The True History Of The Kelly Gang By Peter Carey

A crack in the historical door – Peter Carey invites readers into Ned Kelly’s domestic life, unearthing Ned’s unseen motives for justice. Although, can this really be considered “True History”? The award winning novel The True History of the Kelly Gang (2001) Written by Peter Carey, has been a classic piece of Australian national literature for nearly 20 years now. The novel has become a valuable contribution to the biography of Australia’s most fascinating and iconic personalities.

Ned Kelly and his gang.

Through the eyes of Ned himself, this novel becomes much more than a simple, dry historical recount, rather a chance for Ned to speak through Peter Carey’s writings, setting the records straight. From his adolescence to apprehension,

During the late 1800’s, Australia was in the midst of defining itself, emerging from its colonial past in which British and Irish criminals were sent to Australia. England’s jurisdiction on Australian land generated constant conflict and was made evident through Peter Carey’s reference to the culture via the interactions Ned Kelly and his gang had between authority and government. Carey not only discussed this oppression through the depiction of major quarrels, but in the daily disputes that pitted families of low class, such as the Kellys or the Quinns, against the local police establishments. Ned Kelly’s sense of justice was represented to be a result of Ned’s awareness of this British superiority, with Peter Carey alluding to it in statements saying "That is the agony of the Great Transportation that our parents would rather forget what come before so we currency lads is left alone ignorant as tadpoles spawned in puddles on the moon." This alone provides readers with an understanding of his sense of justice: he is the oppressed fighting back against the oppressor. Kelly’s trials and tribulations with the local police, in which he was repeatedly arrested and throwing into jail, only serve to shape Kelly and the readers understanding of the historical class divisions, clarifying the motives and intentions of Ned’s rebellion. Through the perspective of Ned himself, Carey allows audience into Ned’s psyche, revealing his awareness to his victim status and class consciousness, leading him to enact with justified brutality. Carey makes it an effort to portray Kelly as the image of righteousness in order for readers to side with him, relating and encouraging the quest to oppose corrupt governments, although in doing this created an unequally expressed argument, that of which might Ned’s sense of justice may spawn menacing