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49 pages 1 hour read

Tara June Winch

The Yield: A Novel

Tara June WinchFiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Character Analysis

August Gondiwindi

August Gondiwindi is the novel’s protagonist. Returning to Massacre Plains from London for her grandfather Poppy’s funeral after a 10-year absence, the story follows her efforts to process the grief of her grandfather’s death and the generational trauma that continues to affect her and her family as Aboriginal Australians. Her sister’s disappearance when they were both children also weighs on her, and she must deal with the memories being home stirs up. August’s character represents the future of the Wiradjuri community and cultural continuity: She is closely connected to her grandfather thematically and is portrayed as his natural inheritor. As her connection to the land and her family deepens through the search for Poppy’s book, August takes up the mantle of looking after the land her grandfather loved so much.

The novel explores its major theme of grief through August, who struggles with this in various forms throughout the story. Her return to Massacre Plains forces her to confront not only the guilt she feels over having left but also the grief that spurred her to leave in the first place. She is continually shaken by memories of Jedda and struggles to accept Poppy’s death, refraining from mentioning it when he is brought up by those who don’t know he is dead. At Poppy’s funeral when August gives in to the grief she has been repressing, she is rendered incoherent by the force of it. She herself remarks on her avoidant tendencies, stating that she loves nothing more than to leave a place. She feels disconnected from herself, feeling that she lives in “a foreign land of herself” (31). Until she confronts her internal alienation, it prevents her from fully connecting with her loved ones.

August’s character develops so that, by the end of the novel, she recognizes these impulses and has processed her grief in a healthier way. Her admission that she “love[s] leaving more than a drink, more than sex, more than hunger, the books” but that she still wants to go home (186), and her subsequent decision to stay in Massacre Plains, demonstrates her growth, as does her participation in the protest and her determination to find Poppy’s dictionary. Addressing this and opening herself up to her family again allows her to begin to move forward with her life. August’s progression as a character parallels the narrative arc of community healing, reconnection, and resolution in the novel.

Albert “Poppy” Gondiwindi

Albert “Poppy” Gondiwindi is the grandfather of August. A third of the story is told through his dictionary entries, mixing Wiradjuri language definitions, personal history, and cultural knowledge. The novel portrays him as the custodian of his family and culture, an intelligent and loving man whose efforts preserve much of the Wiradjuri language and culture from extinction. Although recognition for his work only comes after his death, this is by design—to save Prosperous, someone had to care enough to find the work he had left, an example of Poppy’s love of and need for community. He backed up this love throughout his life, looking after the land and offering his home up in hospitality and for community enrichment courses. The connection between August and Poppy after his death is key to the novel’s treatment of cultural inheritance, spirituality, and family ties.

Poppy’s care for his community is reflected through other peoples’ reactions to his death, which brings the community together. He was loved not only by his family but also by much of the rest of the town, with many expressing condolences and appreciation for his kindness. He was a father figure for many: He adopted his granddaughters and also took in his sister and her son; August’s friend Eddie confesses that he liked Poppy more than his own father.

Poppy’s character also reveals a strong determination and resilience. As he relates in his recollections, after Jedda’s disappearance, he planned to kill Jimmy. When Jimmy confessed to killing Jedda, Poppy was willing to maim and torture him to find her body. His determination is also evident in his dedication to learning his culture’s history even when forced away from his family as a. As he says in his dictionary’s introduction, “[I]n a country where we weren’t really allowed to be, I decided to be” (11).

Just as Poppy physically cares for people and the land, he physically protected his language and culture by creating his dictionary. Poppy himself became a historian and collector of his own culture, recording it for future generations. In his death, with his knowledge preserved and his ashes scattered on Prosperous, he returns to the land he was keeping safe.

Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf

Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf presents a contrasting perspective in the novel, as his narrative is historical and almost entirely told through the first person. Through the inclusion of his story, the novel provides important historical context and engages with the motivations and experiences of Australia’s colonizing settlers.

Greenleaf's letter tells the story of his life from his time in Prussia as a child in the 1840s up to his time in Australia and death in 1916. His journeys through Australia and his founding of the Prosperous Mission provide a record of colonial history that shows how the land that the Gondiwindis have lived on for thousands of years was appropriated by colonial perspectives.

Greenleaf’s struggles with his own faith and morality are drawn with a background of cultural and physical violence against the Aboriginal people Greenleaf believes he is helping. A major struggle expressed is his doubt and eventual loss of faith due to the treatment of the Indigenous people of Australia and his feelings of abandonment by God. He repeatedly states his lack of understanding as to why the white Christian settlers are so violent and hateful; he feels torn between his own colonial beliefs and the evidence of how effective and beneficial the land stewardship of the Indigenous people is. The inherent contradictions of Greenleaf’s position—a colonizer outside of the colonial community, a self-proclaimed protector of the Indigenous population of Massacre Plains while attempting to bring them to white society—grow increasingly difficult for him to reconcile. By the end of his life, he has himself experienced the violence of settler colonialists and the dangers of nationalism. Greenleaf recognizes the evils of the government’s attitude toward the Indigenous people and is angered by the taking of children from their families. He suffers a crisis of identity that parallels that of the Wiradjuri people, in that he belongs to a lost time; he is a British Imperial settler in the new, nationalist Australia.

Greenleaf figures in both Poppy’s and August’s narratives, showing that he is a part of their history. Poppys call him the only “good” white priest he’d ever heard of, and August (having read his letter as preserved by Poppy) questions this. Greenleaf’s recordkeeping gives Poppy and August the material they need to make a Native Title claim, but he also actively tried to suppress their culture. In this way, his character is an exploration of the complexity of motivational cause and effect through history.

Jedda Gondiwindi

Jedda is August’s older sister. She disappeared when August was a child and features only in others’ recollections. According to August’s memories, Jedda was her partner in play and imagination, and she is a key presence throughout the novel. Jedda’s character is symbolic of loss and grief and of the unresolved pain of unexplained separation and dispossession. She is also a means for the novel to show the resolution of pain in the community through truth and knowledge and the development of August’s character as she learns to face up to the death of her sister.

The reactions of white society to Jedda’s disappearance illustrate the devaluation of Indigenous peoples. August often thinks about how the news barely ran Jedda’s photo. The community was scared for themselves but unconcerned with the Gondiwindis, with the children in school making up mean stories about why August left school the year Jedda disappeared. This is a serious indictment of how the town and its majority-white institutions treat the Gondiwindis, showing the extreme bias against them.

Poppy and August believe that Jedda has transformed. Her resurrection into the form of a brolga, one of the native birds, shows the revitalization of the land and the resilience of Wiradjuri life, culture, and traditional beliefs.

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