Week 3: Dick Thornhill and Childlike Wonder

    In Kate Grenville’s The Secret River, Dick Thornhill represents the idea of child innocence, fear of our own ignorance, and nature vs. nurture. As the first section of the novel painstakingly establishes, Thornhill, Sal, and even Willie’s entire world exists in London for most of their life. They are suddenly sent to an unknown world with the context of their occupation being a punishment. This is something even Willie was old enough to understand, so they naturally approached everything in this new world with fear and caution. 

    Dick on the other hand finds that childlike wonder of exploration that all children have in their environment, the difference being that all he has ever known has been in Sydney. While he still is surrounded by a society that inherently considers the native people to be lesser and to be savages, Dick still manages to treat them as people like anybody else. His perception of the world isn’t as harshly ingrained in societal standards like the rest of his family, instead he is more inclined to see other children as children, and more broadly, people as people. The color of their skin isn’t a big deal for Dick, and he spends time playing and learning from them. He even calls out some areas where the natives are more technologically comfortable/efficient, such as their ability to make fire without flint. 

    Dick helps us understand the merging of cultures within Native history, though not in a forceful or assimilating way. It’s a give and take, as Dick also learns things like how to throw a spear. Dick is one of the only pro-indigenous perspectives we see throughout the novel, alongside Blackwood. He is also one of the only lenses through which we really get to see the indigenous culture and that exchange, rather than Thornhill usually wearily observing them hunting or doing something along those lines.