Storytelling Theme Analysis

Mister Pip takes place on the island of Bougainville (one of many islands off the coast of Papua New Guinea), a place whose inhabitants have been exposed over many years to a series of different stories about other traditions and ways of life. In addition to their own traditional narratives that are unique to their indigenous culture, the inhabitants of the island have most notably experienced the arrival of white Christian missionaries who brought with them stories of Christ and Christianity. Furthermore, with a civil war raging over the island’s independence from Papua New Guinea, they are now also locked between two different political narratives: one that says Bougainville should be independent, and another that says it should be governed by Papua New Guinea. Finally, when Mr. Watts, the only white man who has not fled the village during the civil war, introduces Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations to his class, Bougainvilleans find themselves coming into contact with yet another new narrative, this time in the form of a novel about nineteenth-century England. Through these multiple layers of intersecting stories, Mister Pip explores the way that stories offer escape or connection and affect the way people think and behave, as well as how the vital power of storytelling as a collaborative act can build and hold together a community, and how stories can both impact and be impacted by the world.

Mister Pip shows many different stories merging with one another. In some cases, new narratives enhance a character’s view of their own world, as is the case for Matilda when she immerses herself in Great Expectations. By entering this new world, she gains a sense of optimism that, given the death and destruction surrounding her during the civil war, she would not be able to summon on her own. “I knew things could change,” she thinks, “because they had for Pip” (the protagonist of Great Expectations). By paying close attention to Pip’s life story—a “rags to riches” tale—Matilda is able to recognize the possibility of change. Therefore, she enriches her life by borrowing ideas from somebody else’s narrative, merging Pip’s circumstances with her own to create a new story and a new framework for her experiences.

However, other characters in Mister Pip are less open-minded when it comes to merging new stories with their own lives. Matilda’s mother Dolores, for example, becomes suspicious of Great Expectations and Mr. Watts’s lessons. When Matilda tells her that Mr. Watts doesn’t teach the Bible in class, Dolores is very unhappy. She sees Mr. Watts’s failure to teach the Bible as “a betrayal of [her and Matilda’s] very safety.” In short, new ways of thinking threaten her beliefs. She responds to this threat by teaching Matilda about the origins of their family, thereby reinforcing traditional Bougainvillean narratives that leave no room for Great Expectations and Mr. Watts’s secular worldview. This outright rejection of new narratives leads Dolores to steal Mr. Watts’s copy of Great Expectations, an act that triggers a chain reaction of destruction that ultimately results in Dolores’s own demise.

By showing the danger of categorically rejecting the stories of others, Jones implicitly argues for using storytelling as a means for empathy. However, the danger of stories is not limited to rejecting them: Jones also shows that they can be used as a tool of control. This is obvious on a large scale in regards to the Bougainville Civil War. While the rebel armies of Bougainville insist on only believing in narratives that promote their independence, the Papua New Guinean forces insist on a narrative of their own dominance over Bougainville. Matilda speaks to the senselessness of such stubborn viewpoints when she describes a Papua New Guinean officer who appears trapped in a narrative he can’t give up: “He was tired of being who he was: tired of his job, tired of this island, of us, and of the responsibility he carried.” Because he is a military official, it is this man’s “responsibility” to insist that Bougainvilleans should submit to Papua New Guinea. This one-sided approach only leads to violence, though, and the officer’s exhaustion represents the uselessness of committing to just one narrative—especially one of subordination. If he could take the Bougainvilleans’ point of view into account—merging their story with his own—this man might find it easier to enhance both his and his adversaries’ lives. As it stands, he devotes himself to the narrative that he is, as a Papua New Guinean, superior to Bougainvilleans, a closed-minded approach that only leads to more and more brutality.

This idea is observable on a smaller scale, too, in regards to how Matilda tries to share Great Expectations with her mother. Although she wants to introduce Dolores to Pip’s world, she also relishes the fact that she knows something her mother doesn’t: “This was the first time I had been in a position to tell her anything about the world,” she writes. Instead of warmly inviting her mother to share her new excitement about Pip’s story, Matilda jumps at the opportunity to assume a position of authority, flaunting her new knowledge and vocabulary, and repelling Dolores from wanting anything to do with Great Expectations. If Matilda had used Great Expectations as a way to build a connection with her mother instead of using it to drive her away, Dolores may have been able to positively integrate its narrative into her own life, ultimately avoiding the disastrous results of rejecting the book.

While those who use stories to wield power invite violence and division, Jones suggests that collaborative storytelling leads to prosperity and survival. After Papua New Guinean forces terrorize the village, Mr. Watts proposes that the class reconstruct Great Expectations by memory, and he encourages the students to produce fragments of the story, which he writes in his notebook. Matilda underlines the collaborative nature of this process by comparing it to the village’s fishing practices: “We had done this sort of thing before. In the past, when we still had our nets and lines, we would divide up the catch on the beach. That’s what we set out to do now with Great Expectations.” By comparing storytelling to communal fishing, Matilda frames group narration as something that provides sustenance and support to everyone involved. With her fishing example, it’s easy to see the benefits of cooperation: when the villagers share their catches, they help feed one another, just as sharing stories promotes emotional wellbeing. In this moment, storytelling is equated to survival and, just like fishing, it is most effective as a group effort. It is an act that simultaneously provides emotional escape and strengthens the community—two significant outcomes for a village suffering from the single-minded and oppressive narratives of the civil war.