A couple days ago, I picked up a book called Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey. Jasper Jones isn’t the protagonist of the story, but he might as well be. The actual protagonist is named Charles Bucktin. He and Jasper don’t usually speak; Charlie is bullied on the regular, and Jasper is basically treated like he doesn’t exist. This whole story takes places somewhere in rural Australia during the 1960’s, in a mining town called Corrington. Everyone knows each other there, and news spreads there like wildfire.
Basically, the story starts with Charlie, reading a book in his room in the middle of the night in the middle of the Australian summer. He’s startled by Jasper Jones coming and knocking on his window and asking Charlie to come with him. And so, Charlie follows Jasper as they go traipsing through the woods to get to Jasper’s hideout where there’s an awful secret waiting to come out.
What I really noticed about Jasper and Charlie is the contrast between their characters. Charlie has a much more privileged life in comparison to Jasper. Compared to Jasper, he has two parents who care for him (even if his mother treats him like he’s five), he lives in a nice house surrounded by books which only nurture his dream of becoming a writer. Jasper is the total opposite. He basically lives alone because his drunkard father is too busy spending all of their money on liquor to care about his son. Jasper learns to be self-sufficient at the age of 14. His childhood is taken slowly away from him. In terms of this, Charlie loses his innocence and childhood in an instant with what Jasper shows him (I’m not going to give away any spoilers).
The book also confronts racial issues because of the fact that Jasper is half Aboriginal and half white. Because of this the town regards him as less and he has a bad rep because they blame him for anything that can go wrong. Charlie’s friend Jeffrey is also Vietnamese and his family experiences racism due to the war in Vietnam. Both of them are shunted outside Corrigan’s “high society” and blame is pinned on them when it’s not deserved. They become the town scapegoats.
To me it’s interesting to see the way that people deal with issues that are present in our society in the United States. We see through this small window into what life’s like in rural Australia during a war. It’s definitely an interesting read, and it really keeps you on the edge of your seat, and the characters are real and easy to identify with. It’s a book that sticks with you for a while.
