3. The idea of a home is central to an individual's identity. A home often has your family, has memories and experiences of yours, and has love, safety, and comfort, all of which foster the preservation and development of your identity. This identity gives you strength in yourself and a sense of belonging in the world. When you are deprived of your home and all that comes with it, you lose a sense of dignity. This is the story of what happened to the main characters Molly, Gracie, and Daisy in the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence. Because they were forced away from Jigalong, their home and place of Aborigine culture, to assimilate into white, Australian-British society as half-castes in the Moore River Settlement, they almost immediately attempted to escape. Molly led the charge to go home, with dogged determination and perseverance to continue that was motivated by her quiet dignity. She refused to let Mr. Neville and his people take away the sense of self that she, her sister Daisy, and her cousin Gracie all had. Throughout the long journey, and even when Daisy cannot walk, the group continues onward, seeking redemption against the whites who interned them and pursuing the sanctuary of home. Tracker Moodoo shows his pride in the will of these girls when he says his only line of the film: "She's pretty clever that girl; she wants to go home." This statement shows to us the admirable quality of perseverance against adversity to maintain one's identity through home.
6. Talking embodies spirit and livelihood. Talking establishes power and influence; those with a voice are those who win in society. It is in this way that silence is a theme in colonialism, and how it was used in the film to illustrate this idea. Those with voice and power were the British, and those who had their voices taken away were the Aborigine. Much of the speaking in the film is done by British colonial authority imposing their will on Aborigine people. Silence, too, shows the lack of transparency about the evils of the colonial process. Colonialism rapidly and quietly forces native peoples to comply with invaders. A lack of dialogue could present the idea that colonialism, as it happens so abruptly, gives words, and in turn, the individuals who speak them, minimal staying power. But at the end of the movie, when Molly and Daisy's mother, grandmother, and other Aborigines are chanting, a shift in silence to words indicates a power shift to the Aborigines in maintaining their identities.
7. The namesake for the movie Rabbit-Proof Fence is very powerful. The fence is both a symbol for the preservation of identity and the love and security of home, in addition to resilience of characters against British colonialism and their coercive assimilation of Aborigine peoples. When Molly comes into contact with a person on their escape route, she asks them the direction of the Rabbit-Proof fence. We can tell that this serves as a sort of destination for the girls when we can see their palpable happiness when they reach it. They know that the fence runs all the way to their home, a place they associate with love and safety. The fence also serves as a symbol for resistance against British colonialism and the preservation of Aborigine identity and ideals. The rabbits can symbolize invading British colonists to an already established Aborigine world -- they are stopped by the resilience of the fence of Molly, Daisy, and Gracie. Yet the fence could also, earlier in the film, symbolize Mr. A. O. Neville's resistance to Aborigine people and his ideas. He fences in Aborigine culture in an attempt to "Britainize" it. However, the prevailing image is certainly one of Aborigine toil to maintain their home against adversity from those attempting to strip them of it. The fence in the movie conveys the conflicting tensions of colonialism -- resistance, assimilation, preservation, and protection.
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