The Jewish children in the concentration camps suffer a kind of death too, a death
of childhood for they possess an awareness beyond their years.
There is clearly evident in this work Keneally’s recurring preoccupation with
the human body, particularly that of the female and of its function, its vulnerability
and perhaps too, he also examines the question of the nature and even anatomical
positioning of the human soul. What, we hear the voice of Keneally question,
happens to the human soul when the head is shaved, the body stripped naked and
tortured, and brutalised to the extreme? I n an attempt to explain this phenomenon,
one might accept that the individual Jew was sustained amid such adversary and
suffering by their conviction that I srael, the Jewish people, the chosen people, was
predestined for this role. Of course, Keneally the theologian, is aware of this and it
is an element of his ‘craftier theology’. I t is worth noting that no well-defined
Australian character has been introduced directly into the plot of Schindler’s Ark.
There are, however, references to Australians as the flyers, one of whom “ ... was
holding the charred remnants of an English Bible” (Keneally, 1982:309), an image
which strengthens the altruistic motif, shot down after dropping supplies to the
partisans in “ ... the primeval forest east of Cracow” (Keneally, 1982:309). These
men who “ ... should come all this way from unimaginable little towns in Australia to
hasten the end in Cracow, give ...some sort of confirmation” to Oskar (Keneally,
1982:309). One can only suppose that Keneally is referring to his vision, similar to
that of Manning Clark, that Australia, and Australians represent an interstice in the
pervasive degenerative European imperialist heritage and carnage of that time.
This proposition is given credibility by a later Keneally statement that Oskar, “ ... in
another age and condition ... could have become a demagogue of the style of ...
John Lang of Australia” (Keneally, 1982:394) and in interviews in which Keneally
admits that in the character of Oskar Schindler there is an element of Ned Kelly
(Hartley, 1985:124), a character often seen as the equivalent to Robin Hood in
Australian folk history.
Throughout the Keneally corpus the homosexual or bisexual motif represents
rebellion against the status quo and compliments themes of guilt, betrayal,
apostasy, mysticism and individual disorientation. I n Bullie’s House (1981), another
Keneally play, Cleary, an anthropologist, tells the court that all cultures have failed
the individual because there was a time when:
... the world was still one thing, before everything was shattered
into pieces, this piece getting labelled ‘politics’ and this piece ‘love’
and another piece in the corner ‘culture’, and another piece
ron
(Ron)
#1