earticle

영어

This study explores counter-memory narratives for apology in Kate Grenville’s The Lieutenant and The Secret River. The author deals with the perpetrator’s perspective and dissolves Australian national identity as a settler nation revealing the dark side of history. If ‘memory’ in the criticism of post-colonialism consolidates the identity of individuals or communities, the ‘counter-memory’ narratives in the novels may render them to be taken aback. The Secret River tells the story of a convict settler who was complicit with violence against his good nature. The Lieutenant is set at the very beginning of the penal colony in New South Wales in 1788. A British officer was unwillingly involved in an expedition to kill Aborigines. Even though it resulted in failure, he recognizes the fact that he had conspired in the business of colonization: “if you were part of that machine, you were part of its evil.” Eventually he decides to leave the expedition and not to obey orders. The novel aims to acknowledge responsibility and contemplate the shame of the guilty and the complicit.