First Solomons novel:

Tower and hope’

The Alternative. By John Saunana. Published by the Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific Solomon Islands Centre, Honiara, in association with the South Pacific Creative Arts Society. Price and ISBN unprovided.

The ‘alternative’ of the title is the choice a young Solomon Islands boy, Maduru, has to make as he grows up, through an adolescence spent being edu cated by white men into the white man’s culture.

At the age of 10, he goes to a primary school run by an Anglican mission, proud and happy to be accepted into the white man’s world and allowed to benefit from all the advan tages promised by a Western education.

But as he grows up, he moves from the child’s acceptance of his early years, through a rebelliousness and dissatis faction which gradually take over and finally destroy his ambitious search for an edu cation. With manhood he reaches a conviction that his colour and his culture are every bit as good as those of the white coloniser: he will fight for equality and the independence Df his country against the pa ternalism and arrogance of the British administrators.

John Saunana has written the irst Solomon Islands novel, and n it expresses the frustrations md resentment of a people with irm and resolute beliefs during he difficult period of lecolonisation. The story was vritten six years ago while the iuthor was at university. But it vas not published until 1980, wo years after Solomon Islands gained independence a mo nent when its theme of the ejection of white supremacy

vould have been particularly

imely.

Maduru’s growing up and levelopment into a local hero is old through a series of inci lents spanning his nine years at chool. His rebellion begins

when he feels he is being humiliated by having to wear a dress to play the part of the Virgin Mary in the school nativity celebrations. He quar rels with the white head master’s wife and chooses to leave the school.

But back in his village for the Christmas holidays, he realises that his experiences away from home and his superior edu cation are unfitting him for life in the village. He feels cut off from the villagers and wants to impress them with the fine Western ways which he is learning: ‘Oh, I wish I were white! Perhaps there’s some way to bleach brown skin . . .?’

He is alienated both from his roots and from his ambition to move into a wider world. ‘He was beginning to see that neither his quest for the white man’s way of living, nor that of his society . . . could provide the “Heaven on Earth” he sought and had expected to inherit simply by going to the white man’s school.’

The argument over the play is forgotten and he stays on at school, securing an academic standing that wins him a place at the influential secondary school near Honiara. It is a school established with aid from the ‘Mother Country’ to equip students for top civil service positions, to enable them to run the country when it is granted independence. The pace is hard, and the feeling of pressure among the mixed students is not helped by the open contempt of some of the teaching staff for their black pupils.

Maduru, now almost 19, be comes involved with a move ment to have one of the British teachers removed for incom petence and racism, and with a subsequent walkout when a petition to the headmaster is rejected.

The description of the four mile walk into town by almost the total complement of boys in the school to raise support for their cause is one of the best episodes in the book. As the

long crocodile of determined boys winds its way through the town, each establishment they pass evokes a response in Maduru’s mind-memories of rudeness from a European shop keeper, idle thoughts on the availability of the hospital nurses, resentment at the town’s luxury hotel: ‘Someone has to do something about this col onial relic ... its rules and discrimination . . . someone . . . some day.’

The day’s long journey of protest ends with quiet success, though its consequences are less fortunate for Maduru person ally.

After expulsion from school.

it is impossible for him to find a job in Honiara where his lead ing role in the protest walk is quickly discovered. His bitter ness at the discrimination in the town eventually spills over into violence, and he lives through rejection, drunken brawls, and a spell in prison before achieving the status of a hero among his own people and nomination for the Legislative Council.

John Saunana writes with feeling and deep sympathy for the undercurrents gathering force and surfacing in a society moving out of a period of Western influence into a future irrevocably changed by its con tact with the white man.

Though the story is simply told, the tableaux of life seen through the intense and burning eyes of the adolescent Maduru take hold of the reader, and the final effect is one of power and

hope.

Jo Rudd.