Mister Pip By Lloyd Jones

Have you ever imagined what it felt like to be completely cut off from the rest of the world? Left all alone with no power, no food, and no clothes? Have you ever wondered about how families living in war zones are mentally affected by war? In the novel Mister Pip, author Lloyd Jones explores the effects of war on the victim and perpetrator through isolation, fear, and trauma.

In the beginning, the narrator, 13 year-old Matilda lived on the Papua New Guinea island Bougainville during the 1990’s. A brutal civil war had just broken out. A blockade was put on the island. No one was aloud in, and no one was aloud out. The Bougainville villagers were then cut off from their power and medical supply. All but one white man had taken off with their wives. Without proper care “the littlest kids came down with malaria and there was nothing that could be done to help them” (Jones, page 10). They were held captive on the island with nothing left but the island itself and each other. Completely isolated from everything else in the world.

They had no weapons to fight back and defend themselves. Kids were not free to play to be children. They were even beginning to become scared of their own kind for the Rambos were being very irresponsible. “Some of them were drinking jungle juice; these ones grew louder and more boisterous. Real soldiers would have kept quiet and moved like shadows” (Jones, page 160). The Rambos drunken escape from reality put the villagers at danger for if they were heard by the Redskins, they would have been punished for aiding them. This left them in constant fear all the time wondering when the Redskins would show up to take away more of their already very little supply of things they had