The+Island+Setting+-+Tom+House

I’m struck by how often I see the word fable or fablelike used in reference to MISTER PIP, and wonder what exactly the reviewers mean by it. None of the definitions of fable I’ve looked up—fictitious narrative, legendary story of supernatural happenings, story intended to enforce a moral (especially with speaking animals!)—readily applies. If I had to pigeonhole the novel I would call it realism, and often gritty realism, very much tied to factual, everyday life. Granted it takes place on an isolated tropical island, but it’s a specific tropical island in the midst of a specific civil war, and I think this novel is improved by the reader knowing a bit about Bougainville and the political backdrop behind the invasions and atrocities that upend Matlida’s life in the 90s. She says early on, at the beginning of the second chapter, “What I am about to tell results, I think, from our ignorance of the outside world.” I think that’s a warning to the reader not to make the same mistake, especially since we’re probably in the position not to. I certainly knew very little about the geography or history of that part of the world, and it was a tremendous reading aid for me to get down the globe and visit Wikipedia and such sites to get an overview of Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Francis Ona, copper mining, etc. A little historical and visual information went a long way in my ability to situate the story, and isn’t that one of themes here, that books take us to other places, especially when the one we’re in is so untenable?

I’m thinking that a lesson exploring the island—and one that incorporated visuals, which I think Laura was getting at earlier—would enable students to access the story at a deeper level. I wouldn’t go to Rwanda at first, though I see the parallel—a place where “the most unspeakable things happened without once raising the ire of the outside world.” That would be a great extension later in a unit maybe, but I would try to get a picture going of this particular place first. Even just typing “Bougainville images” into Google landed a trove of maps and pictures and links that’s a terrific beginning of a photo story or multimedia introduction to what it might have been like to live on that island at such a time—to be that isolated, that stripped of basic needs and support, and then stripped some more.

Here’s a link to a documentary about the Bougainville blockade. Unfortunately the film seems to be hard to come by, but there are clips here that are illuminating. http://australianscreen.com.au/titles/evergreen-island/