Fly Away Peter Analysis

Brian Dwyer in his examination of Fly Away Peter has done so by focusing on the contrasting imagery of the wilderness of the bush to those of the trenches. Chitra Nair looks at the characters as developed into open canvases. Damien Barlow in contrast seeks to understand the underlying homoerotic elements that lay beneath the surface of the story. To understand how the story addresses the question of national discourse may take all three sources.

Brian Dwyer in his consideration of David Malouf’s’ book Fly away Peter he explores the contrast of the rural environment to that of the trenches. He refers to the image of those who were raised in the bush as already seasoned as to adversity as compared to the British soldiers who were described as

“the rugged bushman who was tough and athletic enough to cope with the hardships of warfare” (Dwyer, 1997).
By being perceived to have survived a virtual 'baptism of fire' and the Australian and New Zealand troops were deemed by the English press as 'a race of athletes' in such a way as to describe the Australian nationhood expressed in masculine terms with an exclusion of the feminine.

(Dwyer, 1997). Thus creating a hetro-centric idea of what it means to be an Australian Male.

When Dwyer moves his focus from the character development within the environment of the sanctuary to that of the trench warfare, he brings into play a range of literary comparisons. There is a comparison made by Dwyer of the romanticised image of the Australian rural male to that of the soldier suffering in the trenches (Dwyer, 1997). As, the harsh environment, is seen to bring out in many of the men the harshness of their instinct for survival. Which is an aspect, as expressed by Dwyer, Jim struggles with (Dwyer, 1997).

In Nair’s examination of Malouf’s book she looks at the juxtaposition of opposites. These are expressed in a range of ways. Jim may be seen to represent the land as a place of wisdom. While Ashley is described as a classic European male, where he sees the land as ready to be tamed and

developed.
“It was a landscape, Ashley thought, that[sic] could accommodate a good deal. That was his view of it. It wasn’t as clearly defined as England or Germany; new things could enter and find a place there. It might be old, even very old, but it was more open than Europe to what was still to come” (Nair, 2014).
It is when Jim and Ashley enter the war that Nair looks more intensely at the way these contrasting worlds collide. The familiar nurturing aspect of the land is replaced with the stark aggressive nature of the trenches. The soothing nature of the sanctuary is starkly contrasted with the corrupted nature of the trenches (Nair, 2014). The constant foulness of water and the ever presence of rats as Jim confronted them were deemed to by him as being;
“familiars of death, creatures of the underworld, as birds were of life and the air”
(Malouf, 1982)
Gone are the natural connections to the bush, sanctuary and life of nature; replaced with an ever degraded form of survival.

Nair’s description of Jim and Ashley creates a contrast to the standard consideration of the male relatedness. She formulates an ideal, based on the story that creates an image of Jim and Ashley as soul mates that goes contrary to the standard concept of the Australian national discourse.

Damien Barlow looks at the underlying homoerotic elements within the story. Barlow believes this understated same sex or homosexual undertones can be found as a subdued implication found “particularly prevalent in some of Malouf’s novels, notably Fly Away Peter (Barlow, 2011). The “numinous quality of their same-sex desire is captured in Ashley’s epiphanic[sic] flight of ideas” are expressed and found contained within his experiences of traversing the sanctuary waters with Jim (Barlow, 2011). This creates a dynamically different and complex explanation of the male identity as an incompatible image of Australian

masculinity.

Neither Jim nor Ashely could be described as typically male by their classical descriptions of such. As such, Ashley is described by Barlow to have had an epiphany. In that the same sex desire he was feeling towards Jim was understood to be through a primitive discourse that is believed to trace such homoerotic feelings in some sort of “pre-classical, pre-historic, primeval and haunted world” (Barlow, 2011). Barlow seems to believe that it is this desire as both “present/absent and real/mythological” is an articulation that Malouf creates to describe the desire Jim and Ashley (Barlow, 2011). So for Barlow, Malouf’s apparent queer epiphanies are different to preconceived perceptions as they point to a queer epiphanies are different in that they look towards a future full of alternative possibilities, a queer envisioning (Barlow, 2011).

On reflections by means of these three diverse yet uniquely significant aspects of Fly away Peter we can find a group of challenges to the national discourse. By Dwyer’s exploration of land and physical relationships, to Nair’s consideration of significance of land nature and nurturing, and with the added inspection made by Barlow into the significance of the emotional homoerotic nature of male bonding; we can see a range of complex analogies that counter the stereotypical national discourse of Australian masculinity.