Jimmie Blacksmith

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Recommended: Political Ideologies

In modern society, it is of upmost importance to understand the operation of ideologies within societies and cultures, how they have developed over time to instil diverse morals and values within individuals and how these are frequently echoed through texts. These social and cultural paradigms often spread so widely and influence societies so greatly that they are reflected through literary works and can be traced within texts, and this statement resinates through textual analysis of The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith by Thomas Keneally which represents a broad catalogue of gender & education based, social, racial and religious ideologies of the 1900’s.

Keneally explores the ideology of social class being dependant on your gender, race and religion through the experiences of Jimmie Blacksmith and his interaction with different genders, races and religions. This particular ideology holds the value that the more you possess, the higher status you have within society. We can see this value operating in the text when Jimmie says “when he became a recognisable man, an owner of things.” The use of optimistic tone and juxtaposition between ‘recognisable’ and ‘owner’ conveys his attitude towards possessions and how they determine his current and future social standing. As a reader, we’re able to see the popular beliefs circulating in colonial Australia and how this positions the audience to either feel sympathetic for Jimmie’s circumstances or denounce his actions as materialistic.
Gender is also a contentious topic within Keneally’s piece. Comparison and contrast of Florence and Mrs Healy throughout the text represents the ideology that the attitudes of men towards women form their rights and responsibilities. Jimmie’s attitude towards wome...

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...ristian faith, comes with the price of his right of respect from the superior white people. As race and religion are so closely interconnected, we’re able to see why people of this time period felt that they had the right to discriminate against Jimmie harshly and how their actions were influenced by their morals and values.

As readers, Keneally enables us to see how particular paradigms within texts operate as a basis on which people use as justification to discriminate and dehumanise others upon. He comments on several of these ideologies and chooses to convey these comments from a perspective that not many authors would have the courage to write from in 1972. Through his representation of ideologies and notions of values in The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, readers may further their acceptance of others and be positioned to perceive the world in a different light.

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