85 pages • 2 hours read
Potiki
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Chapters 8-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1
Chapter 8 Summary: “Toko”
Chapter 8 is narrated by Toko, who recounts one of his childhood experiences, both from his own memory as well from what he has been told about it by members of the family.
One evening, when Toko is 5 years old, Hemi takes James, Tangi and Toko out on the lagoon to fish for herrings, which are to be used as bait “for the next day’s fishing” (47). Despite the objections of his siblings, Toko is compelled to take a big, “heavy line” (47) from the shed because he knows with all certainty that he is going to catch a big fish.
While the others are catching herrings and enjoying themselves, Toko waits patiently and excitedly, oblivious to the cold and the beauty of the sky because his thoughts are “in the water” (49). When he finally feels a pull on his line, James holds onto him and Hemi ties his line to a seat so that he is not pulled overboard. Unable to pull the fish up, they row towards the shore with it, where it latches its tail on a rock. Using a torch, Hemi manages to free the fish and, after it has been hauled on to the beach, kills it with a heavy piece of wood. They transport the creature, a conger eel, to the verandah of the meeting house, where Hemi cuts off its head and slices the body open. They then fill a tub with salt and water, cut the fish into strips and place the strips in the brine.
The next day, they fetch green manuka brush, make a smoke fire, and cook the eel. Hemi reminds the children of the importance of sharing food before eating it themselves.
Toko comments that his strongest memory from this incident was his presentiment about what was going to happen: “But what I remember most of all about then, what I remember truly and really was that I knew. I knew that there was a big fish for me” (52).
Chapter 9 Summary: “Toko”
In this chapter, Toko recounts his memories of a visit he pays Granny Tamihana, following the big fish incident. He takes her some of the fish and finds her at home making baskets, which she does very skillfully. The two then sit down to eat fish with bread and syrup, while she talks and gives Toko advice on life. After dinner, they go to the living room, where Toko sees Granny Tamihana’s brother, Toko’s “great-granduncle” (56), among the photos of “long-ago people” (56). Granny Tamihana tells Toko the story of her brother, who died seventy years ago when his horse, which he was riding along the beach, saw a “very big kehua,” or ghost, on a “little rock sticking up in the low water” (56) and reared in fright, throwing her brother to the ground and causing him to hit his head on the rock where the kehua was. She tells Toko of her distress at her brother’s death and of her frustration during his funeral, where she “smack[ed] him hard” (56), threw her flowers down, and kicked his coffin.
According to Granny Tamihana, it was forbidden to fish or enter the sea following her brother’s death, just as it had been after Toko’s birth. She gives Toko the name “Little Father,” which had been the name of her brother, and tells him that the day of her brother’s birth, eight people had died “of a bad sickness” (57).
As Toko walks home from Granny Tamihana’s house along the beach, he recollects that soon after Hemi and his uncles had buried the fish head and guts where Grammy Tamihana’s dead passion fruit vine was, the plant suddenly “began to grow and grow,” and its “branches began to swim everywhere like a multiplication of eels” (57).
Chapter 10 Summary: “Hemi”
This chapter describes the day that the factory where Hemi works finally closes down, leaving him, like many other people who are suffering from the same “unrest” (59) and “general hardships” (59), out of work. As he walks home along the beach, with his newly-acquired work horse, he reflects on the happy and exciting prospect of being able to return to work on the family land, which, following his father’s death, he had originally left school to tend to. His grandfather had taught him how to farm and make a living from selling the produce, which continued until “the old man died” (60) and the rest of his family began to pursue their own lives. He hopes that, with the help of his family here and that of his returning family, “who had moved away” (62) for work, he will be able to use the land to provide enough food for his family, and eventually enough to make a business from.
He also reflects on the years of struggle experienced by his family, as well as that of the Te Ope tribe, to fight urban development plans in order to hold on to their respective ancestral lands and cultural heritage. The Te Ope people have “one more legal battle to go” (61) before they can begin to rebuild their meeting house on their land, and have asked for James’s help with the carving work, which is a skill their tribe has lost.
Manu and Toko greet Hemi, excited about the new horse, which Manu names Kaha. Hemi allows them to ride on it.
Seeing Roimata, who is waiting for them on the verandah, he remembers the friendship and support she and her father had always offered his family. Although, growing up, he had always regarded her as a cousin, now “he couldn’t imagine a life with anyone else” (63).
As he continues his work on the fence he has been making for the horse, he compares the proud attitude of young people nowadays towards their cultural heritage with the weakness he and his peers had shown towards the societal attempts to disparage or ignore the Maori culture. He remembers his friend Reuben’s defiance towards such attempts.
He then thinks about the differences between Tangi, Manu and Toko, and about the different ways in which they were brought into the world. He dwells particularly on his anger following Toko’s birth and his unsuccessful attempts to trace Joseph Williams, the man they all suspected of being Toko’s biological father.
Hemi is unable to finish the fence that evening, but is optimistic about the future and “getting back to the family things” (67).
Chapter 11 Summary: “Roimata”
Here, Roimata remarks on her own thoughts and feelings about Hemi’s redundancy, describing it as a “time of some anxiety” (69). However, she listens to Hemi’s description of how years earlier the land had successfully provided for his family, remembering how she and her father had helped them in this endeavor, and is reassured by his “hope and confidence” about bringing the land “back into full production” (69), this time with new crops, a small tractor, and a truck.
She then recalls a conversation she had with Toko “one day during the spring of the new gardens” (71). Sensing an impending visit to their gardens by some unknown visitors, Toko rushes anxiously to ask Roimata when the visitors will come, in what manner they will come, and what their intentions will be. He also wonders how his family is to respond to them. Roimata does not know how to answer his questions and can only think to calm him down by holding him, despite the fact that his words have frightened her.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Toko”
Here, Toko recounts the full story of the lost land of the Te Ope people and their struggle to regain it, which Hemi briefly comments on in Chapter 10. The Te Ope had originally owned a plot of land, which was comprised of an orchard, some hills, twenty-five houses and “an empty house that was used as a wharenui” (71). Although, they were too poor to develop the land, it provided them with enough food and firewood to live off. However, at the outbreak of World War I, on the pretense of needing to borrow this land “for purposes of war,” the government of New Zealand deceived the Te Ope people into leaving their land and then tore down their houses. The land was later developed into a playing field. Refusing to accept this injustice, a member of the Te Ope tribe, “an old man called Rupena” (73), wrote letters to the government in protest and kept copies of them. Years later, Reuben, his grandson and Hemi’s childhood friend, reignited his grandfather’s lost fight to regain the land by setting up camp on it. He received support from some of his people, “who knew that they still owned the land” (79), but others were content with the use of the land as a park, felt “embarrassed by the trouble he was causing,” and suspected Reuben of wanting to make “himself a chief” (79). Many other people in the community saw the camp as an eyesore and wrote to the newspapers expressing their desire for it to be removed. Despite being arrested and pressured to leave the land, Reuben refused to give it up.
Things came to a head following a big picnic to which the police were called by some angry cricketers, resulting in the arrest of many people and, subsequently, a “full enquiry” (82) into the matter. The enquiry unearthed Rupena’s letters and the replies from the government and, consequently, the court of enquiry found that the land legally belonged to the Te Ope, on the condition that they “pay for the improvements” to it (83). The people continued to fight amongst themselves because some wanted to sell the land—which they now regarded as useless, due to its development—whereas others wanted to resettle there. After “weeks of talking” (84), it was finally agreed that the people would keep part of the land and that some of it would be “given in repayment for improvements” (84). The Te Ope people were finally able, therefore, to start rebuilding their houses and gardens on their ancestral land
Chapters 8-12 Analysis
Chapters 8-10 give the reader some important insight into the central characters of the novel, building upon the glimpses into character that we get during the first few chapters. Toko’s “big fish story” (59) corroborates Roimata’s comments on the different personalities of each of her children in Chapter 1. Whereas James, who “could always be careful and patient and tidy” (53), does not argue with Toko when he resolves to takes a big fishing line to the lagoon, Tangi stares at Toko angrily. As Toko points out, “no one can escape from her” (48). Later, in Chapter 10, when Hemi likens Tangi to his childhood friend, Reuben, who had always stood up to those who wanted to marginalize the Maori culture, also comments on her fearlessness and assertiveness: “If she’d been round in Reuben’s day, she’d have been up there beside him, spitting” (66). Manu, on the other hand, hides in Mary’s arms at the commotion caused by the big eel, showing his meekness and sensitivity.
While Chapter 8 is another example of Toko’s gift of clairvoyance, which sets him apart from his siblings, his excitement at the prospect of catching a big fish and the game he plays later that night in bed with Manu, pretending that they are fish, swimming, diving and fighting “until all the blankets were on the floor” (51), show that he is ultimately a child like any other.
Chapter 9 explores the special relationship between Toko and Granny Tamihana, who cares deeply for Toko, wants to equip him to deal with life, and even names him “Little Father,” after her beloved dead brother. He, in turn, has very warm memories of his moments with her, which take on a dreamlike quality: “I remember feeling warm and happy on one of Granny’s rugs with the garden smell of flax and the sea-sound of her voice, and the shifting sounds of her body and her liney hands” (55). His memory of her as a “fire woman,” and his comparison of the veins in her eyes as “fiery pathways,” suggest that Granny Tamihana is wise and knowledgeable, but at the same time, unfathomable and almost supernatural.
Another important aspect of these chapters is the introduction of the struggle of the Maori people against Western civilization. For the Maori people, who have spiritual bonds to the land and whose livelihood was traditionally based on agriculture, land was of utmost importance. However, from the second half of the 19th century onwards, following the colonization of New Zealand by Britain, the Maori lost control of much of their land. Although some of this land was sold, a great deal was either lost through unfair land deals or seized in the aftermath of the New Zealand War, which took place between the New Zealand government and the Maori over disputed land purchases. However, from the 1950s, the Maori began to reclaim their lost land, using the Treaty of Waitangi, which had originally been drawn up and signed in 1840, to protect the rights of the Maori against French forces, as a platform. These events are alluded to by Hemi in Chapter 10 when he reflects on the new determination of his people to assert their rights to land that belongs to them and to express their culture and stand up to discrimination: “Things were stirring, to the extent of people fighting to hold onto a language that was in danger of being lost, and to the extent of people struggling to regain land that had gone from them years before” (60).
The circumstances of the Maori, with regard to the loss of their land, is then further explored in Chapter 12, through Toko's detailed retelling of the story of the Te Ope tribe, who were cheated out of their land by the colonial government during World War I on the pretext that the taking of the land was required in order to build a landing field. However, the land was not used for the war effort, but was instead stripped of the Maori buildings, leveled off, and developed some years later into a leisure facility.
This story, in turn, introduces a fundamental aspect of Maori life in colonial and postcolonial New Zealand: discrimination. This is voiced explicitly by Rueben, who complains to his parents about the way the Maori people are portrayed in school and through the media: "That's all I learn from the newspapers, that I'm nobody, or I'm bad and I belong in jail" (74).
Another aspect of postcolonial society that is touched upon in this section of the novel is the utter lack of understanding and cultural sensitivity shown by the Western settlers towards the Maori people and their traditions. In response to Rupena’s letter to the government setting out his people’s grievances with regard to the demolition of their houses, the government responds with the counterargument that since the houses were already “substandard,” their demolition is “no great loss” to the Maori people. Additionally, by way of a response to Rupena’s complaint about the demolition of their meeting house, the government responds: “There was no building on the land that could in any way fit such a description” (77), showing its ignorance of the spiritual significance of a Maori meeting house and displaying a total disconnect between the two cultures.
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