Ned Kelly And Australian National Character

Every Australian is brought up inevitably indoctrinated with the legend of the Great Outlaw Ned Kelly, whose exploits are memorialized in the old Melbourne Gaol in 1880. Being the nation's most famous (or infamous) outlaw and paradoxically the only national hero. Ned Kelly lived his short life fighting against the authority and its persecution and injustice. Kelly and his gang were seen to embody qualities central to the Australian character: rugged honesty, loyalty to mates, unswerving respect for justice, and a refusal to tolerate totalitarianism.But more than anything. Kelly's 'ransformation from a mere horse thief, bank robber and killer into a national idol or icon was the result of historical and social development in the cultural history of Australia. Jts convict origin inevitably cast shadow on the land's inhabitants with Irish descendents hit most hard. In the social aspect, the colonising Britons transplanted severe social antagonism between land-owning squatters and landless selectors.As a loser. Ned Kelly's rise to national heroism is found in the tradition that Australians have since history an affinity with the underdog, a character who tries hard but underachieves. At any rate, such feeling of doomed destiny prevails as seen in the Cultural Cringe and the glorification of Waltzing Matilda, a eulogy to a sheep-thief. Coupled with Hobsbawm's theory over social outlaw-turned hero, Ned Kelly justifies his protestations to become a potent and enduring mythology for Australians.Ned Kelly that emerges is a resourceful, champion horseman and an enraged social outcast inspiring an ever booming collection of books, movies, ballads, and other publications into the present day. The rational characters Ned Kelly speaks for are reinforced in the First World War when the ANZAC troops combated courageously in foreign lands. The military retreat at Gallipoli again highlights the cherished tenacity and mateship. crystallised into the unique Australian national and cultural identity.The thesis is divided into seven chapters. The first chapter introduces Ned Kelly by briefing on Peter Carey's Booker Prize novel True History of the Kelly Gang. The second chapter reviews Ned Kelly's short life, followed by the third chapter devoted to background of the society in which Ned Kelly lived, including historical, social and cultural. The fourth chapter probes into the explanation of the national character seen in Ned Kelly and his gang, continues to the further discussion of the defeatism in the fifth chapter. The sixth chapter is about Ned Kelly and his legend living into a fully Kelly literature, and the continuation of such legend in ANZAC during the First World War. The thesis is concluded in the final chapter.