The Community Theme Analysis

Because Mister Pip takes place during the Bougainville Civil War, its characters are constantly threatened by a loss of community. To make matters worse, the war is characterized by a number of rival sub-factions: different guerilla militias that seem to forget their original intention to protect the people of Bougainville, instead warring between themselves and threatening the villages they visit. In this confusingly divided climate, Jones emphasizes the importance of banding together with one’s community. He highlights that each member of Matilda’s village can contribute something valuable to society, even if that contribution is only a bit of fishing advice or Biblical knowledge. In turn, these contributions strengthen the community, which provides the villagers emotional stability in unstable times.

In his depiction of education, Jones illustrates that there is power in shared knowledge. Mr. Watts’s classroom embodies this, since Mr. Watts—who admits there are gaps in his knowledge—invites parents and relatives to visit the classroom to share what they know. One mother tells the children about a plant called the “heart seed” that can make “a fierce flame and keep away the mosquitos.” Another mother teaches the class how to kill an octopus and how to slaughter a pig. Matilda’s mother lectures about faith, the opening lines of Genesis, and “the wisdom of crabs” (a theory she has about their ability to predict the weather). As a result, the students gain not only useful knowledge, but a deeper understanding of the beliefs and practices of the community they live in. Later, after the town has been terrorized by Papua New Guinean forces, Mr. Watts builds upon this sense of community engagement by suggesting that the class work together to rewrite Great Expectations by memory, each student contributing the snippets he or she remembers. This involved group activity becomes critical to the students’ emotional well-being, giving them both a distraction from the threat of Papua New Guinean soldiers and a renewed sense of unity in otherwise divisive times.

Shared knowledge has a direct effect on real life, too, when Mr. Watts tells the story of his personal life to the rebel soldiers. Though it’s unclear whether or not these soldiers pose a threat to the village, Mr. Watts’s seven-night tale invites them to partake in a communal event, ultimately distracting them from harming the villagers. At one point, he draws upon the lessons the community members taught his students in the classroom, incorporating them into his story. This has the effect of both keeping the soldiers entertained and ensuring that the villagers remain on his side as he navigates this tricky situation, which has the potential to end badly if somebody like Dolores raises suspicion amongst the soldiers about the validity of his claims. Matilda writes; “[…] we began to hear all the fragments that our mums and uncles and aunts had brought along to Mr. Watts’s class. […] Mr. Watts was assembling his story out of the experience of our lives.” As such, he uses the communal knowledge he’s already learned to create an even bigger community, one that includes the rebel soldiers; by telling this story, he invites the soldiers into the village’s shared knowledge, “assembling” a story that takes root in the community itself. And because the story enthralls the soldiers while simultaneously pleasing the villagers, Mr. Watts is able to protect the village (at least temporarily) from conflict.

Another kind of community engagement comes in handy when Matilda’s mother finds herself unable to recall more than one prayer at Grace Watts’s funeral. Having lost her pidgin Bible when Papua New Guinean forces burned the town’s possessions, she has trouble remembering a second prayer, until a fellow funeral-goer provides one by memory. It is in this manner that the funeral proceeds, with the fellow villagers piecing together their Biblical knowledge to give Grace a proper ceremony. They also begin to share their favorite memories of Grace, telling Mr. Watts what she was like as a child: “They gave their bits of memory to Mr. Watts. They filled in a picture of his dead wife. In this way he learned of a girl he had never met. […] The big things came back to us, and the little things. Mr. Watts did not care how small.” This is a significant moment because Mr. Watts has been an outsider until this point, and here the village finally welcomes him into its community, caring for him and trying to ease his pain. In turn, he accepts their kindnesses, not caring “how small” their memories are, but simply grateful for their compassion. It is this kind of banding together that Jones holds up as essential to making it through difficult times.