In World War II, Richard Flanagan’s father was held by the Japanese as a POW, in the group of around 1000 POWs led by Weary Dunlop. This book, his latest, is a tribute to his father’s wartime experiences.
The book follows a number of characters from both sides of the war. Central among them is Dorrigo Evans, a Tasmanian doctor serving as an officer in the Army (he rises through the ranks, but since the narrative is non-linear, it’s not always easy to work out at any given time what his rank is). Dorrigo’s wartime career is short-lived: he’s captured after a few months by the Japanese, and eventually he and the men under him are sent into the jungle, where construction is underway on a strategic railway line stretching across South-East Asia.
Although the Thai-Burma railway is now infamous, prior to reading this book I really didn’t know very much about it. If I’d spent some time thinking, I probably could have predicted some of the things encountered in the book (tropical diseases, malnutrition), but the details were unfamiliar. For that matter, a lot about life as a POW was a mystery to me. One of the characters at one point notes that, if you were a prisoner of the Germans, you might as well be on holiday. Presumably, at the time WWII took place, the old-fashioned rules of European warfare still had some power (despite many of them having been rendered obsolete by the advent of more advanced military technology: thanks, HSC WWI studies!). However, from the descriptions in this book and those I’ve read online since, it seems like life as a prisoner of the Japanese was not so breezy. The book attributes this, at least in part, to the different cultural presumptions underpinning the Japanese military: enlisted men in Japan’s own Army are treated as little more than dogs, so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the Australian prisoners are subjected to beatings and degredation. Soldiers who choose surrender over death are seen as having lost all honour.
Unfortunately, before I managed to crack this book I had already heard it referred to as a “masterpiece”. Talk about blowing out expectations. I already had high ones due to nothing more than Richard Flanagan’s name on the cover. As I started reading, I was puzzled. The book was good. It was involving, it moved along at a good pace and, of course, the language was beautiful. The characters were interesting. But masterpiece?
A large chunk of the first part of the book is concerned with a love affair between Dorrigo and the young wife of his uncle, Amy. The war has started, but Dorrigo hasn’t been called up yet; I suppose you’d have to say that his departure looms over the romance, but it’s only retrospectively that I notice it. In the middle of the affair, the external world is pushed back to the margins. Even when it intrudes, it seems to me that the threat of being caught by the uncle/husband is greater than that of the death and disease that waits in the later pages of the book.
The beginning of the book is non-linear: we have had a small taste of war, of Dorrigo’s childhood, and even of his somewhat lecherous old age. So we not only know what’s coming for him: we know he survives it. The book isn’t concerned with suspense about that. However, once we properly enter the POW camp, the chronology settles down to be more or less steady.
It was once this happened that I began to sense the cumulative effect of the prose about the camp and surrounds. At times, the language about the love affair seemed somewhat unreal, with the characters acting without properly understanding what was going on (witness, for example, the surreal elements of the scene in the book shop), or without seeming to will their own behaviour into being. The camp, on the other hand, is only too real. Flanagan chooses details and zooms in on them, knowing that the horror is more pronounced when it infects even the smallest events of day-to-day life. The descriptions of the camp toilet; of the G-string-like garments worn by the near-naked prisoners; of the consequences of losing the sole of your boot. There is horror, also, in the utter blind assertion of the Japanese officers that the railway line will be completed, in the face of the starving, ill-equipped, disease-ridden reality of the inability of the prisoners to even walk unaided to the line. One particular scene stands out in my memory, Dorrigo performing jungle surgery on an amputee whose gangrene has spread. The language is visceral in its technical precision, more at home in a sterile hospital environment, but here set against the dripping canvas roof, improvised saline drip, home-brewed anaesthetic, and above all, sheer gore. The scene can only have one ending. As the novel progresses, these things seem to reach a critical mass, elevating it into something beyond the sum of its parts, until the experience of reading it becomes an event, both devastating and enlightening.
Yet the POW camp scenes are not, strange as it may seem, given over wholly to futility. Other elements are here as well. There is humour, both simple (such as the men dressing in drag to perform scenes from a popular movie) and (in, for instance, the strange territory of Dorrigo’s interactions with the Japanese officers) bizarre and satirical. There is a spectrum of human interaction between the prisoners: frustration, resentment, trust, selflessness, and every possible kind of bravery. All of those things are necessary to make the book bearable. At the centre, there is Dorrigo, arranging his face so as not to show the despair beneath, making impossible decisions to try to save one or two more lives, performing acts of selflessness while feeling his hypocrisy. As readers, we can see his leadership as something indispensable, without which possibly every man under him would die. For himself, he sees a necessary role performed grudgingly, and weakness behind the facade.
While elements of Dorrigo’s character are based on Weary Dunlop, clearly he is Flanagan’s own creation, in his contradictions, hedonism, and public reserve. Of Dunlop, we know that he devoted himself to public causes in his later years, whereas Dorrigo shies away from the spotlight suddenly shone on him. He is, like many war heroes, a man who is at his best when called on to act, as is evident in his genius as a surgeon. The war, however, forces him into the role of negotiator and observer, bargaining down the outrageous demands of the Japanese officers, choosing the men who will be forced out to the line each morning while he stays in the camp, conducting the funeral services for those he is unable to save.
I don’t know how I feel about the “masterpiece” tag. There is, however, no doubt that this is a piece of Australian fiction that is not only beautifully written, but is of great importance culturally. Unless something unexpected happens, it will be the next Miles Franklin winner. What we know about its context also makes it important personally for Richard Flanagan. I read that his father, though now deceased, survived to read the final manuscript, and it made me glad.