Anela Vrki British studies: Postcolonial context Slavica Troskot, Research Assistant English Department University of Zadar December

2010 Do You Love Me - Peter Carey

1. PETER CAREY biography and bibliography Peter Carey is an Australian novelist, short story writer and also children book writer. He is one of only two writers who won the Booker prize twice. He also won the Miles Franklin Award three times and is frequently named as Australia's next contender for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Peter Carey was born in Bacchus Marsh, Victoria, in 1943. Where he grew up and was mostly educated. After graduating Carey enrolled in a science degree program at Monash University in Melbourne, majoring in Chemistry and Zoology, but cut short his study due to a car accident and a lack of interest in his studies. He started working in advertising and during that time he wrote and published a number of short stories in magazines and newspapers such as Meanjin and Nation Review. Most of these were published in The Fat Man in History.

In 1976, Carey moved to Queensland and joined an 'alternative community' named Starlight in Yandina. He would write for three weeks, and then spend the fourth week working in Sydney. It was during this time that he wrote most of the stories collected in War Crimes, as well as Bliss, his first published novel. During the 1970s and 1980s, he lived with the painter, Margot Hutcheson. Carey moved to New York in 1990/1991 with his wife and his son to teach creative writing at New York University (NYU). In 1998, he provoked controversy by declining an invitation to meet Queen Elizabeth II after winning the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Jack Maggs, many believing his response to be motivated by his Australian Republican beliefs, though he cited family and personal reasons at the time. Carey later said he had asked for the meeting to be postponed, and indeed the meeting was rescheduled by the Palace. He has been awarded three honorary degrees and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, the Australian Academy of Humanities and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Besides all listed awards Carey won numerous awards more. Some of his famous novels are Bliss (1981), Illywhacker (1985), Oscar and Lucinda (1988), The Tax Inspector (1991), The Unusual Life of Tristan Smith (1994), Jack Maggs (1997) and True History of the Kelly Gang (2000), and some of his short stories are Peeling , The Fat Man in History, Do You Love Me?, Crabs, The Chance , Exotic Pleasures and War Crimes.

2. The role of cartographers

Perhaps a few words about the role of the Cartographers in our present society are warranted. To begin with one must understand the nature of the yearly census, a manifestation of our desire to know, always, exactly where we stand. (ch1, pg1)

In this chapter Peter Carey is trying to explain the role of cartographers in society. Throughout the descriptions one can conclude that cartographers have a special status in society and that they are considered as some kind of aristocracy. Taking this fact into consideration, and observing it from colonial and postcolonial views, one can interpret cartographers as the rulers of space. They are the one who own the power to decide the boundaries, to set the imaginary lines that actually affect peoples lives. They decide what belongs where, or better to say who belongs in what space, and by that they are in a way responsible of the manner people are treated, of their customs, behaviours and culture, just like the colonialism affected natives. Like Britain had set the rules, religion, language and culture to the states they had colonised, in a way cartographers can set the faith of people by setting the boundaries. The narrators father, a cartographer, in story has superior position, or to be more accurate he considers himself as a superior towards other people. In second paragraph we can clearly see the narrators father view to the world, but also the inner view, where we can establish, as readers, the relation between narrator and his father. Theyre fools, said my father. They were born fools and theyll die fools. (Chapter 2)

We can relate, as already said, the cartographers with Britain and colonising. Cartographers, by entering the space, set the boundaries, and by that they impose the rules of living. If they do it irresponsibly, like in the story, that can bring serious consequences. 3. SF elements in story The first SF elements in story appear in fourth chapter, The I.C.I. Incident, when The I.C.I. building disappears in front of people. It was the first sign of dematerialization. This is the opening element of the SF in the story; it is inexplicable and disturbing at the same time. Chapters at the beginning seem quite disconnected, but later on fall together, where is possible to conclude that irresponsible and sloppy work that cartographers where doing actually had consequences, and that the regions they hadnt imprinted on the maps begun to disappear. If one consider that cartographers were as some kind of colonisers, one can conclude that everything that hasnt been colonised, or to be more specific, anything that hadnt been colonised, or been ignored by colonisers wasnt important. 4. The nether regions The nether regions were the first to disappear in Careys story. It was the first sign of dematerialization. The narrators father explains that those areas were totally useless, and were occasionally visited by people, and that is why those areas disappeared. He uses those regions as a symbol of alienation, loneliness and uselessness. Because of lack of their value and importance they were first to dematerialize. 5. Dematerialization and domination Dematerialization appears for the first time in the fourth chapter. One cannot conclude the reason of dematerialising, but later on it is explained. Regions, spaces, like the nether regions, that were worthless in cartographers eyes were the first one to disappear. Why? Because they hadnt imprinted them on the

maps, by that mean people didnt know that they exist, they were forgotten by people. They became empty spaces that no one ever visited, they were alienated from the rest of the world, became useless, unimportant, and what has most significance in the story; they werent loved. So they disappeared. The dominate spaces, that also werent loved also disappeared but in a much more slowly process. The domination in this story is not only in the cartographers hands. In the end the cartographers actually do not have domination, because they werent loved. Their arrogance and their superior way of thinking of themselves made them unloved. If we switch back to the cartographers colonisers resemblance this is another segment where we can conclude how natives felt and thought of British colonisers, who were dominate towards them. 6. Love and existence

Carey relates love with existence. In his view, and in the story, anyone who is not loved, with time will stop existing. He goes to the extremes to show and prove that theory by dematerialising spaces, and eventually people. Anything that has no purpose, and his purpose is to be loved and belong somewhere, will not survive the story. One, as reader, does not know in what extent dematerialising has gone, because the story ends in the narrators father dematerialising. We do not know if the narrator later on dematerialised, or his mother, or his girlfriend. But as far as one can get deep into the story, one can realise that the narrator is led through life by love and understands the meaning of love, even though he fails in the end by trying to love his father only to stop his dematerialisation. That final act of trying to give unconditional love to his father and try to safe him, speaks for love itself. But also Carey does not use love, and directly shows it when narrator fails to love his father. Not by his own will, not by intention, but because his father simply did not deserved the existence.

Works cited: 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Carey_(novelist)