becoming united with the divine ... to enter into mystical union
with the word is to attain final bliss (Dillistone, 1955:1 42 - 46).Keneally’s literature demonstrates that he is overawed by the power of the
word and the concept of the Analogy and obsessed with the oath motif in very
much the same way as J R R Tolkien was in his imaginative construct The Lord of
the Rings. This becomes clear in Gossip from the Forest where it can be seen that
when an age or society is in the throes of profound transition, the first thing to
disintegrate is language and communication. I n the dedication of Gossip from the
Forest, Keneally made the note; “I n the season in which this book is written, the
French Government persisted in exploding nuclear devices above the ocean where
my children swim”; in this he establishes the theme of the temenos-like Australia
and its innocent inhabitants pitted against a degenerate Europe and Europeans.^
(b) Antipodean Temenos
(^) Keneally seems to make use of the Australian ocker as a primary motif, a
character who either overtly or implicitly intrudes into and disrupts that imperialist
milieu of corrupt power, as is the case with the Australian flyers in Schindler’s Ark,
the Australian larrikin, Callaghan, of Season in Purgatory, or the perceptive and
dependable Barry Fields of, A Victim of the Aurora. The presence of these
Australian characters in the various situations contained in the works under
examination seems to have a mediating effect. Even the very mention of Australia
seems to provide a sort of juxtaposition to the insanity of the European milieux. I n
all of these four novels a hint or reference is made to Australia or Australians in
such a way as to carry the connotation of them as ultimately being apart from, even
immune from the European or British decay. I ndeed, Keneally has said on many
occasions that he believes Australia to be a sacred place and he was quite emphatic
on this point in an interview with Geraldine Doogue which he made for Qantas I n-
Flight Entertainment in January 1984. I t is also forcefully made throughout his book,
Outback (Keneally, 1983:11); also in his article, Tom Keneally meets Uluru: the
myths and the realities in The Sydney Morning Herald, page 45 on November 2,
1985, and in his essay, On Being Australian, (in Braddon, 1984:95). Australia, like
Antarctica, that other continent with which Keneally seems obsessed, has a vastness
and a timelessness and perhaps represents for him that essentially unsullied place