Richard Flanagan The Narrow Road To The Deep North Analysis

Humanity is known to signify empathy, sympathy, and overall kind interpersonal interactions. It is often associated with and used to characterize humans; however, humans have committed various atrocities that bring to question their humaneness; therefore, there is a lack of confidence within a human’s capability to be humane, and it is still not completely known as to why this occurs. However, according to Richard Flanagan, renowned author of The Narrow Road to the Deep North, humanity in and of itself is lost in times of circumstantial pressures. According to Flanagan, one reason that inhumane atrocities occur are due to the racial tensions instilled within people during times of ethnocentric pressure. History has proven through numerous …show more content…
Culture has a big impact on human beings and a stronger influence on a human’s actions. Cultural influence is directly represented through much of Flanagan's book within the belief systems of the Japanese as well as the Australians. Flanagan utilizes culture to build his characters’ reasoning for inhumane actions, especially from the Japanese. The Japanese in particular have a complex, yet simple, cultural attitude towards war and sacrificing oneself for his or her country. According to Saburo Ienaga, an influential Japanese historian, war was not only encouraged but glorified to Japanese citizens from a young age (115-116). As a result, a majority of Japanese citizens were “inculcated with militarism throughout the system, the Japanese people believed that dying for the nation on the battlefield was the supreme virtue […] encouraging jingoism” (115-16). Jingoism is defined as “extreme patriotism, especially in the form of aggressive or warlike foreign policy” (Merriam-Webster, 2003). Flanagan portrays this Japanese patriotism considerably, especially through the actions and thoughts of the high officials of the Japanese prisoner of war camps. For example, Flanagan writes of the characters, Nakamura and Colonel Kota, discussing the prisoners’ treatment, and while doing so they begin to feel as if what they are doing is immoral and inhumane; however their jingoism kicks in and Nakamura immediately crushes the sympathy. He specifically states to his Colonel, “One cannot distinguish between human and non-human acts...This is a war, and war is beyond such things...this railway is the moment when we and our outlook become the new drivers of world progress” (104-5). Nakamura, in this situation, exhibits a strong sense of Japanese jingoism instilled in him by his culture. He specifically states that in times of war humanity is abandoned in favor of