David Malouf - Extract from Johnno

David Malouf

Identity is shaped by many external factors and one of the most predominant is family, especially the interactions between parent and child. This is shown in the extract from Johnno by David Malouf the narrator reflects upon his father's identity, in a way examining his own. In the extract, the narrator tells of the hidden life of his father and how it broke from the stereotype the son assigned. This is achieved with techniques such as an intentional overuse of listing to give the reader a very accurate mental image of the father. It explores how other's identity affects our own through this relationship between the son and the father, and provides an exploration of the aspects that make up identity.

Initially, the extract presents us with what the son initially identified with the father; the traditional embarrassing, DIY, sporty father figure. Malouf conveys this through similes such as ‘strutting around like some exotic bird' and ‘laughed like a miraculous image in a southern monastery' which endears the reader to the father. The listing evident in ‘his...' gives the sense of a very broad definition of the father given by the narrator, seen when he says ‘I chose the facts about him that I needed'. The statement ‘I found these images comfortingly foreign' shows the paradoxical nature of their relationship; distance yet close. The image of the father ‘wearing a leather apron and shorts, with his tool box on the bench behind him' presents a rather alpha male persona which appears to be how the narrator perceives him. As the narrator later states; "all of this was a gap between us and left my notion of my own independence utterly uncompromised." This suggests that others' identity affect our own, as it is seen between the son and the father, people often assign a perceived identity upon others on which they create their own. In this case, the son attempts to separate himself from his father, perhaps feeling threatened by the father's abilities such as creating handiwork, athletic skill and exhibitionist nature. By limiting his father to these basic qualities, the narrator gains independence by becoming a different person. All this goes to suggest how people derive their identity, culture and personality from a pre-existing pool of identities, culture and personalities, much like evolution.

The narrator being the offspring in this text attempts to differentiate himself from his father to create a unique persona to enable a purpose to his existence. The assumption that he is inconsequentially separate from his father's identity is infeasible as the narrator obtains his own identity based upon experiences throughout his life in which his father was (assumingly) heavily involved with during the narrator's childhood. But it is this way that the author presents the child and the father as similar but different; the narrator gathers his identity from what he perceives in his father among other factors similar