Review of Witi Ihimaera, the rope man

exchanges between Tama and his siblings foreground the principle of morehu or
survival, in practical terms as well; they have to survive his defection when he
chooses not to honour the obligation to return and care for them after their father’s
death. Huia and Tama have to survive not only an event, which has haunted them
for years, but its outcome:
‘I watched Eric Amundsen, repelled by him and angered at myself for bringing Mum
to see him. . . .
“Eric keeps seeing a huge glowing river”, Dr Stephens explained. “It’s a river that
comes out of nowhere and recedes into some darkness way beyond the room he is in,
In our sessions with him, Eric has been able to tell us about the river. It’s the most
beautiful thing he has ever seen. It’s threaded with many colours, like a glorious
rainbow. There are voices in the river and they are calling him”. . . . .
“It isn’t a river”, I said’. 23
The most powerful moment in ‘The Return, 2005’ describes the ascent onto the marae
of the group from the psychiatric facility:
‘I watched Eric Amundsen as he approached. He was making swimming movements
with his arms, his eyes were glowing with gladness. What did he see as he swam
towards the river that wasn’t a river . . . .
For two years he had been dreaming of a river and had tried to join its stream, but it
wasn’t a river. Spiralling out of nowhere was a rope stretching from the beginning to
the end of time . . . .
This time as he swam towards the river, the rope recognised him’. 24
Permitted to embrace his Māori ancestry this man may now benefit from its
distinctive knowledges and practices. There are implications here too for the future
in the idea of an adoptive Pākehā mother seeking a Māori healing for her son.
the rope of man successfully communicates the need to realise a sense of
belonging and place, one which allows us to appreciate our cultural diversity.
Occasionally pretentious, the novel supports a national identity with expatriates torn
between staying and returning who address the narrator as ‘sir’. 25 Its characters are
credible; even a narrator with a lop‐sided grin disconcertingly close to the writer’s
own. Its catalogue of major media events over the last thirty years and the level of
research it has required is especially evident in the international broadcast of the
finale. This emphasis embraces a global community and sustains the notion of our
common humanity.
The novel concludes with the words ‘We bow only to the highest mountain’. 26
This final statement in English is a commentary on the calibre of Māori and New
Zealanders. Only one point back on the curve of the spiral and the pepeha 27 is in
Māori: ‘Me te tuohu koe, me tuohu ki te maunga teitei’. 28 This tribal saying is not a
measure of defeat, it attests to the values and the mana 29 of the Māori people.
Jon BATTISTA
University of Auckland
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www.arts.auckland.ac.nz/gjaps