How Does The Secret River End?

I just finished reading The Secret River by Kate Grenville. The ending of the book is so quietly brutal. Thornhill gets everything he wants: land, wealth, safety. But it’s all empty of any true meaning. His wife is disillusioned with him. His children are almost strange to him. And the ghost of the Indigenous people he destroyed slowly haunts him through the only constant in his life – the river. What really got me about the book is that it makes you feel the cost of winning in a society where violence is the way to succeed. I didn’t read it as some kind of melodramatic comment on the past but rather as a realistic portrayal of what happened. The book has left me staring at the ceiling of my room wondering just how much of history is simply repeated in quiet rather than dramatic ways.

I often teach ‘The Secret River’ to students and the ending is always highly contentious. Thornhill’s fate is not just personal but also symbolic in that his moral decay mirrors Australia’s colonial sins. It is a very clever novel by the author, Grenville, as it links the individual’s story to the national story of Australia. The end is very powerful as the land outlives Thornhill and is untouched by his attempts to claim it. I have always been asked by students why Thornhill could not have redeemed himself but the point of the novel is that some choices cannot be undone. The power of the novel lies in its refusal to sugar coat the truth of history. I also love how Grenville contrasts Thornhill’s decline with the way that Indigenous cultures survived against the odds in such a subtle but brutal way. It is a great example of showing as opposed to telling.

I finished The Secret River with the heavy feeling of history weighing on my chest. After reading of Thornhill’s desperate bid to claim land and the tragic wars between him and the Aboriginals, the resolution of the novel was quietly devastating for me. In the end Thornhill’s family did manage to survive on the land that he had fought so hard for but it was a hollow victory. The novel ends with Thornhill as an old man, a bitter and lonely man who is consumed by regret for the violence he was responsible for during his time in the colony. The Secret River flows serenely through the center of the novel but there is no resolution, no sense of closure for the characters in the novel. It’s a messy and powerful ending to a powerful novel and really conveys the painful and complex reality of colonization.

I also found it interesting that Grenville had developed the Indigenous characters in the novel in such a way that they were not portrayed as victims of Thornhill’s actions. Rather, they had agency, and even in the face of tragedy, they were fully developed people. This book has been really effective at forcing readers to engage with the discomforting choices made by Thornhill and to feel the full extent of his guilt. How that guilt affects subsequent generations is also explored effectively in the novel. I felt affected by this book for a long time after finishing it. In fact, I remember just staring at a wall for a long time afterwards because it had affected me so much. I eventually realized that even though so much time has passed since the actions of the novel, the story itself is not over yet. It is still with us today.