Literary Analysis Essay on Ruby Moonlight and Smoke

Introduction

The novel, Ruby Moonlight, is literary a collection of poetry set in remote Australia in the late '80s. The following poems in Ruby Moonlight adopt a more traditional form of narration. They convey past conflicts to life with clear short phrases that are quite polite. The poems intricately explore the themes of love, lingual and racial division in a form that wows and engages the audience throughout the book. The novel has a bizarre and frequently ill-fitting marriage of poetic concentration and imagism with characterization plot and the other tapings of fiction which maintain interest to the reader through a distinctive unit of poetic lines (Holland-Batt, 2013).

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The novel tells a story of an Aboriginal woman named Ruby who survives the massacre of her entire family and seeks refuge in the woods where she befriends an Irishman trapper-Jack who, as she finds out, is just as lonely as she is. Ali Cobby Eckermann uses third-person perspective in the poems to tell the chronologically narrate the story of Ruby and Jack's relationship, the difficulties they face and the condemnation they receive from their town-folk as well as other Aboriginal tribes. More to this, the poems comprehensively examine ideas about the hierarchy of colonialism, structures of power and the historical impact that colonialism had on the first people of this country.

The poem "Smoke" depicts to the reader Ruby's first encounter with Jack with rigorous use of figurative imagery such as " she observes a smoking ash ghost...it is tall like emu/ [and] its face hallah pink...breathe smoke from its mouth" (Eckermann, 2012). The use of metaphors and similes in the poem show us that Ruby instantly adored and admired jack the moment she saw him. This brings about the theme of love in the story. It also brings together two languages and cultures. The use of words like "tall like emu" challenges the audience English to find out what an emu is and as a result they learn more about the Aboriginal culture. Powerful imagery is also depicted in other poems in the novel as well. In the poem "Loos" for example, Jack goes to drink in a pub where "froth shampoos have newly grown beard/ [and] the beer tastes like liquid gold" (Eckermann, 2012). The poem "Birds" gives the audience a mental picture of Ruby walking "honeyeaters flit the route to sweet grevillea/ [and] owls nest in her eyes" (Eckermann, 2012). Every use of imagery in the novel concisely short and distinctively elaborate in showing the settings of the poems.

The novel also brings about the theme of racial division and hierarchy. In the poem "Merger," we learn that "it is forbidden for Europeans/ to fornicate with blacks" (Eckermann, 2012). The poem "Caution" also suggests that "abo lovers are despised in these parts" (Eckermann, 2012) and in "Visitor", Jack encounters men "who touch hats in silent greetings" (Eckermann, 2012)in a passing carriage at the camp the he and Ruby share and learns that people are killing "blacks" in fear that they are "disease spreading pests" (Eckermann, 2012). Their relationship is therefore marked as a difficult union that can only exist in the "oasis of isolation" due to social pressures and racism.

The issue of division by language barrier is also brought about several times in the book. We learn in the poem "Oasis" that the relationship between Jack and Ruby is divided by language when it is opined in the poem that "neither know/ the other's language... [and] they never speak during the day" (Eckermann, 2012). At the beginning of their relationship, they have an awkward courtship where they only communicate with gestures. In "Merger" we learn that Ruby is "glad Jack is/a man of few words (Eckermann, 2012).

Work Cited

Eckermann, A.C. (2012). Ruby Moonlight. Magabala Books. 64 pppb, ISBN 9781921248511.

Holland-Batt, S. (2013). Verse novels in the review. Southerly, 72(3). Retrieved from http://eprints.qut.edu.au/60616/