Summary
The funeral party comes across a priest, referred to by one of their party as "the Devil." They stop and unload the coffin. The priest takes his hat off and carelessly leaves it on the ground before attending to the coffin. He sprinkles holy water on it, and a few members of the party wince at the holy act. The water droplets leave little black spots on the coffin, revealing the rest to be a cheap, shabby gray.
As the funeral begins, the narrator describes what he calls the "vanity" of the men. A heavyset pub owner picks up the priest's straw hat and holds it over the priest's head for the entire funeral, absurdly protecting him from the sun despite his standing in the shade. The priest doesn't seem to notice. The narrator regards the pub owner as an "ignorant and conceited ass" who is intent on proving his piety to the town by holding the priest's hat.
The narrator is relieved to see that the coffin fits in the grave as it is lowered into the ground. Once, the narrator saw a coffin get stuck in the ground, and it was a miserable sight. The grave-diggers had to widen the hole while the funeral party wailed.
The grave-digger today, however, is not immune to the gathering's "feelin's," and so tries to guide the dirt into the coffin to make a softer sound. Nevertheless, the dirt from the Darling River is "hard [and] dry" and it makes a loud, rebounding noise as it falls on the coffin. The narrator himself doesn't mind the sound: it sounds like dirt falling on any box, he imagines.
The narrator lists a few conspicuous absences. First, there isn't any wattle present. Second, he neglects to mention the "heartbroken old mate," who is isn't there either. Third, he doesn't mention the "suspicious moisture" in the eyes of a bushman named Bill, because Bill didn't show up. In reality, the heat is the only thing causing moisture at the funeral. The narrator also doesn't mention the classic Australian sunset, because it is midday.
No one found documents, photographs, or anything to identify the dead man by; only a few union papers. The narrator and the funeral party only find out his name—Jim Tyson—when they see it on the coffin. The narrator's drover friend comments that he didn't know the name before; only that the deceased was a "union man."
As it turns out, the narrator says, James Tyson was not the man's real name. But that's how he was buried, and how he was mentioned in the papers. Later, the narrator and the group did hear what his real name was, but have forgotten it by now. If any loved one searches for him, the narrator will be of no help.
Analysis
James Tyson is an ironic choice for the name of the deceased laborer. The real James Tyson (1818-98) was one of the largest landholders in Australia. The James Tyson of this story dies unknown and penniless. The difference could not be circumstantially greater between historical namesake and fictional character. The final twist at the end of the story reinforces the irony of this contrast: James Tyson is not, in fact, the deceased man's real name. Coming full circle, the story of the dead man ends exactly as it started: as a stranger, unknown to those who even attend his funeral. This cyclical arc serves to neatly wrap up the narrative. It also, however, brings up a major theme in Lawson's work: the emptiness of bush life.
The episode with the publican and the priest reveals Lawson's characters' disgust for social pretension and hierarchy. This incident unfolds as the priest recites the funeral rites. The pub owner, presumably a wealthier man than the rest attending the funeral, persists in holding the priest's hat over his head—despite both of their location under the shade. In other words, despite the circumstances that render his actions completely necessary, the publican persists in order to come across as respectful of the church.
It is this performance that is the source of the narrator's disgust. He views the publican's actions as not only unnecessary, but also disrespectful to the funeral. According to the narrator, he is not alone in his opinions: all of the men at the funeral stand "uneasily," "struggling" to know how to respond. This scene highlights the classic bushman distaste for social pretension.
The funeral scene also plays on stereotypical bush sentimentality. First of all, emotions are largely absent. The sentimental potential of the scene, however, is illustrated by the narrator's depiction of the grave-digger lowering soil down to begin to cover the grave. Perhaps, the narrator surmises, the hypothetical "most sensitive" members of the funeral party might mind the "thump of every sod" falling on the coffin; but the narrator is not one of them. Thus, the narrator acknowledges that the scene itself may call for emotions; yet in actuality, none are present.
Further, the narrator evokes several archetypal symbols of Australian bush sentimentality, only in order to ironically emphasize their absence. There is no "heart-broken... old mate" present, though if there was, it would certainly be the "grizzled" incarnation that the narrator describes. The tears shed by the "bearded bush ruffian," Bill, are absent, and so is Bill—leaving readers to assume Bill to be the most archetypal incarnation of a bushman. There is no "sad Australian sunset," an image so canonized it is captured in quotation marks even by Lawson. In an ironic twist, the midday sun that, earlier in the text, was representative of the distinctly Australian landscape, is now only a replacement for the more idealized sunset. Even the most distinctively Australian, the wattle—an Australian native plant—is absent from the scene. In this way, Lawson juxtaposes the classically Australian circumstances of the text with the distinct absence of the other classic Australian images.
