It Is Impossible Escaping one's Origins

It Is Impossible Escaping One's Origins

"Going home" by Archie Weller is the touching story of an Aboriginal young man with grand goals and a great desire to fit in. The story is told by a limited omniscient narrator in the perspective of Billy Woodward, who depicts this man's life through three different time-periods; from being a sixteen year old boy called Billy Woodward, who lives at home in his childhood camp with his "brotherhood" (247) of the aboriginal community, to life in Perth as the new white man William Jacob Woodward who wants to become a great football player and to develop his art skills, to his final return home to his family on his twenty-first birthday. A significant theme the story deals with is racial differences. As it turns out throughout the story - no matter how hard you try, you will never be able to forget about your roots and your real identity.

The first time Billy was reminded of his heritage was when one of his uncles accidentally fell asleep on his verandah in the middle of the night. In the morning he responded by shouting and pushing the poor uncomprehending man down the steps whereupon the white neighbors were woken up by the noise and peered out of their windows and one could see that "they had smirked in self-righteous knowledge" (126). Billy felt ashamed since he did not want to be considered as black and tried to be a part of the general (white) society behaving as a white man, but the white neighbors knew his true colors.

The next time Billy experienced that he was being left out from the crowd was when he watched his white friends kicking a football back and forth on the street. For a moment three of the boys glanced up and spotted Billy and "their smiles faded for an instant and they speared him with their proud black eyes" (128). At that time Billy came to his senses and grasped that he did not belong to that world. It did not matter that he had bought new and flashy clothes, had well-groomed hair and a luxurious shiny car. He was always going to be the "wild and half-naked" (134) Billy Woodward, "a thieving boong" (136). "So [Billy] was going home, because he had been reminded of home (with all its carefree joys) at that last match" (128).

Later on, on his arrival home after five years of absence, at the old camp where he used to live, it immediately struck Billy when stepping out of his fancy car that he is still a part of his aboriginal brotherhood and always will be. Yet, he had never felt more unsure and alone. He was not greeted with cordiality but with suspicion and his mother barely looked at him when speaking to him, resulting in that Woodward ended up reflecting on how his life had turned out.

The memories seep trough Billy's skin so he isn't William Woodward the talented football player and artist,