Question: "The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a closely personal account of the tragedy of one man. It is also an indictment of a racist society where the white man, assuming authority on the basis of racial superiority, can so comprehensively abuse this authority."
             Discuss this statement with detailed reference to the text.
             The Chant of Jimmie Blacksmith is a powerful story of a black man's revenge against an unjust and intolerant society, where the whites assume and abuse authority on the basis of racial superiority. Jimmie is mistreated and racially abused throughout the entirety of the novel. This racial abuse is what leads Jimmie to his murderous rampage in the middle of the novel. Keneally wrote this novel with the purpose of trying to eliminate racism against the aborigines, and to rid society of the concept of racial superiority, and the abuse of the authority, which is created by the concept. Each time Jimmie is racially abused, he becomes more and more provoked, until he lets out his anger against white society by carrying out all the murders.
             Jimmie Blacksmith discards his aboriginal ancestry and tries to fit into the white culture and follow the white ways of life, only to eventually be rejected from it, due to racial superiority, and abuse related to that. Mr Neville plays a key role in the event of Jimmie trying to become part of the white world, because he plants the idea of how the white world is better and has more opportunities, in Jimmie's mind, which is the first sign of racial superiority in the novel. The first instance when this theme occurs is when Mr Neville encourages him to leave his village and go to work in the white world, or on the farms owned by white people. Jimmie is captivated by the idea that Mr. Neville proposes, which is: "If you could ever find a nice girl off a farm to marry, your children would only be quarter-caste then, and your grandchildren one-eighth caste, scarcely black at all." ...