What are the Maori words or concepts that you have come across in Journey by Patricia Grace?
Answers
Explanation:
In Journey by Patricia Grace we have the theme of change, powerlessness, frustration, responsibility and acceptance. Narrated in the third person by an unnamed narrator the reader realises after reading the story that Grace may be exploring the theme of change. The old man can remember travelling into the city by steam train. Also when he is on the train to the city he notices how much the landscape has changed. The difference that time has brought. This may be important as in many ways it acts as foreshadowing. The old man also wants to change the small piece of land that he owns and build some houses on it for his nephews and nieces. However it becomes clear to the reader that the old man is in reality powerless when it comes to the decision making on the changes that he wishes to make. While in the city talking about his land with the young man (Paul) it becomes clear to the reader that the city planners intend to make car parking spaces out of the old man’s land. Something that frustrates the old man even though he has been promised other housing. The old man’s frustration may be two fold. Firstly he is unhappy that the city planners will not build on his land for him and secondly his emotional attachment to the land gets the better of him. Something that is noticeable by the fact that the old man kicks and damages Paul’s desk.
An elderly man from New Zealand sets out on a "journey" one day to speak with an official about his land. It starts out with the old man hailing a taxi and talking with the driver, whom he calls "young fulla", about his life, children, and wife. He arrives at the train station 30 minutes early, and interacts with an unpleasant man in the ticket booth and refers to him as "sourpuss". While on the train, he notes how times have changed. He describes how the water where his generation used to find "pipi", a small edible shelled animal, has been paved by the government to make new space for railway cars. He explains how the pakehas, which means foreign Europeans in Maori, deem this change to be "spectacular", and how they can go through land as if it is nothing.Later on the train ride, he points out the place where the pakehas bulldozed a Maori burial groud, promising to "tastefully" place all of the headstones back, even though they disregarded whoever was beneath them.After leaving the train, he speaks to a man about preserving his family's land, which is scheduled to be subdivided by the government for off-street parking.
The man does nothing to help him except promise him "equivalent" land elsewhere. The old man grows exasperated, kicks and cracks the man's desk, and leaves.He goes to drive home in the taxi, and he and the taxi driver talk about their days, leaving out the information about the land. Once home, elderly man instructs his family to have him cremated, not buried, one he dies. He says that he doesn't want anyone to disturb the land he is in, as the government does now.The purpose of this short story is to represent the lack of respect that the government has for the Native Maoris in New Zealand.