Australian Culture and Jasper Jones Maximilian Cullen Feng 10th Grade

Australian Culture and Jasper Jones – Essay‘Jasper Jones’ by Craig Silvey is a semi-realistic representation of the social commentary and culture of Australian society in the 1960s. The distinct novel demonstrates the harsh climate of xenophobia, cultural stereotyping, and destructive racism that existed, as well as the fictional, patriarchal town of Corrigan. Against the social turmoil of the Vietnam War and the Aboriginal Rights Movement, Silvey explores themes of community, conformity, and discrimination, which remain true throughout, and are personified, by the multi-faceted characters of ‘Jasper Jones’. ‘The Australian Temperament’ introduction by Peter Goldsworthy, and similarly Tony Birch’s summary of Jasper Jones, accounts of the core ideas in the novel and Australian society both presently and in the past.

The cultural elements and ideas in Jasper Jones are heavily influenced by the majority of Australians’ opinion in the ‘60s, which are discussed heavily in Peter Goldsworthy’s introduction. In Silvey’s text, several accounts of racism are incorporated, such as Jeffery Lu and Jasper Jones. Jeffery Lu is an Australian-born Vietnamese boy and Charlie’s only friend, who ‘one-ups’ his intellect, which, because of the...