Deadly Unna Themes

Deadly Unna by Phillip Gwyn is a story about the friendship between two boys set up in a small country town in the 1980’s South Australia. Gary Black (or Blacky) is the protagonist, a fifteen year old boy with many siblings, who develops and matures. He becomes highly aware of racism in the small country town against aboriginal people, as well as many other issues through out the course of the novel. Through out the story he meets a girl named Cathy that he gets smitten by, he looses his friend Dumby because he died in a shoot out down by the bar, so he drastically matures as the novel progress. Some of the other significant themes dealt with by Deadly Unna are the issues related to life in a small country town and the idea of loss of childhood innocence.
Dumby was the ‘best man on field’ so he obviously deserved and earned the ‘Best Man on Field’ Trophy. But instead the trophy was awarded to Mark-Arks. Remember when Dumby tried to mug Macca’s bar, he died because he shoot him with a shotgun and the police didn’t even try to solve the case. Basically nobody cared just because Dumby was just another Aborigines kid. Speaking of Maccas’s bar, all the gonyas sits in the front of the bar. But the Nungas is in the back. Except for one person called Tommy who always says Chug-A-Lug. But he’s only there because he is always drunk and it’s funny for the Gonyas. When the Slogs wrote BOONGS PISS OFF. This really affected Blacky because he became so aware of racism ever since Dumby’s