The epic genre is known for its celebration of achievements of community heroes and several other features. This paper argues that Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider conforms to the requirements of the epic genre although the author has used it push for progressive ideals among the Maori. It is, therefore, not mere celebration of heroic deeds of the protagonist as it would be the case for traditional epics. By setting the story in the present and through Kahu, the heroine, Witi seeks to inform the Maori and the world that leadership is no longer reserved for men as most epics tend to imply. The tussle between progress and conservatism characterising the story is indeed a cultural dilemma facing modern societies. When progress represented by Kahu defeats conservatism spearheaded by aging Chief Apirana, the story’s main message crystallizes out of the epical cultural milieu it is made of.
Is Witi Ihimaera’s The Whale Rider an epic narrative or a novel? There is no straitjacket answer. As Chatman explains, no work of literature is a perfect representation of a certain genre (18). The decision to classify a piece of literature under a given genre depends on the tendency of that piece to exhibit features of a certain genre. In other words, classification is part and parcel of the reading process and indeed a matter of judgement. For instance, the novel is a very fluid genre (Mwangi, 42). It can encompass aspects of epic, drama, poetry etcetera. The purpose of this paper is to argue that The Whale Rider is basically an epic narrative only that the genre has been subverted by the author’s modernist/progressivist agenda targeting his Maori community of New Zealand. While doing so, the discussion will look at how the story has been weave...
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...that literature reflects life which, of course, evolves.
Works Cited
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4. Mwangi, Evan. “Gendering Genre: Issues of Feminist Identity and Subversion of the Epic in Margaret Ogola’s The River and the Source” The Nairobi Journal of Literature 1 (2003): 42-53.
5. Petrova, Mwangi. “The Four Seasons: A Matter of Style in European Literature” The Nairobi Journal of Literature 6 (2010): 2-16.
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7. Witi, Ihimaera. The Whale Rider. Essex: Pearson Education Limited, 2012.
Chatman, Seymour, "Existents." Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1978. 107-126, 131-145.
Meyer, Michael, ed. The Bedford Introduction to Literature: Reading, Thinking, Writing. 5th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999.
Within his writing, Nam Le achieves autonomy by expressing authentic traits through the presence of the novel’s characters. In Le’s novel The Boat, the author introduces key behaviors and personas within the first story of the narrative. Though he could approach culture from a Vietnamese perspective, the writer offers a transnational impression throughout the story. By including various characters in numerous roles, Nam Le appropriately applies and articulates the title of his first story, “Love and Honor and Pity and Pride and Compassion and Sacrifice,” which focuses on the ideas of lineage, identity, and inspiration.
Updike, John. “A&P.” Literature Craft and Voice. Ed. Nicholas Delbanco and Alan Cheuse. 2nd ed. New York: McGraw, 2013. 141-145. Print.
Stories are powerful devices that “are all we have, you see, to fight off illness and death” (Silko 1). Within the novels Ceremony by Leslie Marmon Silko and Haroun and the Sea of Stories by Salman Rushdie, stories serve exactly this purpose. Each protagonist, Tayo and Haroun respectively, has an obstacle they must overcome. Tayo is a Native American World War II veteran who suffers from an illness of the mind, which is implied to be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He is told that a Ceremony is the only way to cure him. The ceremony mentioned involves stories. Haroun is a young Indian boy who has gone through tragedy at a young age. His mother has left and his father has lost his job as a storyteller. Haroun feels that both of these occurrences are his fault. Stories are how Haroun saves his sad city, his father’s job, and brings his mother back. Both of the protagonists have burdens to carry upon their shoulders. The authors, though from two different cultures, use stories in their novels in similar fashions: as healing devices. This proves that stories are universal elements that can be utilized in the same way no matter what the culture.
Meyer, Michael. The Bedford Introduction to Literature. Ed. 8th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2008. 2189.
Updike, John. "A & P." Literature: An Introduction to Fiction, Poetry, Drama, and Writing. By X. J. Kennedy and Dana Gioia. 12th ed. Boston: -Pearson, 2013. 17-21. Print
Moreover, Tayo's struggle to return to indigenous cultural traditions parallels Silko's own struggle as a writer who wants to integrate Native American traditions into the structure of her novel. Instead of simply following the literary conventions used by other American and European writers, Silko develops new li...
Charters, Ann & Samuel. Literature and its Writers. 6th ed. Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2013. 137-147. Print.
In “The Truth about Stories”, Thomas King, demonstrate connection between the Native storytelling and the authentic world. He examines various themes in the stories such as; oppression, racism, identity and discrimination. He uses the creational stories and implies in to the world today and points out the racism and identity issues the Native people went through and are going through. The surroundings shape individuals’ life and a story plays vital roles. How one tells a story has huge impact on the listeners and readers. King uses sarcastic tone as he tells the current stories of Native people and his experiences. He points out to the events and incidents such as the government apologizing for the colonialism, however, words remains as they are and are not exchanged for actions. King continuously alerts the reader about taking actions towards change as people tend to be ignorant of what is going around them. At the end people give a simple reason that they were not aware of it. Thus, the author constantly reminds the readers that now they are aware of the issue so they do not have any reason to be ignorant.
Perkins, Geroge, and Barbara Perkins. The American Tradition in Literature. 12th ed. Vol. 2. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
Structurally, Walcott creolizes the epic genre and makes it his own. Homeric epics deal with battles and honor, which reflects the culture of the Ancient Greeks. Walcott is doing the same; he is reflecting the experience of the new empowered people of the receding empire and telling the struggle of his own tribe. The reader often comes across a reference that resonates with something read in the classic epics, and it would be unfair for Walcott to expect the reader to refrain from these associations and allusions made in the text. By Walcott expressing the struggles for identity in the Caribbean in Omeros, he is also expressing the hybridity of the islands by these associations. The names Walcott decides to use in his epic does not only draw from Homeric works, but it represents the colonial space where slave owners would give their slaves names from their homelands. This mirrors the Caribbean, as it too is a collection of associations rather than a completely whole culture. Walcott is among many others, such as Virgil and James Joyce, who have adapted the classic epics. Classically, an epic is usually a long narrative poem, on a serious subject, and centers on a hero who takes on a larger than life persona. There are also some other indications such as an opening in media res, an invocation to the Muse, concerns with the fate of a nation, extended similes, divine intervention, and at times a visit to the underworld. Walcott’s Omeros has some of these elements and is separated into seven books containing sixty-four chapters. The two opening and closing books are set in St. Lucia, books three through five encompass African, European, and North American influences that fuse in the Caribbean and island of St. Lucia. Each ...
Perkins George, Barbara. The American Tradition in Literature, 12th ed. New York: McGraw Hill, 2009. Print
In the novels and epics of Robinson Crusoe, The Odyssey, The Tempest and Gulliver’s Travels the reader encounters an adventurer who ends up on an island for many years and then returns back home. These four stories have another point in common: they are all unusually popular. There is something very appealing to the popular imagination about such narratives. In this essay I will explore the vision of life (or at least some aspects of it) which this novel holds out to us and which is significantly different from the others, no matter how apparently similar the narrative form might be.
An important theme in Potiki is the enduring idea that creating and sharing stories as a central part of being human is important. It is a significant theme because the novel is heavily imbued with Maori culture, in which the stories and spoken teachings are given prominence, and also because it is a popular belief that people need narratives to give meaning, structure and value to their lives. This theme is displayed resolutely and poignantly in Potiki’s plot, characters, setting and symbolism, as the people of a small rural New Zealand community rediscover themselves through stories spoken and found in Maori carvings. The idea that humans need narratives is the core theme in Potiki, and it is used also to link other themes and aspects of the novel; it is in this way that we know the idea of storytelling is an intrinsic part of the novel’s structure.