Fly Away Peter
Encyclopedia
Fly Away Peter is a 1982 novel
by Australia
n author
David Malouf
.
Fly Away Peter won The Age Book of the Year
award in 1982, and is often studied at senior level in Australian high schools.
Gold Coast, and the second part on the Western Front
.
The novel relates highly to the theme of Adam and Eve, with the farm being the Garden of Eden due to its nature and wildlife. Jim relates to Adam, a peaceful man who wouldn't hurt anyone and Imogen is related to Eve.
The central character of the novel is Jim Saddler, a self-contained young man with a profound understanding of the bird life of an estuary near his home. Ashley Crowther has recently inherited the farm which includes the estuary; despite the divide of class and experience, the two young men form a close bond when Ashley offers Jim a job as a warden, recording the comings and goings of birds in their 'sanctuary'. Jim also befriends Imogen, an older woman whose photography captures the beauty of the crows. This is an idyllic world of sandpipers, plovers and ibises, but not without the seeds of change and disturbance.
When the First World War breaks out, Jim feels obliged to join up, and travels to the Western Front, where his unique and sensitive perception gives the reader a window to the horrific experience of trench warfare. Malouf's description of the all-consuming 'system' of war and the gruesome realities of living and dying at the front are gut-wrenching in their detail. After an uneventful arrival at the front, a shell lands unexpectedly among Jim's friends behind the lines. Jim is coated by the blood of his friend Clancy, who is blown out of existence. Subsequently a young recruit Eric loses both legs.
Jim sees many other friends die. He crosses paths with Ashley, who is an officer in a different division. He confronts his own sense of violence when assaulted by another man, Wizzer, who later dies in a shell-hole. He also sees the local farming communities trying to keep making their livelihood amid the mayhem, including an old man planting in the dirt of a blasted wood. Jim begins again to make a record of the crows as their barely interrupted migration patterns continue above the front.
At the end of the novel, the reader enter Jim's subjectivity as he goes 'over the top' in an attack, is wounded and dies of his wounds. His exact point of death is not made explicit; his journey out of life is dream-like and poetic.
On the Queensland coast Imogen grieves Jim's death, and reflects on the meaningless but beautiful continuity of life.
The novel touches on a range of themes which are common in explorations of Australian identity. Its setting in the First World War draws our attention to the ANZAC legend, and gives us a powerful sense of the experience of the men who forged that legend. The relationship with land is explored; Jim feels he belongs to the land as much as Ashley, who owns it; Ashley accepts this with laconic good humour. The boundaries of class and experience are palpable - Jim has grown up with a hardworking but violent and resentful widower father, and Ashley has had a privileged schooling in Europe - but they have a quiet rapport which transcends their differences.
The central motif of birds gives the author the opportunity to explore a range of themes. The miracle of bird migration becomes symbolic, echoing Jim's journey across the globe to the war. The notion of the 'bird's eye view' is explored. Like a migratory bird, Jim holds a 'map' of the swampland in his mind, whilst also seeing the detail of grass, undergrowth and water. A flight in Ashley's biplane gives him a view of the landscape which confirms his mental map. Later, in the trenches, he seems to go out of himself and see the battle as a map - while he is present in the mud and heat of battle, part of his perception observes, detached, from above.
Time - and the meaning of how we exist in time - is also a key theme in the novel. Imogen's comment that "Life isn't for anything; it simply is" is reinforced throughout. Her photographs of birds capture them in time, and give them a permanence they do not have in nature. The skeleton of a woolly mammoth, which rotted where it was killed with flints by early humans, lies where it fell and is unearthed as the trenches are dug. In this context the seemingly all-consuming 'machine' of war becomes merely a blip. As Imogen watches a surfer who repeatedly falls from his board, which rises behind him like a tombstone, at the end of the novel she cannot help, in spite of grief, to see that life goes on in all its power, exhilaration and tragedy.
The novel consists of dualities: war and peace, life and death, innocence and experience, wealth and poverty, natural and man-made. However, these binaries are tinged with ambiguity; while the 'sanctuary' is idyllic, it is in this time and place of 'innocence' that Jim saw his brother killed on the farm, and had to live with the venomous and destructive despair of his father. Conversely, in the trenches, friendship is rich and the bird life is miraculous.
Malouf was regarded as a poet before he wrote novels, and much of his writing in this novel is poetic. Malouf himself describes it as a novel which explores ideas (such as the meaning or purpose of life) rather than story.
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
by Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
David Malouf
David Malouf
David George Joseph Malouf is an acclaimed Australian writer. He was awarded the Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2000, his 1993 novel Remembering Babylon won the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award in 1996, he won the inaugural Australia-Asia Literary Award in 2008, and he was...
.
Fly Away Peter won The Age Book of the Year
The Age Book of the Year
The Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. Since 1998 they have been presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival...
award in 1982, and is often studied at senior level in Australian high schools.
Plot summary
Fly Away Peter is an Australian novel set before and during the First World War. The first part of the novel is set on the QueenslandQueensland
Queensland is a state of Australia, occupying the north-eastern section of the mainland continent. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Australia and New South Wales to the west, south-west and south respectively. To the east, Queensland is bordered by the Coral Sea and Pacific Ocean...
Gold Coast, and the second part on the Western Front
Western Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
.
The novel relates highly to the theme of Adam and Eve, with the farm being the Garden of Eden due to its nature and wildlife. Jim relates to Adam, a peaceful man who wouldn't hurt anyone and Imogen is related to Eve.
The central character of the novel is Jim Saddler, a self-contained young man with a profound understanding of the bird life of an estuary near his home. Ashley Crowther has recently inherited the farm which includes the estuary; despite the divide of class and experience, the two young men form a close bond when Ashley offers Jim a job as a warden, recording the comings and goings of birds in their 'sanctuary'. Jim also befriends Imogen, an older woman whose photography captures the beauty of the crows. This is an idyllic world of sandpipers, plovers and ibises, but not without the seeds of change and disturbance.
When the First World War breaks out, Jim feels obliged to join up, and travels to the Western Front, where his unique and sensitive perception gives the reader a window to the horrific experience of trench warfare. Malouf's description of the all-consuming 'system' of war and the gruesome realities of living and dying at the front are gut-wrenching in their detail. After an uneventful arrival at the front, a shell lands unexpectedly among Jim's friends behind the lines. Jim is coated by the blood of his friend Clancy, who is blown out of existence. Subsequently a young recruit Eric loses both legs.
Jim sees many other friends die. He crosses paths with Ashley, who is an officer in a different division. He confronts his own sense of violence when assaulted by another man, Wizzer, who later dies in a shell-hole. He also sees the local farming communities trying to keep making their livelihood amid the mayhem, including an old man planting in the dirt of a blasted wood. Jim begins again to make a record of the crows as their barely interrupted migration patterns continue above the front.
At the end of the novel, the reader enter Jim's subjectivity as he goes 'over the top' in an attack, is wounded and dies of his wounds. His exact point of death is not made explicit; his journey out of life is dream-like and poetic.
On the Queensland coast Imogen grieves Jim's death, and reflects on the meaningless but beautiful continuity of life.
Discussion
Fly Away Peter is an important work in Australian literature, and is on the Senior English curriculum in some states.The novel touches on a range of themes which are common in explorations of Australian identity. Its setting in the First World War draws our attention to the ANZAC legend, and gives us a powerful sense of the experience of the men who forged that legend. The relationship with land is explored; Jim feels he belongs to the land as much as Ashley, who owns it; Ashley accepts this with laconic good humour. The boundaries of class and experience are palpable - Jim has grown up with a hardworking but violent and resentful widower father, and Ashley has had a privileged schooling in Europe - but they have a quiet rapport which transcends their differences.
The central motif of birds gives the author the opportunity to explore a range of themes. The miracle of bird migration becomes symbolic, echoing Jim's journey across the globe to the war. The notion of the 'bird's eye view' is explored. Like a migratory bird, Jim holds a 'map' of the swampland in his mind, whilst also seeing the detail of grass, undergrowth and water. A flight in Ashley's biplane gives him a view of the landscape which confirms his mental map. Later, in the trenches, he seems to go out of himself and see the battle as a map - while he is present in the mud and heat of battle, part of his perception observes, detached, from above.
Time - and the meaning of how we exist in time - is also a key theme in the novel. Imogen's comment that "Life isn't for anything; it simply is" is reinforced throughout. Her photographs of birds capture them in time, and give them a permanence they do not have in nature. The skeleton of a woolly mammoth, which rotted where it was killed with flints by early humans, lies where it fell and is unearthed as the trenches are dug. In this context the seemingly all-consuming 'machine' of war becomes merely a blip. As Imogen watches a surfer who repeatedly falls from his board, which rises behind him like a tombstone, at the end of the novel she cannot help, in spite of grief, to see that life goes on in all its power, exhilaration and tragedy.
The novel consists of dualities: war and peace, life and death, innocence and experience, wealth and poverty, natural and man-made. However, these binaries are tinged with ambiguity; while the 'sanctuary' is idyllic, it is in this time and place of 'innocence' that Jim saw his brother killed on the farm, and had to live with the venomous and destructive despair of his father. Conversely, in the trenches, friendship is rich and the bird life is miraculous.
Malouf was regarded as a poet before he wrote novels, and much of his writing in this novel is poetic. Malouf himself describes it as a novel which explores ideas (such as the meaning or purpose of life) rather than story.
Awards and nominations
- Australian Literature Society Gold Medal, 1983: joint winner
- The Age Book of the YearThe Age Book of the YearThe Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. Since 1998 they have been presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival...
Award, Imaginative Writing Prize, 1982: winner - The Age Book of the YearThe Age Book of the YearThe Age Book of the Year Awards are annual literary awards presented by Melbourne's The Age newspaper. The awards were first presented in 1974. Since 1998 they have been presented as part of the Melbourne Writers Festival...
Award, Book of the Year, 1982: winner