Kullark by Jack Davis : Summary

Introduction:

Kullark is a play written by an Aboriginal Australian writer Jack Davis. The play represents the author’s real life experience as an aborigine. Kullark depicts the postcolonial Australia under the whites and also depicts the sufferings of the native people, experienced for the sake of race/skin colour. The author has used various stage techniques like symbolism and stage settings. The play deals with themes like Identity, marginalization, racism and colonialism.

Summary:

                  The play has two different plots interwoven with one another. First plot depicts the present life of native Australian Alec and another one deals with the past history of colonization. The history begins with the British settlement in Australia. Captain Stirling, the founder of Swan River Colony and Frazer meet Yagan’s father and mother and offers their dresses. They find the aborigines friendly and establish the colony near Swan River. Thus the British colony is established in Australia.

                The next scene presents a friendly relationship between Will, a white settler and Yagan, an aborigine. They exchange fish for Flour. The relationship continuous until Jenkin, another officer threatens Yagan with Gunshot. In the course of time, Will and his wife Alice comes to know that Yagan has killed two whites for killing his (Yogan’s) brother. Yagan soon escapes from prison and comes to Will’s home. The government announces thirty pounds reward for the person who catches Yagan. Yagan is shot dead by a little boy, William Keats who pretends to befriend Yagan. Soon the British brings the area under their control and threatens the natives with their guns.

                After the colonization, the races begin to mix because of interracial marriages between natives and settlers. Soon, half-aborigine children begin to born. The half-black people struggle to establish a single identity throughout the play. Act II revolves around the history of the life of Alec’s father Thomas who is arrested and forced to live in settlement area, just because he is multiracial. Thomas tries to escape from the prison four times but caught by the police and put into prison for six months for each escapement. Finally, the day comes when he is released and ordered to live with his wife and children in his desired area.

                Thomas’s son Alec becomes an Army officer and builds his own identity as an aborigine Australian citizen and begins to despise whites for the marginalization which he experienced when he was a child. Alec becomes a drunkard and retires from Army and marries Rosie. Alec and Rosie beget Jamie, who is their son. In the first act, Jamie returns from abroad after higher studies. Jamie and Alec quarrels over Alec’s drinking habit and the play ends with their realization of their freedom and free existence in their own home.

Postcolonial reading of Kullark:

The play can be analysed with a postcolonial perspective with the application of the concepts such as mimicry, hybridity, and agency. The four generations of people represent four kinds of colonial attitudes. Yagan is targeted and killed by the coloniser because they think himself to be a threat to their colonial power. He epitomizes the colonized aboriginal community. Thomas represents the quality of agency and mimicry. He both serves the white and despises them as well; Thus reveals ambivalent nature. Alec shows his mimic attitude by drinking British drinks and shows his resistance through appropriation of English language.  Jamie exemplifies hybridity by swaying between two different life styles.

Conclusion:

                The play Kullark, thus, exposes the sufferings of the aborigines and the history of colonization of Australia with the life of main characters.