Reading Response – Stolen Car

CLB322 Reading Response

Stolen Car   

The only knowledge I was given upon reading the short story Stolen Car was that it was written by Archie Weller who is an Australian writer with an Aboriginal heritage. My initial prediction of this text was that this narrative would present the Indigenous discourse. I came to this prediction solely on my knowledge that texts contain cultural codes and therefore the author’s own cultural beliefs would be drawn upon in the text. As I was reading the text I saw my predictions come into fruition as this text is rooted with attitudes, values and beliefs of both Indigenous Australians as well as the cultural beliefs of White Australians of the time.

My personal response to this text was rather distressing. I cannot understand the chauvinistic cruelty which the Aboriginal people suffered from many White Australians. For me this text opened my eyes once again to the injustice of our actions against Indigenous Australians. In class we began to verbalise our personal response to this text and similar to my response my peers also felt saddened by Australia’s history and treatment of Aboriginals. A general consensus was that this text positioned us to feel great sympathy towards the protagonist of the text. The way in which I drew a reading of sympathy towards Aboriginals from this narrative is a result of my own cultural and social experiences. Being a Greek Australian I am lucky to have never directly suffered from racial discrimination myself. However, I know my father did a lot as a Greek growing up in Australia. This makes me very sensitive to racism and therefore I feel greatly for those Indigenous Australian’s who still receive unwarranted racist remarks. My own personal attitudes towards racism caused me to sympathise for the character Johnny.

 This reading of sympathy was created through the way in which the author foregrounds many similes and metaphors to describe Johnny’s overwhelming sense of not belonging in the city of Perth. My reading of sympathy for Johnny was reinforced through the negative descriptions of the city and the images constructed of the White Australian Police force. The malicious language used by the police further impacted upon my reading of sympathy and presented a whole range of cultural attitudes which the White Australians upheld.  The horrible actions of the police men reveal the ideology of the White Australians. The text represents the social system of the time and it is clearly evident through the construction of power that the dominant race were the White Australians. Even the language of the Aboriginal characters denotes that they are the oppressed group as Wallaby mentions to Johnny that “Ya won’t get a lift ‘ere mate, unless a Nyoongah comes along.  Them white bastards to good for us,” (Weller, p.129).

In class we discussed how young Aboriginal character’s like Johnny believed that going to jail was a rite of passage. This is largely due to their lack of access to basic social resources. This ideology is evident in the text as the character Wallaby takes pride in his crimes and his involvement with the police. Weller describes Wallaby’s point of view as “Empty bragging. A pitiful attempt to prove a manhood that doesn’t exist. Stamped out of existence by generations of white men” (Weller, p.135). Weller’s inclusion of this comment is a technique of narrator point of view. Moon states that this technique is a powerful instrument for producing narrative effects and it has powerful effects on our reading of a text (Moon, p.94). This comment positioned me as a reader to feel sympathy for Wallaby who is no doubt a criminal, however I read him as a victim rather than a perpetrator of crime.

I think a text like this is an ideal short story for senior English teachers to analyse with students. Stolen Car has numerous conventions which reveal how all texts are underpinned with certain discourses and positions its readers to frame the world from a certain point of view. This text deals with issues of power which come with race and ethnicity and by dissecting this text with a class students will be able to recognise how closely power is linked to cultural identity. Although, a teacher must take into account that this text should only be studied with mature students due to the texts use of course language and violent themes.