The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith

Award-winning Australian novelist and playwright Thomas Keneally’s novel The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith was inspired by a fragment of Australian history, describing a mixed-race indigenous man who went on a murder spree in Australia in 1900. In the novel, Keneally imagines main character and murderer Jimmie Blacksmith's life before he commits his crimes, focusing on the racism he faced as a man of mixed race and the struggles that he had as a person caught between cultures.

The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith, nominated for the Booker Prize in 1972, was adapted into a film by Fred Schepisi in 1978. Keneally took his inspiration from an earlier work by Frank Clune, which tells the story of Jimmy Governor, the real historical figure on whom the book is based and character Jimmie Blacksmith named.

At the beginning of the novel, Jimmie is initiated into the Mugundi tribe, but he rejects his tribal roots, unable to express himself in chants the way his half-brother Mort does. Instead of remaining with the tribe, Jimmie chooses to travel to a new town with the Reverend and Mrs. Neville, who suggest that he try to pull himself out of his unhappiness by moving to a higher social class. Because they are white, they tell him that ascribing to white values will help him advance himself – he should, they say, work to earn money, buy a farm, and find himself a white wife who knows how to work the land. Jimmie is inspired by their ideas, but when he tries to make it in the white world, he finds that his employers and the police treat him with disrespect and suspicion because of his race. Jimmie is frequently cheated out of money he earned fairly, and his only option is to accept his mistreatment or lose the fragile foothold he has in white society.



During this period, Jimmie begins a relationship with a white woman named Gilda, who is a kitchen maid. She becomes pregnant, and Jimmie takes on work with the Newby family so they can find housing together and make a life for the baby. They get married, but once the baby is born, Jimmie quickly realizes that it doesn't belong to him. Jimmie's rage is building; he feels trapped in his marriage and in his new life.

Soon after the baby is born, some of Jimmie's relatives, including his half-brother Mort, bring him his initiation tooth from the tribe, hoping that its spiritual power will protect him from his damaging white marriage. Jimmie asks for a pay advance to buy food for his relatives, but his new employer, Mr. Newby, is appalled by the presence of these indigenous men and refuses, hoping to drive them away from his home. Furious, Jimmie seeks revenge on the family, and in a fit of passion, kills Mr. Newby, his wife and daughters, and a schoolteacher named Mrs. Graf. Realizing the severity of his actions, Jimmie and his family are forced to leave town. Eventually, Jimmie and Mort leave the other relatives, Gilda, and the baby behind.

Still furious and unable to control himself, Jimmie and Mort move on to the Healy family, whom Jimmie worked for previously and who cheated him out of his paycheck. The Healy family is killed, and Jimmie and Mort continue fleeing their pursuers, including the deceased Mrs. Graf's fiancé, Dowie Stead. The two men take a hostage, a teacher named McCreadie. McCreadie convinces Jimmie that the violent actions the two are committing are ruining Mort's pure native spirit, and that he should continue without them. Jimmie leaves, giving Mort the opportunity to redeem himself before he is killed after carrying McCreadie to an abandoned barn and setting him free.



Jimmie continues to run and is shot trying to cross a river. He holes up in a convent, only coming out of an empty guest bedroom when the nuns leave the building to pray. In this quiet setting, he is captured; the novel ends as he watches one of the family members he left behind, Tabidgi, hanged, aware that he will be the next to lose his life.

Keneally's novel, based on centuries of violence and bias against indigenous Australians, is built on the premise that Jimmie Blacksmith's rage and violence are not facets of his character because of his race, as was presumed in 1900 and in the decades following, but the result of unfair treatment in a violent and oppressive system. Jimmie's crimes, not committed until nearly halfway through the book, are obviously the result of his failed attempts to assimilate into a white system that refused to accept him despite his willingness to play by white rules. Many of Keneally's novels reimagine nuanced historical situations in this way, including his novel Schindler's Ark, which was adapted into the award-winning and highly acclaimed film Schindler's List.