45 pages • 1 hour read
Keri HulmeThe Bone People
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1984A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
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The Connections Between Violence, Abuse, and Love
Violence and love go hand in hand in this novel. Kerewin notices several times how forgiving both Joe and Simon are of their abusers and how loving their relationship can be despite Joe’s beatings. This seeming paradox in their behavior raises an important consideration: Domestic abuse is not a straightforward problem and it is not necessarily the result of hate on the part of the abuser.
For Joe, beating Simon seems to be an outlet for repressed anger but also a poorly chosen way of trying to correct the boy’s destructive tendencies. The man has an epiphany at the end of the novel in which he clearly sees the source of his violence: his resentment of Simon’s difference and Joe’s inability to control the boy. This moment reveals the deep-seated trauma of colonialization. Joe, the embodiment of a colonized people, has internalized the pakeha value system, giving up his dreams and aspirations to provide what is considered a proper life for his wife. When his unfulfilling life choice becomes oblique due to his loss, his unhappiness and inability to find a different type of meaning lead to self-resentment. He fears the things that are not rational or normal, at least according to mainstream Western perceptions. Simon, with his strange habits and connection to the natural world, becomes an embodiment of these irrational, subconscious, and incontrollable impulses, causing Joe’s fear and self-resentment to manifest in violent behavior toward the boy. His beatings are a punishment for Simon’s nonconformity, but also an expression of Joe’s fear of those parts of himself.
For Kerewin, physical violence is a joyful way to assert her strength and will. She does not seek altercations on purpose, but she follows through when someone provokes her. Kerewin also possesses a dark side, expressed through her biting and wounding words. She is coming to love Simon, but that love does not prevent her from hurting the boy just as badly as Joe, albeit verbally rather than physically.
The insistence on violence and abuse in the novel can be read as an exploration of contemporary social issues caused by grief, poverty, and a prior history of abuse. However, it also alludes to New Zealand’s legacy of violence: the Maori traditional tribal conflicts, or riri, as well as the detrimental and often bloody process of colonization during the 19th century.
Sexual and Gender Norms
Questions of sex, sexuality, and gender are central to the book as the main protagonist is neither romantically nor sexually interested in anyone and does not identify with either masculine or feminine pronouns, something considered to be highly unusual for a woman at that time. In Western societies, gender and sexuality have historically been fundamentally binary concepts. A person was supposed to be either a cisgender woman or a cisgender man; anything in-between was considered abnormal or strange until recently. Furthermore, women’s sexuality is almost always problematic, caught between two extremes: It is either too strong, leading to the label of promiscuity, or too weak, causing the diagnosis of frigidity. It is seen as proper only when expressed under controlled circumstances, such as within the marriage bond for the purposes of procreation. Abstinence is also considered only permissible in specific circumstances, such as religious devotion. That Kerewin does not fit this binary automatically marks her as an outsider.
Kerewin not only refuses to conform to Western stereotypes, but also stands wholly outside them, challenging what is usually perceived as the natural social order. Her character destabilizes pakeha perceptions of how women and families should look like and function, opening up the potential for alternative ways of socialization and cohabitation. With the help of Joe and Simon, her character demonstrates a way forward that is not entirely based on European social norms but is also not entirely Maori in nature.
Additionally, male sexuality is also investigated through Joe’s one homosexual relationship. Maori culture seems much more accepting of same-sex relationships, whether sexual in nature or not, than Western culture. This could be explained by the Maori origin stories, in which there are mentions of intimate male friendships, such as the one between Tutanekai and Tiki. While in Ancient Greek and Roman texts there are similar mentions of close or intimate friendships between men, the spread of Christianity in the West gradually altered cultural norms until same-sex relationships were perceived as wrong and unnatural.
Loneliness and Family Ties
Maori culture is based on the whanau, or extended family, several of which form clans or groups, hapu, which in turn constitute a tribe, or iwi. In translation, iwi means “bone” or “bones,” suggesting that a people is defined by the bones of its ancestors or the ground where they are buried. The book’s title, then, can be interpreted as alluding to contemporary Maori, who understand the significance of bones. Alternatively, the author could be suggesting that all people are related, since we are all made up of bones, regardless of whether we acknowledge it. Additionally, in one of Kerewin’s dreams, she sees her bones melting into the ground and bringing it back to life. Symbolically, this could be taken as a return to her community and the investment of her creative energies into reviving Maori culture.
Despite the importance of family ties, or maybe because of it, in the beginning all three protagonists are shown as lonely and isolated from their surroundings. As Kerewin notes, a family can be both bane and meaning (242). In other words, a strong and healthy whanau can bring structure to a person’s life, but families are made up of individual people and will always have internal conflicts or disagreements. When relying so much on the whanau, it can also be devastating when something goes wrong and a person breaks away, as in Kerewin’s case.
Joe also feels isolated by his grief and dissatisfaction with his life. His maternal relatives, the Tainuis, help with Simon’s upbringing but do not seem particularly close to him. Possibly, Joe feels unable to establish a deeper connection with them because of his guilt over Simon’s abuse and because of a fear of abandonment. His closest family members have all left him in one way or another. His grandmother died some years ago. His mother is alive but has rejected him as a reminder of an unhappy past, and Joe, in his turn, has rejected his abusive grandfather. His loneliness is probably emphasized by the presence of Simon, who is not his biological son and is markedly different in appearance. The boy’s European origins are a constant reminder that Joe’s son has died.
While loneliness is an internal state, isolation is an external condition. Simon is the most socially isolated of the three, due to his muteness. Social misunderstanding and ignorance of physical and psychological disability make his inability to talk a truly painful and traumatic experience, rather than the minor inconvenience that it could have been. Unable to express himself in a socially acceptable way and often ignored due to his perceived mental disability, Simon is forced to resort to anger and violence to communicate and connect to others. His behavior demonstrates that outward violence, especially in children, is often not a simple character flaw, but a symptom of a wider social problem.
One of the novel’s main messages is that the isolation and loneliness caused by painful and traumatic pasts can be overcome with the help of the extended family. The three protagonists find happiness by reuniting with their relatives and embracing others, without necessarily being blood-related.
