This study guide will help you analyse the short story “Flight” (1939) by Katharine Susannah Prichard. We will show you examples of elements in the text that will be relevant for your analysis. In these notes, we will focus on:
Below, you can read an excerpt from our study guide:
When he reaches Lorgans with the girls he takes them to his home, where his police-station is also located. The interactions between him and his wife show that his wife also disapproves of what is happening to Aboriginal children. Furthermore, the two even have a small argument about it, in which the wife complains about the Aboriginal women that come asking her about their children: “ ‘The gins will be trailing in from Movingunda for months to ask me what’s happened to the children. And what can I say?’ ”
O’Shea’s interactions with his children (three girls and a boy) also creates a contrast between the treatment and social position of white children versus that of half-Aboriginal children.
In the meantime, the girls have been locked up in a room, still tied together. Mrs O’Shea takes them dinner after her own family has eaten, and she acts against her husband’s wish and unties them, hoping they will not flee.
The story switches to the girls’ perspective, as they listen to the family getting ready for bed, and they look for a way to escape. After the O’Shea family falls asleep the girls manage to escape the room by undoing the barbed wire. They try to head back to their home the way they came, although they are afraid of evil spirits lurking in the woods: “Anyhow, their fear had to be overcome if they were not to be taken away, never to see their mothers or the back-country again.”
The climax is reached when the girls fail to overcome their fears. Walking through woods and rocky paths, they become convinced the evil spirit gnarlu is following them and go back to the police-station: “It was gnarlu, Mynie, Nanja and Coorin were sure—the dreaded evil spirit they had seen hopping and flopping just like that, up to the camp-fire in a corroboree.”; “Mini turned and fled, with Nanja and Coorin after her, back along the way they had come…”
