal” and the residents as being diverse. But the residents’ reaction to the “different” artists makes clear that the white sense of being normal is itself a racist construct that reduces all those who are non-white to the primary status of being something other than white.
Themes
The narrator asks if the women in her class will still attend the mural’s opening on Friday and the women agree. Then, the narrator suggests they could all wear traditional dresses from their cultures, saying that the minister (a local politician attending the mural opening) would like to see them dressed up in their national costumes. The women grow uncomfortable at this request, and refuse, but reiterate that they will come to the event. The narrator feels awkward about her role in this exchange. Then as she looks around her class, at the women of various different ethnic and geographic backgrounds, working next to each other in the class she thinks about how the centre manager would want her to take a photo. Though she does also note that the women are not yet sharing tables with people from different backgrounds than their own.
The narrator once again pushes the women in her class to come to the mural opening, even though they don’t want to help paint it. The women agree to do this, but then the narrator pushes it further, making clear that her real agenda is not to try and include the women in her class, but rather to make them participate in just the right way to impress the minister to see. Once again, the narrator trying to use the women rather than try to understand what they want and need. The women’s kind but firm refusal shows that while they do care about the narrator and seem to want to be supportive to her, they also see when they are being made into props and refuse to let this happen. The narrator has another moment of feeling embarrassed by the entire mural project but still can’t help, but then immediately thinks about the women in her class as an image that may impress her boss (the centre manager) or the minister. That the women in her class also don’t mix across ethnic lines, though, underlines again how complicated multicultural interaction is, and how the white character’s idea of “diversity”—in which there are white people and other people—is in fact hopelessly simplistic.
Themes
The narrator reflects how different the women in her class are from the way they are being represented by Mandy and Jake on the mural in the gym. In the mural, the women are represented wearing culturally traditional dresses painted from how such clothes are depicted in library books. In reality, the women in her class wear pastel windcheaters (i.e., windbreakers). The narrator then turns back to ironing pillows cases flat so they will be ready for the women to apply painted patterns to them.
The difference between the images of the residents being presented by the mural and the way the residents actually dress shows that the supposed authenticity of the mural is actually a fabrication, not based in reality. Moreover, the narrator, in the actual work she is doing in the class, is actually doing more work for the community ostensibly being celebrated in the mural than the artists in the gym are. the narrator is actually meeting their material needs by doing this ironing work, by actually supporting and serving the women, rather than creating a piece of art they do not want that does not truthfully represent them.
Themes
By Wednesday afternoon, Mandy and Jake have still not completed the mural, which they have created mostly by referencing pictures in library books and photos from a centre barbecue that took place last year. The narrator observes the half-finished mural, which depicts people of multiple different ethnic, racial, geographic, and cultural backgrounds all smiling with their arms around each other. She thinks about how far this image of an integrated community is from reality; in real life, each of the people in the mural speak different languages and tend to live separately from each other within the centre.
Mandy and Jake have still not connected with the community or gotten any residents to help paint. Despite the fact that they said they wanted to create bonds with the community, they seem unbothered with designing the mural entirely based on paste images and overly simple ideas about diversity and harmony, rather than capturing real people and real complexity. The mural, consequently, has become an attractive but entirely false image that is profoundly untrue to what the actual experience is of the people living on the centre’s estate.
Themes
The centre manager and the artists feel excited about the mural and about showing the work to the minister at the event’s opening on Friday. the narrator reflects that the mural, while not authentic to actual experience, does look nice, and knows that the minister and other white viewers will think it is beautiful. Mandy comments that the narrator looks sad, but the narrator lies and says she’s fine. Mandy shows a tiny spot of the wall they left for kids living at the centre to paint in, and the narrator remembers that she will have to pick out a few kids to do it. The narrator thinks to herself that she may have to bribe the kids with chocolate to do the work and to ensure that they do a good job and don’t “wreck it.”
The centre manager and the artists are happy with the mural, even though no one in the community has come to help make it. The narrator by this point understands that even though the mural is not a truthful depiction of the community, its actual purpose is not to tell an accurate story, but rather to make the minister (and the other white centre staff members) feel good about themselves and their role in the pretty story they are telling. Accordingly, the artists have only left a small sliver of a spot for the residents to help paint. Their concern is with meeting a deadline and making the mural look a certain way and not with working to actually involve the community. While the narrator seems to be the only staff member at the centre to be able to understand the true nature of the mural—that it’s built to obscure rather than reveal the truth of diversity in the centre—the narrator is herself a flawed character, with her own prejudiced or racist thoughts. Here those flaws are on display as the narrator assumes she will have to bribe the children of the center not just to come and paint, but to not ruin the mural when they do. The conception of “diverse” children as unruly is a typical racist trope.
Themes
The narrator’s coworker shows up to tell her a man is waiting to meet her in her office. The man is a representative a company called Pro-Guard. He’s come to help her pick out an anti-graffiti sealant to protect the mural. He monologues for a while about the various products she could choose and eventually goes to inspect the wall in the gym with the mural on it. The narrator eventually stops him from talking and asks for an easy sealant she can apply herself that will prevent any damages to the wall if someone does graffiti it. Mandy comments that no one will graffiti the wall, arguing that the community will feel a sense of ownership over the mural and that, consequently, they will not want to wreck it.
The narrator finds the man from Pro-Guard both boring and overwhelming. He talks for a long time about the different products she could purchase and she omits relating most of what he says because she finds it so grueling to listen to. The interaction shows the monotony of the mural project, and its true nature. While the mural is meant to be a work of art, it’s actually a commodity which must be protected. And the protection is not just from time or the elements—it’s from graffiti. The narrator’s request means that she privately understands that the mural may not be well-received by the community. But rather than do something to make the mural something the community does value, the narrator is only empowered to protect it from the community it is supposed to be celebrating, which is just another indication that the mural was never really for that community in the first place. Meanwhile, Mandy’s comment that the community will feel that the mural belongs to and represents them shows her willful ignorance about both the community and the mural. She is, willfully or ignorantly, misrepresenting the feelings of a community she knows nothing about in order to protect her sense that she is doing something good, that she herself is good.
Themes
The Pro-Guard representative recommends the sealant Armour-All to prevent any graffiti, saying that it will just take two coats, painted twelve hours apart to finish, and that any graffiti that does go up on the mural could then be removed by white spirit, a paint thinner. The narrator agrees to purchase Armour-All and adds up the limited funds she still has remaining from the grant to spend on the opening. She thinks of the food they will have at the celebration, which will be largely catered by various cultural groups living within the centre.
The sealant and the white spirit paint solvent become important symbols in the story; both are used as protective measures to the ensure that the message of the mural—no matter how it is actually received by those it is supposedly representing—will be protected. The white spirit solvent, then, becomes a an extremely aptly named metaphor for how the intentions and feelings of the white people working at the centre will always be valued above the actual desires of the centre residents. Finally, this section show the frustrating financial limitations and bureaucracy of the narrator’s job at the centre, as she worries about the lack of money they even have to make the event happen. Because of these financial limitations the will actually require the labor of the people it is ostensibly celebrating; ironically, they will need to cater the event, even as the mural is supposed to be honoring them.
Themes
The narrator goes to try and get a couple kids from the class to add a small bit to the mural before they paint the sealant over it. Mandy and Jake agree to help the narrator apply the sealant. The narrator reflects on how the two artists are kind people but continues to feel saddened and confused by the way that the entire mural-creation process has felt so awkward.
The narrator is still stuck trying to convince people to help, even though no one has shown interest in doing so. Mandy and Jake’s kindness and willingness to help the narrator with the sealant, even as their work on the mural has been disruptive and alienating to the community, shows that niceness is not enough, and in fact can go hand in hand with harmful, prejudiced, or appropriative actions.
Themes
The narrator, Jake, and Mandy stay up until Midnight on Thursday applying the second coat of the sealant. The narrator feels lightheaded and tired as they work on it and thinks about how she has never been at the centre’s estate this late at night. She listens to the sound of all the cars, sirens, doors-slamming, music, and voices of people living at the centre, most of whom, she admits, speak languages she cannot understand and are people who don’t even know who she is, nor she them. She thinks of all these people, who have no time to even think about her because they are “busy with the demands of getting by.”
This scene portrays levels of systemic inequality at the center. The narrator, to do her job, has to work late into the night at the centre—the needs of the centre impose themselves on her life, and she must do what she has to do in order to look good and perform her job, even if what is asked of her is unfair. But in being at the center late at night, and hearing all the noises of the lives being lived there, and while the narrator has her own frustrations and exhaustions, she reflects in this moment on how much greater the demands of living are for the people living at the centre.
Themes
At the event unveiling the mural the next evening, the minister praises the celebration and the mural. The narrator is unsurprised. The minister continues, expressing admiration for the authenticity of the mural, about the way the entire event spreads a positive message, and he further praises the fact that the community worked on making the mural. The narrator knows that none of this is true and that the minister has no real evidence to confirm its truth either.
The minister’s approval and praise of the mural has been the goal of the celebration event all along, but now the narrator is jaded about the minister’s admiration. The narrator knows that minister’s compliments are empty; he has no way of knowing if the mural is actually authentic or if the residents actually participated in making it, which they did not, but he also shows no interest in investigating his assumption. He sees the happy story he wants to see; and doing so makes life easy for him. Further, he doesn’t actually interact with the residents either. For the minster, the primary audience for the mural, the actual residents are not as important as the simple, easy message of diversity that they symbolize to him. The centre’s mural uses the residents in order to make itself look and feel good. The minister uses this entire event to make himself look and feel good.
Themes
A group of teenagers approach the mural and the narrator remembers how these same kids had wanted to purchase pool tables, not the mural, with the grant money. She has a moment of understanding about why they would want that instead, and watches Mandy and Jake approach the group. The narrator notes how self-conscious Mandy looks as she speaks to them. The narrator starts to feel an itching feeling in her eyes and a tight feeling in her throat, but assures herself its probably just from residual chemicals in the air from the paint sealant, and not from tears.
The narrator tries to see from the perspective of the teenagers at the estate. At other points in the story, she has been dismissive or even insulting of the kids living at the centre, but here she finally understands why something fun like pool tables would have been a better use of the grant money than an unwanted and inaccurate mural. She sees how the centre could have listened to its residents, could have actively put the residents first. As she watches Mandy and Jake try to talk to these same teenagers, she has an emotional reaction, seeing how awkward the interaction is and how self-conscious Mandy appears. Yet the narrator is not yet willing to admit the full extent of her sadness, and blames the itching feeling behind her eyes on the sealant’s chemicals. Still, her denial of the source of her tears can be seen as being metaphorically accurate—the need for the sealant symbolizes what’s wrong with the mural, and so in fact it is what’s pushing her toward tears.
Themes
The minister praises the narrator’s use of the grant money, calling it a success. Meanwhile, the narrator notices some Vietnamese women residents of the centre serving guests food, and wonders how they feel about the mural and if they feel it represents them. Then she turns to look at the women in her fabric-painting class who smile and kindly wave to her.
The minister sees the grant money as a successful investment in this mural. It is a shallow and false way to think about a mural meant to portray the diversity of the residents; but, then, the mural itself is itself shallow. The white minister’s praise of the mural and its representation of positive, uncomplicated diversity contrasts with the actual nonwhite residents at the event. Some of these residents are performing labor for the white guests. Their feelings have not been prioritized or uplifted. Instead, their bodies have been used to help make the event feel like a success to the white people in attendance.
Themes
The narrator’s eyes begin to feel itchier and her throat more constricted (which she continues to blame on the sealant) as she observes how the divided community of different groups all manage to look like one group now, as all of them, she notices, work to avoid being close to the mural. She sees their efforts to distance themselves from the mural as a sign of their dignity, as she imagines they reject the artificial positivity of the mural which does not accurately represent them at all.
The narrator continues to fight off and deny her emotional reaction, unwilling to yet admit the depth of her sadness. She notices the other residents and constructs a different narrative around them than the story the mural tells. She sees their refusal to go near the mural as a resistance to the mural’s patronizing message. She cannot know for sure if her assumption about the residents’ feelings is correct, but she is making more of an effort to see from their perspective than she has up until now, or than any other white character in the story has at any time.
Themes
The narrator thanks the minister and goes to leave the event, when the centre manager approaches he and gives her a camera to take photos of the event. Then he also asks her to get rid of the empty solvent cans from the Armour-All, suggesting that kids living in the centre might try and sniff them to get high.
The centre manager’s comment shows that beneath the good intentions and positive message of the mural is actual a patronizing, degrading, and even racist view about the community living in the centre. The centre manager wants certain images of diversity to come out of the event so that it looks like the community is happy and being celebrated. But he also suggests to the narrator, another white person, that the kids living at the estate may use any opportunity to get high, showing both that he does not actually believe these teenage residents are enjoying the event as well as how little he thinks of them.
Themes
The centre manager then asks the narrator to gather some of the Turkish women in her fabric painting class to come be in a photo shoot in front of the mural. The narrator bitterly realizes that the centre manager just wants to create an image of positive diversity, but does not actually care for what the residents really want and think, for who they really are. She thinks about how the entire mural has whitewashed the community and how if anyone in the community tried to graffiti the mural to contradict what the mural actually represents, it would just be wiped away—figuratively and literally—with the white spirit.
In the climax of the story, the narrator sees the hypocrisy in the centre manager’s desire to take a happy, staged photo while he also degrades the people living at the centre. His prejudice and hypocrisy pushes her toward finally admitting that the mural does not actually serve the community. She also sees the metaphor in the solvent, as she understands that any of the community’s actual feelings about the mural (if they tried to graffiti it) could easily be quashed by white spirit, much in the same way that the force of the white people working on the mural managed to override the actual desires and feelings of the nonwhite people living at the centre.
Themes
The narrator leaves the centre manager and walks over to the women in her class. She hands Jameela the camera, despite the fact that this is against the centre’s rules regarding its property. She tells Jameela to take photos of anything she wants at the event, which Jameela seems to be surprised by.
The narrator chooses to leave the event, finally extricating herself from the patronizing harm of the mural. In giving Jameela the camera and asking her to take pictures, the narrator prioritizes Jameela’s point of view on the event—how Jameela sees the community from her perspective—above her own point of view. Jameela’s surprise at being given the camera reveals how undervalued the point of view of the residents of the centre usually is, and shows a transformation within the narrator from trying to control the behavior of the residents to giving up this control and letting them tell their own stories. That giving the camera to a resident is against centre policies makes clear that the centre has no intention of giving up such control.
Themes
The narrator turns to leave Jameela and thinks to herself how tired she is as she remembers that she has to get rid of the paint solvent cans, which she will take back to her own suburb and throw out in her own trash can.
The narrator’s reflection on the labor she must continue to do shows how demanding her job is and reveals that even though the narrator herself has benefited from her whiteness, she too exists on a lower rung of the ladder of systemic inequality in which she has to focus on her own “demands of getting by.”
Themes
Just as the narrator is about to leave the gym, Jameela calls her name and runs after her. She leads the narrator back to the rest of her class, who are ready to take a picture together, with her. The narrator stands next to the women in her class, who seem genuinely excited to take a photo together. She thinks about how different and downcast she looks from the rest of them but find herself in the group, with two of the women’s arms around her, and “in spite of everything,” she smiles.
Jameela’s invitation for the narrator to join the the picture of the class shows the first real moment of connection in the story, and serves as a kind of redemptive moment for the narrator. This time, Jameela and the other women in the class are deciding what this image should look like and they are allowing the narrator to be part of it, rather than the reverse. Despite the narrator’s flaws, she has put in the time to actually get to know these women; and it is that connection which results in their insistence that she be in the picture. The fact that the narrator smiles in the picture, even as she is feeling worn out and sad, is a moment of true selflessness on her part, as she lets go of her own self-pity and bitterness to support the women in her class. At the same time, it is a moment in which the women themselves are supporting the narrator. She is not only smiling for them. They are also giving her a reason to smile. The story ends on this hopeful moment of true connection across ethnic and racial boundaries; this picture captures an actual portrait that celebrates diversity. Yet this happy ending is not complete. The narrator and these women have made a real connection—such connection is possible—but it is also limited, and it is not clear that anyone else in the story will do the work to make such connections themselves.
Themes
