“The Bone People” By Keri Hulme

One "Possible World" in The Bone People by Keri Hulme

 

    When I first started to explore what "possible world" I wanted to concentrate on for this essay I decided against concentrating on Simeon's or Kerewin's character because it did not create the emotional experience as did Joe's character. Joe's character seemed to jolt internal conflict about the systems of responding to abuse I was harboring. Later, after further thought the connection with Joe and another family member of mine who had abused someone in my family became even more overwhelming, especially since the family member who enacted the abusing was also named Joe and had similar traits as that of The Bone People's Joe. I thought of how this world that was being created through the story and my own experience with abuse was a significant connection, especially in relation to how we the readers create worlds and how this creation helps us to safely gain an educational experience about the world we experience that sometimes is not so safe to explore, or worse yet, not easy to even think about. However I decided against exploring a possible world though Joe's character, because after concentrated reflection of my notes I realized that the world being created in my mind was not through Joe's character, but through Kerewin's character in light of Joe's actions and Simeon's vulnerability.

    In this essay I have concentrated on three key ideas. The first of the three is this internal connection with Kerewin's character in response to Joe's abuse and her own development of character because of the abuse. In relation to Jerome Bruner's four levels of interpretation, the idea behind this response and development stems from the moralis, or the ethical. The word I would favor in this section of the essay is the moral development of me as the reader through Kerewin's character. The second item is directly related to the first but concentrated more so on the metacognitive development that occurred within myself because of Kerewin's character. The third idea deals with another level that Bruner talks about, which is the anagogia, or the mystical. I will not venture into this section as if coming from an entirely different interpretation of the story but in relation to the first idea. The ending of the story and its heavy concentration on spirituality gave not a sense of resolution but helped me as the reader gain a renewed sense of self through this experience and reflection in the first two ideas. There are significant ideas of spirituality that lead to a path of possible healing and understanding that experience alone does not give. These ideas are imperative on the basis that while reading The Bone People the world that appeared for me was important because it was reflective to my own personal growth as an individual in a complex society. I think this reflective process is the tool that we put in our kit in order to develop a sense of self in society, whether it be intellectually, emotionally or spiritually.

    I want to take us back to something mentioned earlier about the relationship to Joe's character. In doing so it might be easy to lose sight of the significance of the first key idea, which is my moral development through Kerewin's character . I would like to point out first that even though Joe's actions in the story triggered the connection it was Kerewin's responses to Joe's actions that created a world that drove the story to be an emotionally moral experience. The connection to Joe's character was with a family member who had the same name and a similar demeanor as Joe. When I was very young I was told a story of my uncle Joe, who had sexually abused two of his younger sisters, one of which was my mother. When the two sisters came to their mother about what had happened to them, both had been slapped in the face and blamed for the incident. I was told this story by my eldest sister because she did not want me getting close to my male family relations without supervision as there was another incident where she had been molested as a child by a great uncle on the opposite side of the family. It was intended by her to make sure I would not follow the same fate and I would feel comfortable talking to her if anyone touched me in way that made me feel uncomfortable. What preceded this story was deeper than just keeping me aware of safety issues with family, but it created a moral confliction about why this funny and gentle man that I remember from my youth had been put on a pedestal, yet was never confronted about the wrong doings in his life. My aunts and uncles thought my uncle Joe was such a great man, even though in real life he physically abused his wife and was a drug dealer. He was shot because of a bad drug deal and I still remember the day he died. He visited us the night before and the next day we received a call of his death. I remember watching the two sisters that he had molested at a very young age cry uncontrollably and grieve for him for a long time afterwards. Two or three years after his funeral I was told the story of what he had done. I remember being angry that everything was hidden away and forgotten. That all these years my own mother shed tears and revered him as a good man. My grandmother held the man in such high esteem and wouldn't allow anyone in the family to say one bad thing about him. Although this is an extreme case, the idea behind "forgive and forget" became a reoccurring theme in life, especially as it dealt with family. Was it wrong of my family to not say anything about his abuse towards his wife, or his drug addiction? As an adult why did my mother never confront my grandmother about her actions so long ago? I don't know the insides of my mother's mind and spirit, but it seemed as if she hid the memory in a far corner of her mind and forgotten it. I always wanted to ask her how she could love a man that was so abusive, but learned otherwise from discussions about why she decided to stay married to a physically abusive man. The response was always that this was the way things were. Once you were married there was no turning back, it was better to forgive and forget if you can.

    Kerewin's character responded to the abuse of Simeon through anger, first. Then she came to a sense of reason, that Simeon needed Joe and Joe needed Simeon. So then Kerewin's response was a possible solution where she would enact as the medium between Simeon and Joe. Joe would not be able to hit Simeon without Kerewin's permission. A rekindled friendship between Joe and Kerewin had sprouted after the fight scene, as if the abuse had never occurred. The actions were forgiven and forgotten, but not by Kerewin, but by me. Kerewin does not insinuate that she had not forgotten what Joe had done, especially at the bar, but she let it go. I, the reader, had started forgetting the abuse that Joe had inflicted on Simeon and concentrated on a possible deeper loving relationship between Kerewin and Joe. Then Kerewin lost her temper, her senses, after the guitar is broken and the medium that came between the abuse and sane punishment had evaporated. Joe had ruined everything, but why didn't Kerewin do what she said she would. I point out these occurrences in the story to relate to the internal relationship that I started to connect with in Kerewin. I added on emotions to her character because I felt like her, an outsider that could not make decisions for Joe. Something else occurred, something that I did not think possible, and that was this forgive and forget mentality. Joe and Simeon were each others family, they depended on each other more than anything. Kerewin decided not to say anything to the officials because she knew that. She, unlike the rest of Joe's family, did not decide to pretend it wasn't going on, but she accepted the things that Joe did and decided to move past them.

    In between all the turmoil of deciding what to do when she found out about Joe's abusiveness, and the emotions that were erupting after their return from the "vacation" she turned towards drinking as a release. Her solitude was more appealing then in the beginning, because the solitude along with the drinking represented an all too familiar self-taught protection plan from the complications of family conflict. I could not help but monitor the connection with Kerewin's need to be distant from the rest of the world in order to handle its chaos, to my own self-creating distance from those around me when I can't handle all its complications. Her hopelessness at the end of the sour event of Joe going to jail and losing custody and Simeon being in the hospital close to death was like swallowing cold and lonely life experiences. Towards the end of the novel, when she destroyed the tower and walked away to meet her death somewhere, I felt a sense of desperation come from her character. This desperation was confusing, because I don't know if Kerewin actually felt desperate, I wondered if it was me that felt desperate. Sometimes I wondered if it was desperation to turn back time and redo things or desperate that there was no solution that was morally right when it came down to it.

    This leads me to point out that my second idea of revealing metacognitive development through the story is already in play with the reflection of my connection with Kerewin's character. The questions that occurred while analyzing some of the situations that Kerewin was confronted with had me explore questions of morality that I had not explored because I felt incapable of doing so in the past. I have shown much in the area of metacognitive development that I've gained through the self-monitoring of my reactions and connection to Kerewin's character and Joe's actions. The self-correction is not as explicit as the self-monitoring. The idea of what the morally right thing to do is still in conflict internally, however the spirituality at the end of the novel does shed a beginning to a sense of self-correction.

    In the end I truly believe that Kerewin did not survive. There was too much implication that she decided to relive her afterlife in the shadow of her previous life. At the bottom of page 421 she distinctly indicates that a moth enters, touches her fingertips and Kerewin tells the moth to lay her eggs. She goes through a transformation that sounded so near death I can not see it as anything but her passing, in the midst of this passing she realizes that she loves life (pg. 423), mother earth, father sky, she loves all things like she had never cherished it before. With this choice to love life an "indeterminate" person arrives without known sex or race. This person gives her something to drink that in essence gives her back life. The renewed sense of hope and love for humanity at the end describes an important lesson that can not just be said, but must be felt in order to enact its true potential, and that is that even in the midst of our misery we must always cherish that that is around us. The unity of her family, of Joe's family, of Hana and Temote, of Simeon, this in the end is what is most important and needed in order to start a new beginning. The fact that I have been in turmoil about this confliction of what was the morally right thing to do when my grandmother found out her eldest son had molested two of her youngest daughters was not up to me to decide. It was my mother's choice to forgive her brother, and it was my family's choice to stay silent about these things. Throughout my life I have built a wall (or a tower) between those I love and myself because I fear the conflict they will arise inside me. I am conflicted about whether to see their choices as the morally right/wrong thing to do because ultimately I can do nothing about those choices. I can however choose to decide to maintain a unity with them. Coming to a sense of resolution of what the morally right thing to do is not as easy as following society's rules of conduct, but it becomes an even more harmful process to enter without a greater perspective of what is important. Maintaining the idea of what is most important in life, as well as rising to the occasion when it calls for difficult choices to be made is what makes our character, seeing it through the eyes of a fictional character helps us to practice at it with much lesser consequences.