Trials:
The concept of using texts to connect between a composer’s message and a global audience is reflected in Keri Hulme’s The Bone People. Hulme draws on the Maori traditions of storytelling and legends, which did not take the listener back into the past, but brought the past forward by making events described contemporary. The painful pasts of Hulme’s three main characters reflects New Zealand’s cultural past and uncertainty in identity. “The Lightning Struck Tower” symbolises the speed with which colonialism destroyed Maori culture. Hulme reflects the certainties of broken Maori traditions and cultures, even within the present society “the Maoritanga has got lost in the way that I live.” Hulme attempts to reaffirm Maori culture, celebrating it through characters who are of part-Maori descent, and who find happiness in rediscovering their Maori heritage. For example, Kerewin must face “the secrets that crept and chilled and chuckled in the marrow of her bones”, which represent the ancestors and family, drawing on the Maori word iwi as “bones” and tribe. Hulme’s text is valued as a creative answer, in literary terms, to the devastation of colonialism and its successor, globalisation, through the promotion of “a new, bicultural New Zealand” (Culture and Identity in NZ).
The Bone People is a text that explores human nature, and the notion of violence as part of human nature. Hulme, like Sitch, depicts within a microcosmic community human behaviour that could be applied globally. This is seen through the abusive relationship between Joe and his adopted son Simon. The graphic descriptions of violence, “he can feel [the blood] spilling from his mouth, his ears, his eyes, and his nose” compel the responder judge Joe, as Kerewin does, as a “bastard”. However, Hulme directs the responder to forgive Joe in her positive, reconciliatory ending, depicting Joe as part of the new definition of familyhood that she has created. Hulme, in exploring the reasons behind Joe’s violent behaviour, suggests that it is a trait that is part of human nature, and part of the responder human beings. “The Bone People gives a deep insight into human nature” (1985 Booker-McConnell Prize jury). It is valued for the questions it raises, especially that of how society should view, as Hulme suggests, the problems in social functioning that occurs within communities.
