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49 pages 1 hour read

The Yield: A Novel

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2019

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Chapters 33-42Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 33 Summary

August returns to Prosperous from Eddie’s, still upset. Her Aunt Missy is there, sorting through Poppy’s trophies for fishing and gardening. August tells her about the Falstaff family selling cultural artifacts and shows her the box of papers she grabbed as she ran out. They look through the papers, and Missy says that finding the things that the Falstaffs sold could stop the mine. Missy asks if August is really going to go back to England, and August says she isn’t going to. They head to the library and meet Julie, the librarian who was helping Poppy with his research. She gives them the books he found the most helpful, a dictionary compiled by Ferdinand Greenleaf, and a PDF document of Greenleaf’s letter.

Excited, the two resolve to go to the museum the next day to track down the artifacts to hopefully get a Native Title and save the land the Prosperous mission is on. Back at the house, a woman from the mining company arrives to make sure Elsie will be leaving at the end of the week. Missy makes the woman leave, and August tells Elsie she isn’t leaving Prosperous again. Later, Alena Dimitri comes by. She brings dessert and says that her husband told her not to bring the mining propaganda booklets that were given to the town’s children, which she had wanted to show to August. After Alena leaves, August finds a packet hidden underneath the dessert. The next day, as Missy and August drive into the city, August thinks about how much she loves leaving and how this time, she wants to return. She feels she has found a purpose in Prosperous. She thinks of seeing Roman artifacts in a museum in England and compares them to the treatment her people’s artifacts have received. As they drive, August reads Greenleaf’s letter aloud, and they realize they can use it to claim Native Title.

Chapter 34 Summary

Poppy begins this entry with the definition of Biyaami, the spirit that ruled the Gondiwindi. He talks about the origin story of the land and how Biyaami lives at Kengal Rock near Prosperous. Poppy goes on to talk about how he and Elsie both silently looked for Jedda on the property after her disappearance. One day, his ancestors came to him and told him that he had learned everything he was supposed to know and that, although he should have been able to learn these things as a child, he was resurrected through their teachings. They told him that Jedda was reincarnated as a brolga bird.

Chapter 35 Summary

August and Missy arrive at the Historic Museum Australia, where the artifacts are. Buying their tickets, they begin to look for anything labeled “Falstaff collection.” They get into trouble for taking photos of the Indigenous artifacts. Missy becomes upset by the tokenism of the exhibit and begins to hear Poppy’s voice in her head speaking about the colonial atrocities that happened and saying she should tell the truth. Missy excuses herself to take a breather. August speaks to the museum staff about the artifacts, and they are kind but tell her that the artifacts are packed away and they have to book an appointment. As they travel back to Massacre Plains, both Missy and August feel demoralized, as they don’t think they can prove Native Title in time. At the train station, Joey picks them up and says that the protestors have begun to chain themselves to everything near Prosperous.

Chapter 36 Summary

Greenleaf writes about the rising anti-German sentiment and how he believes he will die in internment. He expresses his frustration for people hating others because of their nationality or origin. He goes on to talk about his growing lack of faith and how he is ashamed of his Lutheranism, now knowing about Martin Luther’s antisemitic writings. He confesses to questioning his entire belief system and his shame at substituting his God in for the Indigenous God. He closes out the letter by reaffirming his British citizenship.

Chapter 37 Summary

Arriving back at Prosperous, Joey, Missy, and August see police spraying water guns at the protestors who have chained themselves to the mining machinery. The garden is on fire. As August’s Aunt Mary begins to explain how the confrontation between police and protestors started, August becomes desperate to find Poppy’s dictionary. August asks Eddie, who is putting out the fire, who brought her up to the attic the night of the funeral and realizes it was her Aunt Nicki who works for the city council. She and Joey rush to go speak to her. At Nicki’s house, August accuses her of hiding the book, and Nicki says she did it to protect their family. August insists on reading it, and Nicki says it is at the council office and she’ll get it in the morning. August and Joey leave, with August saying she must read the book now.

Chapter 38 Summary

Poppy talks about meeting Elsie when she came from the city as a university teacher to conduct a demonstration about discriminatory practices and how he fell in love with her right away. He recounts how she and the other university students fought to get the local pool to let the Indigenous children go for a swim. Poppy says that even though they were kicked out after Elsie and the rest left, it mattered because it happened. He talks about the drought and the rising despair in Massacre Plains. He talks about how the colonial government has tried to isolate his people from each other.

Chapter 39 Summary

August and Joey get to the council office. August apologizes for Joey going to juvie, and he tells her it wasn’t her fault. She decides to smash in the office window to get to the dictionary. However, she realizes she would have to smash the library window and tells Joey that they can wait, and the two head back to Prosperous. She tells Joey that they went to the city to see Gondiwindi artifacts at the museum. They call Missy to tell her what’s going on and that they’re going to join the protest, and Missy declares that she wants to protest too. Joey and August join the protesters (including Mandy), and Eddie is angered. Missy arrives and tells him he should join in. The police begin to arrive, and Mandy says that more protestors will be arriving soon.

As Mandy tells August how to protect herself by covering her face, and the two talk about protesting and land rights, with Mandy saying that it should be personal for everyone and that the language of a country should be important and personal too. This resonates with August. Elsie brings the protestors fruit, and Joey convinces Missy to go back to the house as he doesn’t want his mother to be hurt. The protestors stand against the police’s water cannons, and Mandy says they cannot be arrested as long as they don’t fight back. The police blast them with tear gas, but they hold strong until August hears her Aunt Mary cry out and sees Nicki arrives with Poppy’s dictionary, in the form of Jedda and August’s childhood tape recorder and a stack of papers. 

Chapter 40 Summary

This chapter is a 1916 obituary for Reverend Ferdinand Greenleaf, published in The Australian Argus. It talks about his controversial work and recent letter to the British Society of Ethnography. It says that he died while being transported to a German internment camp and that he will be remembered as a British citizen.

Chapter 41 Summary

Nicki has brought the proof that is needed to save Prosperous at the same time that one of the mining company’s machines has unearthed a graveyard, the one from the old mission. Poppy’s Native Title application and his recording of himself speaking his dictionary further cement the importance of the site. Eddie leaves town, and six months after the protest, rain falls and the drought breaks. The importance of the Gondiwindis’ culture is recognized by the museum, and the language is saved from extinction by Poppy’s work. August remains at Prosperous, and her mother is allowed day release from jail. August and Joey print the dictionary for the town’s children.

Chapter 42 Summary

Poppy writes about art and pictures and paintings he has seen, particularly of cities. He says he sees his own city in the land. He writes that pain has been passed along in his family and that everyone is ready to heal. He hopes that his ashes will spread to cover the whole town, and he reasserts his love for and connection to his country, Ngurambang. The rest of the pages are given to Poppy’s dictionary, translating Wiradjuri words into English.

Chapters 33-42 Analysis

These final chapters show August not only comprehending the significance of the recording Poppy was trying to do before his death but also realizing that the methods he chose mattered alongside the content. The theme of The Power of Language especially comes to the fore. Poppy, knowing the dictionary and the words inside it would need community attention to continue, made it so the dictionary required someone who really cared to find it. Because August cared, the town now has access to the book, and others who care will also be able to learn the value of language and see the complex and beautiful history and traditions that the words explain and contain stories of.

Poppy’s belief in community is proven not only through the dissemination of the dictionary but also through the halting of the mine itself. It is through collective action that the mine is stopped until the dictionary can be found. Without Mandy and the protesters to help them stall until the Native Title application was retrieved, without Missy and Joey’s support for August’s search, and without Nicki’s acquiescence to giving back the dictionary, it would not have been possible. Each individual’s actions combine together to accomplish something greater than themselves. Mandy tells August, “[W]e’ll all continue not really having a collective identity unless we take a long and hard look back and accept the past and try to save the land we live on…that’s what I think” (225). Everyone, across racial and geographic lines, has to come together to find the truth in order to move forward. This is similar to how by coming together in their grief, the Gondiwindis are able to begin to heal.

Past and present unite in halting the mine, bringing home the book’s elastic discussion of time and the key theme of Memory and Time. Poppy is dead, but his work provides Native Title from beyond the grave. This is in keeping with his continued presence as part of the land, with August continuing to address him and Jedda in the belief that some part of them has remained. The mission graveyard is also able to slip through time, having been forgotten and grown over only to reemerge when most needed.

In keeping with this merging of time periods, these chapters contain the ending of Greenleaf’s letter, the record of his death, and August’s reaction to his letter and work. The story of Prosperous Mission and the people who lived there reaches through the centuries. Greenleaf’s concern over his own behavior and how he handled the situation in 1915 is met with questions and a refusal to absolve guilt by August a hundred years later. This furthers the theme of memory and time, creating a conversation about the truth of Australia’s history that in and of itself spans centuries. It also effectively quashes the idea that everyone thought that the government’s actions toward the Indigenous people were okay at the time. There is an exhaustion to August’s desperate search for the dictionary, for any other proof that the land has cultural significance. The colonial system is what both brought modern Australian government into power and what originally took the land away from August’s family. As August engages in the latest battle to protect Indigenous rights, she is contending with the weight of a long history of dispossession. This is both a cause for grief and a motivation. As Mandy posits, it is even more important for Australians now to recognize their past for what it truly was and learn from it.

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