Altruism vs. Cruelty Theme Analysis

Throughout the pages of Follow the Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doris Pilkington examines the line between altruism and cruelty. As she reproduces missives sent between members of the Australian government, and imagines interactions between government officials and the half-caste children they were tasked with capturing, however, this line sometimes becomes blurry. The cruelty of the Australian government’s campaign to forcibly assimilate—even eradicate—Aboriginal culture is undeniable, but by disguising their actions under the cover of altruism and “protection,” the government was able to surveil and control Aboriginal communities by confining them to “schools” and “settlements” that were effectively internment camps until well into the twentieth century.

In the early 1900s, the Australian government sought to placate the Aboriginal people by handing out rations, blankets, and other supplies. Government officials and civilians alike marveled at the “gratitude” with which Aboriginal people received these meager, half-hearted reparations, and wrote mournfully in letters and newspaper articles of the “dispossession” of the “once-numerous” tribes. These meager attempts at atonement, an insult to the Aboriginal people, were really designed to placate not the Aboriginals but the Australians, allowing them to feel slightly better about the destruction, violence, and chaos they had unleashed upon the continent, as well as the government’s ongoing systemic subjugation of Aboriginal people. The insidiousness and cruelty of such unthinking shows of mock altruism is a major concern of Pilkington’s throughout the text, and she teases this theme out, as the book progresses, through the characters she reimagines and recreates.

Doris Pilkington was herself raised at the Moore River Native Settlement, and has said in interviews that she did not realize the true nature of the place she came to see as her home—or the true role of “protectors” like A.O. Neville and Constable Riggs—until long after she’d departed the settlement. The irony of bestowing the title of “protector” upon men whose role in their local governments was to hunt down, round up, and forcibly remove half-caste children from their families is palpable throughout the text. In their letters to one another, these “protectors” discuss what to do with the children they are charged with monitoring in disdainful language. Officials abduct Molly, Gracie, and Daisy from their homes and transport them thousands of miles away without any concern for the damaging effect this forced separation will have on the girls. When a constable charged with watching Molly, Gracie, and Daisy becomes otherwise occupied, he leaves them in a jail cell for several days while they await passage south to Fremantle. The government often labeled these government officials as “protectors” of Aboriginal people, but charged them with undertaking duties and tasks which actively caused harm and trauma to them, and perpetuated the cycles of loss and dispossession which had already plagued the Aboriginal people for centuries, since the arrival of the very first white settlers. 

Mrs. Flanagan, a character whom readers meet only briefly, is perhaps the character most emblematic of the sometimes deceptive boundary between altruism and cruelty. When Molly, Daisy, and Gracie, nearly halfway through their trek through the bush, approach Mrs. Flanagan’s farmhouse starving and in rags, she feeds the girls, clothes them, and sends them on their way with sacks of food, sweets, and supplies for the journey ahead. While the girls are in Mrs. Flanagan’s house, she assures them that she will not report them to the authorities, and she asks them questions about their journey so far and their ultimate destination. When the girls depart, Mrs. Flanagan, watching them go, decides that it’s unsafe for the girls to go off into the bush alone. Out of a sense of “duty,” Mrs. Flanagan calls her local superintendent and reports the girls, including information about their ultimate destination: Jigalong by way of the rabbit-proof fence. Mrs. Flanagan is satisfied with herself, proud of her “altruistic” decision, but unaware of the devastating effect that her phone call might have on the girls’ futures. Pilkington leaves it up to the readers to decide for themselves whether Mrs. Flanagan was acting out of cruel, racist motivations, or whether she truly saw herself as an altruist concerned with the girls’ safety.

In cases like Mrs. Flanagan’s, altruism is, in effect, cruelty. Even if readers are to believe that A.O. Neville, Constable Riggs, Mrs. Flanagan, and the assorted government officials who hunt the girls through the bush were all acting out of a genuinely altruistic desire to protect the girls, Pilkington shows how even such “altruistic” actions on the part of white Australians repeatedly led to experiences of unspeakable suffering and hardship for Aboriginals.