Summary of Judith Writght's Nigger’s Leap, New England

Judith Wright is an Australian poet.  Most of her poems are about identity crisis and they talk about the lost identity of the aborigines, the native Australians.  Through this poem the poet subtly expresses the historic event of the fall of aborigines from the top of a mountain due to the compulsion of the English people.

Judith Wright begins the poem with beautiful description of Australian landscape through images and metaphors.  She describes the dusk at the Australian coast with spectacular language.  She describes the beach, the high cliff along the coastline which is enveloped by the dark clouds, representing the invasion of the English force.  The English people invaded the Australian coastline and compelled them to commit suicide by jumping from the edge of the cliff.  This is said by using the image of the dark cloud swallowing the spine and forming a quilt across the bone and the skull.  The fallen dead bodies of the native Australians are been lifted by the flies.

The poet declares, “Here is a symbol…” the symbol of death, the symbol of darkness and the symbol of ‘peace’ arousing from darkness and slavery.  The English people did not inform the aborigines of their arrival.  Even their ships failed to send them signals of dangers.  The present life of the native Australians is highly paradoxical in nature.  Their days are measured by the nights, their speech by silence and their love by its end.  They feel timid in the their home land.

Judith Wright contrasts the life of the native Australians with that of the English rulers by posing poignant questions.  She asks that all humans have the same qualities, though different in their skin.  We all eat the same food, we all have same blood and we are all same.  There is no one superior to another.  She questions why the English rulers do not understand this concept of equality.

The poem concludes that by no means the Australians could be severed from the native land.  They would be like the shadow of the young children, forever lingering in the barren lands of Australia and never could be driven away.