The Survivor story is presented by Sir Anthony Piers, who, as a young man
was a landscape artist, an important point because this novel deals with
metaphysical and physical landscapes: that in which the soul exists and that in
which the body exists. The ecclesiastical imagery is deliberate in this novel: it is
developed initially as the young Anthony Piers describes the members of the
expedition as “...a worthy priesthood” (Keneally, 1977:41) but is fully developed, in
this context, when the expedition members prepare to search for the missing
Henneker and are “...whispering like monks” (Keneally, 1977:48). I n Antarctica,
however, all members of the expedition will be forced into confrontation with
immutable, eternal values because there time is frozen and everything is recorded
in the snow or ice: a footstep in the snow or a penguin, dead two hundred years,
but yet perfectly preserved (Keneally, 1977:91) implicitly suggesting also that sins
will be, metaphorically, frozen in time. Above all this is the light of the aurora,
dichotomous in that it is ephemeral and yet eternal; it is a metaphor for those
epiphanies, spiritual and psychological, in which essential nature or meaning is
revealed. The members of the expedition express their redemptive desire,
metaphorically, as they dig through the timeless landscape of ice and snow to
collect from it some artefact that will, ironically, only affirm their own mortality and
humanity: a mummified seal carcass, some object that has an eternal, imperishable
state (Keneally, 1977:91). Here Keneally is also comparing I mperialist-Christian
ethics with natural religion and the former is found wanting and it is obvious at this
point that Keneally has deliberately written an epiphany in which he takes his reader
behind the meaning of the words civilization and empire.
Keneally forces a realization of these facts by juxtaposing images and ideas.
The “... wondrous day-night” (Keneally, 1977:86), creating a strange light and the
majestic beauty of the vast ice mass of six million square miles with the ominous
volcano Erebus in the background (Keneally, 1977:86); “... the consummate burial
place” (Keneally, 1977:87). Antarctica is sacrosanct too, a temenos in that “... all
governments have – by the Twelve Nation Treaty of 1959 – suspended territorial
claims upon it” (Keneally, 1977:88). The pure white, eternal polar world, with its
landscape and setting as analogues of states of mind, with its symbolism of
Keneally’s metaphysical longings, has always fascinated him. He is drawn to its
power, dimension and timelessness and it becomes a sort of theatre, verily, a
cathedral for him, a setting for acting out the rituals of humanity. One can find
much that is significant in this place for Keneally for it facilitates again the
ron
(Ron)
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