CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF KERI HULME’S

“THE BONE PEOPLE”

Submitted To

Mr. Jeevan Sagar

(Faculty of English, Hidayatullah National Law University)

Submitted By

Gaurav Vatwani

B.A. LL.B (Hons)

Roll No. 52

Submitted On

15.04.2021

Hidayatullah Natinal Law University, Raipur, C.G

 DECLERATION

I Gaurav Vatwani , hereby declare that, this project report entitled CRITICAL

ANALYSIS OF KERI HULME’S “THE BONE PEOPLE” submitted to Hidayatullah

National Law University, Raipur is record of an original work done by me under the

guidance of Mr. Jeevan Sagar, Faculty of English Department HNLU , Raipur and that

no part of this work is performed on the basis for the award of any degree or diploma

and similar project if any.

GAURAV VATWANI

SEMESTER - Ⅰ

SECTION – A

ROLL NO. 52
 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

I would like to express my most sincere gratitude to Mr. Jeevan Sagar for his encouragement

and guidance with regard to several aspects of this project. I am thankful for being given the

opportunity of doing a project on “Project on former chief justice of India”.

I am thankful to IT lab assistants and the library staff for facilitating my research and helping

me to obtain the required material for making this project

I am thankful to my parents, classmates and friends for their constant support and

encouragement.
 INTRODUCTION

Keri Hulme's novel The Bone People explores Kerewin, Joe, and Simon, who remain in some

kind of an isolated region of New Zealand. Hulme, who really is half Maori, uses Maori

vocabulary mostly in book which creates many comparisons to Maori history and myths. The

Maoris would be the first to colonise New Zealand, followed by that of the Pakehas, or

Europeans. The Maoris all had their own myths and legends that address the origins of life

and why it came to be. Maoris was believed to have developed on islands somewhere outside

of Polynesia, however according anthropologists. They conclude that around 700 A.D., Maori

people sailed from both the Pacific to Aotearoa, which means "New Zealand" in Maori.

Control violence, loneliness and alienation, morality, the desire to defend the vulnerable, loss,

silent contact, and regeneration are among the topics explored. The Bone People seems to be

a romance/mystery novel that combines the two genres. It was lauded for its original

dialogue, which combines lyrical and ribald vocabulary, as well as its changing points of

view (from first person to omniscient) that incorporates both young and old characters. The

relevance of skeletons and predecessors in Maori culture is reflected throughout the word.

Maori writers have used a particular method of politicisation, with some returning to classic

styles of Maori poetry in the Maori language after re-discovering them, partially by scholarly

research. Since there are only a few thousand fluent speakers (government statistics from

2001 show that over 10,000 adult Maori claim to speak the language "well" or "very well"),

some have interpreted this as a form of self-limitation, while others have interpreted it as a

bold assertion of identity; anthologies of New Zealand poetry now include examples of these

new poets' work

 PLOT SUMMARY

Kerewin Holmes is indeed an artist who's already lost her desire to create. She has

constructed a tower upon this side of both a beach in Southern New Zealand to isolate

herself. She discovers a young mute boy hidden in her house one evening. When she calls to

arrange for someone to pick up the baby, the operator tells her that he is a suspected

troublemaker. Joe Gillayley, Simon's father, seems to be very fond of him, but when he

discovers Simon has taken something from Kerewin, he slaps him. This catches Kerewin's

eye, then she becomes more interested in theirs health as a result. Kerewin decides she needs

to have a closer eye on the Gillayleys after more violence is heaped on the baby.

This leads to a holiday during which Joe attempts to harm the boy but is instead injured by

Kerewin, who has been enraged by Joe's relentless beating of Simon. Joe's feelings for

Kerewin have evolved from platonic to romantic over the course of this period. About the

fact that Kerewin does not share this sentiment, she is very fond of the couple. Following the

holiday, some people bring up Joe and Kerewin's friendship, which causes Kerewin to take a

step back. Simon has angered Kerewin by taking her favourite knife. Simon ruins Kerewin's

prized possession when she begs him to return it.

Simon then heads downtown and smashes glass on the main highway. Joe thrashes Simon so

severely that he sustains several burns. Simon stabs Joe with a shard of shattered glass. Joe is

apprehended, Simon is rushed to the hospital, and Kerewin is left to clean up the shards of a

shattered building. Joe is given a three-month suspension, and Simon is able to recover from

his injury. Kerewin's condition starts to deteriorate. She determines that the tower must be

lost because of her remorse and illness, so she dismantles as soon as she can before leaving to

be alone once more. Joe is set free and goes to a secluded place, where he encounters an

elderly Maori man who informs him that he has been chosen to protect a secret in a cave near
the beach and that he will be giving all of his land to Joe. Kerewin refuses surgical attention

for something like an abdominal tumour, but her disease worsens. She heads to a desolate hut

to die, but she is resurrected by an unknown person. She goes to another small town as she

gets up refreshed. She encounters a man who appears to be a diver while she is there, and she

hires him to rescue the shipwrecked boat Simon emerged on.

 CHARECTERIZATION

Kerewin Holmes is indeed a socially isolated artist who really is trying to escape her past.

She seems to have been a talented painter who lost touch with her craft after winning a large

lottery and falling out through her family. She believes she has lost her quality of thinking at

both the start of the book and wishes for everyone to leave her alone. She learns to heal her

life after being involved with Simon and Joe.

Simon's adoptive parent is Joe Gillayley. He is both earthy and spiritual, but his alcoholism

clouds his judgement, particularly when it comes to raising Simon. Joe really does seem to

love and appreciate Kerewin while still competing with her. His wife's death has left him

emotionally scarred.

Simon P. Gillayley – Simon is a deaf, precocious boy who is fascinated with the little aspects

of his surroundings. Simon cares deeply about both Joe and Kerewin, but he expresses his

feelings in unusual ways. He shows a disregard for personal belongings. His failure to

communicate isolates him from others, and others misinterpret his silence for folly. Simon

goes by the names Clare or Claro in secret. Before meeting Joe, his life is never satisfactorily

clarified. It's implied that he was assaulted prior to meeting Joe; Joe mentions finding odd

bruises on Simon before he left his house.

 ALLUSIONS

Changes in the setting and the tone of the voice

Hulme uses abrupt changes in context without explanation and gradual transitions from inner

conversation to fantasies to storytelling in The Bone People; additionally, the plot is told in a

series of voices. This unconventional style provides a surreal aura, as well as a fantasy reality.

Hulme tells the narrative in an unconventional manner by combining poems, brief essay-like

thoughts, and journal entries. Hulme starts her plot, for example, with three poems, each

focused on one of the three main characters: Kerewin, Joe, and Simon. Then there are three

brief character introductions (one under a page long), one for each of the three characters.

There is no link between the introductions. Readers will learn what these poetry and

sentences mean by the end of the book. The novel's prologue is made up of these parts.

Readers will note in the first chapter that the dialogue is not credited to individual voices. The

reader has no idea who is speaking the lines. The protagonist, Kerewin, is identified in third-

person point of view before the end of the page, but the text also includes Kerewin's inner

feelings, which are expressed in first-person point of view. The text is often entirely indented

when the protagonist is speaking by internal dialogue, indicating that the passage is actually

interior dialogue. Other first-person passages, on the other hand, are not indented. Rather,

they are written in the same style as the narration, and is usually written in third person.

Readers become accustomed to all of this change, and the flow of the narrator from one point

of view to the next quickly becomes less important than the material being presented. As a

result, traditional narrative patterns are disrupted. The novel's format is appropriate for its

characters and their stories.

 THEME

One of The Bone People's main themes is isolation. In her tower, Kerewin isolates herself

from its world; Simon isolates himself from the world due to his inability to speak; Joe

isolates himself due to his sorrow. The reader is shown the characters' intentions by

paragraphs that detail their emotions, demonstrating how their alienation progresses to

confusion.

Furthermore, violence is seen as a medium of contact and as "an inherent fact of life" in their

society, according to Leanne Christine Zainer. Joe, for example, sees aggression mostly as

means for teaching Simon. Simon, who hasn't even known anything else, gets enraged until

he is unable to get others to understand him.

The Bone People by Hulme depicts child violence in vivid detail. Simon, a young child, is

subjected to this violence. His classmates bully him and they don't grasp his failure to talk

and his anger at not being able to do so. In certain cases, he is humiliated by those in charge

of his schooling because they ignore him easily, refusing to pierce Simon's self-protective

exterior. These educators just see a depressed young boy who does not match their definition

of a normal student.

The most heinous violence, on the other hand, comes from the one guy who claims to love

Simon. Joe, who has agreed to take on the burden of raising the orphaned child, beats Simon

nearly to death. Joe justifies the cruel treatment by saying that it is the child's sole means of

communication. Simon causes a lot of trouble, or so almost everyone says.

 NARRATIVE TECHNIQUE

Language and its position in postcolonial theory and critique have sparked a flurry of heated

debates, both in general and in relation to particular texts. One example of a particular

controversy is Hulme's blending of languages. A reader must first grasp the wider language

controversy of postcolonial critique in order to comprehend the arguments made against

Hulme and her book. The colonizer's language was imposed on the local people as one of the

most traditional colonisation apparatuses. The colonisers treated the native tongue as inferior,

and the widespread prohibition of the native language was often imposed with beatings,

humiliation, and financial penalties. As a result of these activities, some postcolonial authors

and commentators are advocating for a complete return of formerly forbidden native

languages.

Others believe that using the colonizer's language (English, for example) improves contact

between former colonies: for example, writers from India can quickly interact with writers

from Africa, the Caribbean, and New Zealand. Furthermore, these writers and commentators

contend that adapting the vocabulary that has been used against them to their own needs, that

is, rendering the European tongue their own, not only provides fresh and thrilling literary

modes but also counters the imperialist history.

 CONCLUSION

Keri Hulme understands that in order to cure her characters through a rediscovery of Maori
spirituality, she must construct a new Maori community narrative (Benediktsson). She
accomplishes this by incorporating Maori vocabulary into a Pakeha book. The novel would
be difficult to read for Pakeha readers (or European readers, for that matter) who are
unfamiliar with the Maori language. Stopping to look up Maori phrases in the appendix is a
time-consuming process that can irritate readers.

Around the same time, her omission of Maori myths and vocabulary in favour of a
conventional Westernized version would make a Maori reader unhappy. It would also be
unsettling to read Maori sentences, expressions, and vocabulary mixed up with English, the
colonizer's language. Hulme has decentered her readers by using vocabulary, place, space,
plot, and character to move them all from the norm to the periphery.

It is understandable that too many reviewers dismissed Hulme's novel as a disappointment

and tossed it on the shelf. Hulme has made vocabulary and surreal realism, two of the most
contentious aspects of postcolonial literature, work for her. She assigns the reader the task of
reading her text and reflecting on it, on any aspect of it, from the precise word choices to the
languages, characters, and general form of the text.

Hulme has shown that Maori faith and family values can be blended into New Zealand as a
whole, but only if all of New Zealand's peoples are willing to make concessions and continue
to accept one another. He wants people to accept him, Joe said of Simon this is just what
New Zealand requires. Keri Hulme's favourite scene in the novel is of interwoven threads,
according to her.
 WORKS CITED

1. Hulme, Keri. Bone People, The. NEWZELAND: SPIRAL

PRESS, 1984. Print.
2. Hulme, Keri. "The Bone People." Goodreads.com. N.p., 1986.
Web. 15 Apr. 2021.