Subversion And Reconstruction Of National Identity

Peter Carey, who has been awarded many literary prizes, is one of Australia's most gifted, exciting and preeminent writers. In a sense, Carey's alarming success lies in his ability to motivate the readers to think more about the past of Australian. True History of the Kelly Gang is a case in point.The novel is essentially Ned Kelly's fictional autobiography. Kelly scribbles his story in grammar-challenged but emotionally compelling prose. The novel was narrated by Kelly to his unseen daughter. Structured as thirteen "parcels" of manuscripts preserved in library, it follows chronologically the rise and fall of Ned Kelly's life, from early boyhood, through his apprenticeship to the bushranger, Harry Power, and his subsequent multiple clashes with the law, up to his final dramatic stand against the police in northeastern Victoria.From a post-colonial perspective, it can be seen clearly that Ned Kelly's image in the novel is a subverted one. Ned, whose identity as an outlaw has been firmly fixed by the official histories, has been recorded as a psychopath murderer and a horse thief. In the novel, Carey relates Ned Kelly's history in a way that accords with the popular version of Australian folk culture: he was a sensitive and resourceful bushman, a male loner, loyal to his mates, and implacably opposed to just about all forms of authority. Resurrecting the voice of the silenced Kelly, Carey's novel poses a resistance to the colonial oppression.Yet, the novel goes beyond this. By subverting the image of Ned Kelly, Carey exposes the readers to a picture of the colonized Australia, where power is the key. All the people were under the control of power. In the power net, Kelly was such a humble and unimportant figure that all his efforts against the power machine ended in vain. His voice was silenced and his cry unheard. His story reveals, to some extent, the relationship between truth and power. As the first step to the reconstruction of independent national identity, subversion, in the sense of post-colonialism, is an activity in which the post-colonial text is continually engaged in the attempt to wrest authority and authenticity from the control of the hegemonic imperial power. This novel can also be viewed as Peter Carey's attempts to reconstruct national identity. The image presented is a subverted image not only against the official one, but also against the many versions of the preceding stories which describe Ned as a bush hero. The latter is even more important because when numerous representations make Australians identify Ned Kelly as a typical bush hero, the class conflicts internal to the colonial Social orders become less striking.In doing so, Peter Carey actually questions all those long-standing nationalist notions of Australian identity, for example the bush pioneering spirit and larrikin stereotype, as well as the ideology behind those notions, and through his novel raises a different voice from the perspective of a former convict. The "true history" of the Kelly gang debunks the myth of the bush as the ideal community with its masks of equalitarianism and classlessness, and discloses the Anglo-centric ideology that has shaped Australian identity.Owing to this, it is claimed that True History of the Kelly Gang actually shows the author's attempt to subvert and reconstruct the national identity of Australia.