A key idea in Mister Pip is the power of literature and storytelling to affect lives. To what extent do you agree with this statement?
This essay completely agrees with the statement “a key idea in the novel Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones is the power of literature and storytelling to affect lives”. This is aptly shown through the escape it can provide to the villagers during a civil war and as a form of narrative therapy to recover from the trauma of the war as well. In the novel, storytelling affects almost all the characters in a positive way.

“Mister Pip’’ chronicles the experiences of Matilda, a young resident of a small village in Bougainville, an island in Papua New Guinea, during Frames Ona’s rebel uprising against the copper mine company, Bougainville Copper Ltd. This results in the mine closing, and a civil war ensues between the rebels and the Papua New Guinea Defence Force in 1990.

The central idea that literature and storytelling can positively affect lives is effectively shown, when the readers gain an understanding of how Mr Watt’s narration of “Great Expectations” (G.E.) has a huge impact on village children, especially Matilda, the protagonist. Mr. Watts declares that he wants the novel, by Charles Dickens, as a “place of light” for the children who are trapped in this terrible civil war to escape into. For the children in the civil war, all western aid for which they were dependent on was cut off. They had no medications, fuel, candles, “and soon the littlest kids came down with malaria, and there was nothing that could be done to help them”. Thus Mr Watts creates an entirely new world in the minds of the village children to distract then from the “fresh new atrocities” and the helpless horrors they experience in their daily lives. From Matilda’s own first person narration, the readers can immediately feel the positive effects of storytelling, that it had filled the children’s minds with a world. “We were greedy for… Any world other than this one, which we were sick of-sick of the fear it held”

Moreover the important idea that literature and storytelling have great power to affect lives positively is readily conveyed by Jones, when it provided Matilda with the idea of the possibility of change. In the novel, Matilda identifies herself with Pip in G.E. She “knew that orphaned white kid and that small, fragile place he squeezed into between his awful sister and loveable Joe Gargery because the same place came to exist between Mr Watts and my (Matilda’s) mum”. This close relationship that Matilda has with Pip fuels her imagination, to the point that Pip’s escape from the marshes gave her hope that “things could change because they had for Pip”. Jones purpose of using G.E.as a parallel text and writing a novel from the point of view of Matilda’s is to show to the readers the positive effects of literature and storytelling on young Matilda’s mind as she could identify herself with Pip and could make connections between the characters in the story with the people in her life, and succeed in making sense of her own chaotic world. The hope and optimism that G.E. sparks in Matilda’s mind also keeps her (and the other village children) from being overwhelmed by all the horrors of the civil war they are in, giving them something to cling onto, that one day their world will be better.
The use of narrative therapy by Matilda also serves to highlight the positive effect literature have on people. Near the end of the novel, Matilda falls into a deep depression. While in London, her memory of her last day on the island came back to haunt her, and “I was back with mourning before that flood erased everything”. “For six day” Matilda “didn’t get up except to make a cup of tea, or fry an egg, or lie in the skinny bath”. In effect, her life’s path at the time, to write her thesis, was completely derailed. However, on the seventh day she began writing “Mister Pip”. She “took the top sheet of paper… and wrote, “Everyone called him Pop Eye”. For Matilda, by putting all her thoughts down on paper, this act of releasing her memories freed her from the traumatic experiences she had endured. Here Jones vividly describes the power of narrative therapy to ease the minds of people who were caught in the civil war to further emphasize the positive impact literature can have on individuals, especially through healing a sick mind.

In conclusion, throughout “Mister Pip”, Jones has repeatedly shown the readers the immense psychological benefits literature and storytelling can provide to people, especially those who have suffered shocking and traumatic experiences.