‘Sons For The Return Home,’ by Albert Wendt is about a
Samoan family’s experience immigrating to New Zealand in the hope of gaining
financial security and education for their two sons. It is never intended as a
permanent move and the family plan to journey back to their homeland; Samoa. The
novel is mainly focussed on the life of the youngest son; the romance he has with
a Palagi girl and the turmoil their relationship encounters.
The themes I found within the novel were search for
identity, cultural identity, racism, family, social and sexual consciousness
and love. This story spotlights the complex nature of freedom, racism and love
in New Zealand. It requires the reader to constantly reassess his own
attitudes.
The story contains its share of stereotypes – a love story
about a poor Samoan boy and a rich white, blonde (Palagi) girl, the Samoan
family close-knit, the white parents estranged and their daughter unwanted.
Their love is at the centre of the novel and Wendt explores
the attempt to locate in their love a sense of identity and belonging. For a
time he feels less displaced in New Zealand and his sense of exile is eased. He
also understands his adopted country better through loving her. For this Samoan
boy, this relationship represents the first time he has allowed himself to
become involved with his adopted country. I found the novel to be filled with
lovely poetic prose and this supported the love story. The girl is the stronger
character and initiates the relationship by drawing the young man out of the
silence in which he takes refuge.
A part that I found to be particularly significant and
filled with poetic language was when the man and woman take their road trip and
she shoots the hawk to protect the sheep. I believe this was a reference to how
white people have colonised various countries and destroyed them to a point. I
also believe the shooting of the hawk was foreshadowing for the girl having an
abortion. “It was after those poor sheep. I had
to kill it!”
The story deals with the difficulties that arise when
visiting the home-land one has left behind, especially the challenges that
arise when you feel like a foreigner in either land. It depicts the process of
identifying oneself and others with a particular country.
Something I found really interesting in the book was the
connection between the protagonist and his grandfather. Even though they did
not know each other they were very similar and this similarity was important to
the book.
The novel’s title suggests that home is where we are not,
the place to which we long to return. This man is neither at home nor a
stranger in New Zealand. His desires for home, his attempts to locate home in a
place or in a person, cannot be fulfilled, even when he returns to Samoa.
The mothers of the main characters play an important role
and have more in common than they would like to admit. Both are racist in their
own way, and both have growing anxiety about the budding relationship. “Our way
of life, our people may destroy her...my grandchildren to be half-castes. It
cannot be!”
The abortion is a trauma to the couple’s relationship. It
not only destroys their relationship, the abortion occurs because their
projected union so threatens the people surrounding them.
The novel ends with the Samoan boy being suspended between
countries and I found this made me question what is home and where my own sense
of belonging is.
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