Lecture Part B

One thing I thought that was interesting was Grenvile’s choice of excluding the Aboriginal’s voices. Critics often said that this was an ethical problem, but Grenville says she did it because she felt it was not her place to represent the Aboriginals. While critics seem to disagree, I think that it was the right choice to only have us understand small parts of what the Natives mean. Simply based on the fact that we are reading the book from Will’s perspective and that communication was one of the biggest issues between the Aboriginals and settlers in history, I think that it was the correct choice. Also, even if Greenville included words from the Aboriginals, given the personality of her main character Will and how Will thinks of the Natives, most conversations between Will and the Aboriginals would be negative, so critic would say Grenville is misrepresenting the Aboriginals and that is an ethical issue. So, either way Grenville cannot win the critics with this controversial story, unless she completely changes the story and plot line. 


I, personally, think that anyone can tell a story about anyone, now whether that story is good or not is up to debate. For instance, the main character of the story is Will, a man, but Grenville is a girl, so how can she speak about the thoughts of a man. If she can write about how a man would think, she can write about how a racist man would think about aboriginals, especially if she did research.


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