In The Rubbish Tin Analysis

Task : Article - “Writers are expert diagnosticians of ills in their society”

What are we fighting for? Throughout the course of time and evolution we have come so far and learnt so much yet we still have the heart to cause another person pain. The current problem in New Zealand is domestic violence with women and children. They feel trapped in the dark cloud of fear and trauma, they think the sun won’t shine and it’ll stay to haunt them. ‘In the rubbish tin’ and ‘The Geranium’ they display the harsh reality of violence in a contrast of situations between two families. New Zealand writers Patricia Grace and Apirana Taylor based these stories on domestic abuse. Through the view of a child witnessing her father abusing her mother and the both of them neglecting her, followed by a stay

Phillipa the daughter of Ruth and Rolf is poorly taken care of, to an extent where she’s so young and unable to process all of it. She resorts to temporary happiness as a distraction for her misunderstanding of right from wrong, “She leaned over and punched Chubby in the eye. There Chubby that’s what you get, just like dad does”. We can see how she doesn’t do this with anger albeit as an act of normality because she knows no different it’s almost as if she’s immune. It’s almost in an endearing way because she loves her doll Chubby and he’s her only companion due to the neglect from parents. Taylor shows us it’s known that kids are prone to adapt traits and mannerisms as a representation of their parents, we see how Phillipa is doing no different copying her father’s abusive nature. Another quote is “Rolf grabbed the back of Ruth’s neck, wrenched it in and held it more like a vice-like grip.” New Zealand is known to have the highest partner/family violence rate in the world, showing statistics of 80% cases not reported to the police and 279 calls for help everyday. Which is a new case every 5