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Heather G

  • Last seen on Aug 8 4:06 AM 2006. Member since August 7, 2006.

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  • on Metho Drinker by Judith Wright, on August 7, 2006

    Interpretation

    Perhaps we need to see passed the Methylated Spirits as a drug that kills him. Perhaps the Methylated Spirits, which is referred to as a woman, is a metaphor for the land and, in a much greater capacity, society. Mother Nature, mother land, this is the woman. My interpretation reads into the displacement of Indigenous people in Australian society. I believe that the poem explores, at a much deeper level, the transgenerational trauma, grief, pain and suffering that runs through the blood of Indigenous society. In many Indigenous cultures, lifehood is generated through the stages: conception, birth, babyhood, childhood, young adulthood, adulthood, elders and death. Death is a celebration of going back to the land in which you began. When the British invaded Australia in 1788, Indigenous cultures eroded at the hands of colonisation. A man has Nothing but Death and Time, if he has lost everything he has ever known.
    -Heather