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Alan DuffA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of rape and domestic abuse.
Beth Heke is the protagonist of Once Were Warriors. She is the mother of six children, as well as Jake Heke’s wife of 16 years. She’s known for her beauty and her good skin “if ya don’t mind the scars from a hundred hidings” from Jake (87), but Beth is someone who feels uncomfortable standing out: “no make-up, other than lipstick, and even then she wasn’t sure if the colour suited her coppery complexion” (87). Her uncertainty about her “coppery complexion” highlights the racism that Beth and her Māori community experience in New Zealand. As a stay-at-home parent, Beth’s main occupation is to manage the household with half of Jake’s pay (and later the dole he receives from the government), a job that requires creativity and ingenuity to make ends meet. Like her husband, she has an alcohol addiction and, when drunk, often slurs her words: “tomowwow. Exaggerating Beth’s drunkenness: Tomowwow kidsth” (104). Her slurring suggests that Beth struggles to express herself, something that changes as her character develops and she becomes a community leader.
Beth believes herself to be a good mother to her children, and unlike other parents who leave their kids to fend for themselves, she meets their basic needs: “I make sure my kids come first. Their food, anyrate” (8). However, Beth neglects her children in other ways. Although she genuinely loves all her children, her alcohol addiction conflicts with her role as a mother. While she doesn’t drink alcohol for three months and saves money to visit Boogie at the Boys Home, they do not visit him because both she and Jake become drunk at a bar. However, Beth does show resilience and determination, both in how she stands her ground against Jake and in how she tries to be there for her children and feels guilt when she can’t. Beth is a flawed protagonist who develops into a more conventional hero.
Beth is also often the most outspoken when criticizing her community’s complacency and lack of cultural identity or knowledge. Initially, she herself lacks the motivation to provoke change, even for her children, but knows that community effort is needed:
What can a woman do about their future, their education? It ain’t in my hands. Not on my own. Not living here, in Pine Block, Two Lakes’ dumping ground for its human rubbish. It’s all of us; we need to get together – talk and try and sort ourselves out. Before it’s too late. If we haven’t already missed the bus” (8).
From this thought at the beginning of the novel to community leader by the end, Beth’s characterization contributes to the theme of Distorted History and Disconnection from Cultural Identity. It takes Grace’s death by suicide—the climax of the novel—for Beth to grow determined to change her ways for good. As a catalyst, Grace’s death allows Beth to reconnect with her cultural identity. She engages with her community in an altruistic way and reaches out to her elders so that they may, in turn, teach their history and culture. It is through her efforts that her community begins to heal and reclaim itself.
Jake Heke is the novel’s antagonist. He is Beth’s husband and father to Nig, Boogie, Abe, Grace, Polly, and Hatua. Prior to the events of the story, Jake worked as a quarry laborer for 14 years until he was fired. More than his own house, Jake’s home is the town’s bar, McClutchy’s, where he believes that he reigns as king. Duff uses this setting for Jake’s character exposition. Of the few pillars of Jake’s identity, his alcohol addiction, has led him to commit terrible acts toward his family, for which he feels little sympathy. When he misses Boogie’s court case because of his late-night drinking, for instance, he scarcely spares his child a second thought. When Grace dies by suicide, he is at the bar, deeply inebriated. Due to memory loss caused by his drinking, Jake can never fully deny that he isn’t Grace’s rapist. Even though he refuses to believe it, he is plagued by uncertainty.
He’s known in his community as a strong man who is a “fist-happy bastard” (1). The oxymoronic term “fist-happy” highlights Jake’s antagonism: Violence overshadows the potential for happiness. His physical strength is central to his identity, as is his ability to fight, and both become a source of arrogance: “Lodging their greetings with him [Jake] so he’d not forget, falling at his feet damn near; brushing, touching, squeezing a man’s rock-hard muscularity just like I’m a fuckin god. Shet” (56). His strength, however, is seldom used in a beneficial way. Jake is a domestic abuser who often beats his wife when drunk. In every instance, his thoughts tend toward fighting, and he constantly provokes people so that he can use his fist. Violence is also what sets him apart from his children, specifically Boogie, who is a disappointment to him for his inability to be violent toward another person. When Sonny Boy Jacobs punches Jake and defeats him, therefore, his unshakeable belief in his strength and the arrogance that came with it are broken. This initiates Jake’s most significant character development into a vulnerable and unhoused person.
However, Duff does occasionally make Jake a sympathetic character. The narrative intimates that this need for violence stems from a conflicted outlook on his heritage. As the descendant of an enslaved person, Jake was bullied by his peers as a child and ostracized because of his social standing in Māori hierarchy. Likewise, Jake perceives that he’s never fully accepted outside of the Māori community on account of being Māori. His backstory relates to the theme of The Impact of Internalized Intergenerational Trauma. As a result, Jake is highly sensitive. His temper is volatile and mercurial, shifting at the slightest reminder that he may be deemed inferior, either for his looks, his material possessions (or lack thereof), his social standing, or his lack of education. It is only when he loses everything—his home, his family, and his reputation—that Jake allows himself to be truly vulnerable and pursues an affectionate relationship with Cody, a child whom he meets in the park.
Grace Heke is the daughter of Beth and Jake Heke, as well as the eldest sister of the Heke siblings. Her mother gives her the name “Miss Morbid,” as she can’t seem to find humor in any situation: “Aee, Miss Morbid at it again. Can’t help it. How I am. Can’t run around laughing at everything when I don’t find most of it funny. We have heaps of funerals in Pine Block, or people from Pine Block dying. Being killed, more like it” (79). Her morbid characterization, associated with the myriad funerals in Pine Block, foreshadows her death. As a 13-year-old, Grace is bright and observant. Like her mother, she questions the Māori’s Distorted History and Disconnection from Cultural Identity when she ponders “The Lost Tribe,” associates with the Māori of Pine Block, and wonders what has been lost along the way. Such is her keen observation that she does not believe her mother’s promises about how, for instance, they’ll visit Boogie. While Grace is a quiet child with few friends, Grace cares deeply for her family, especially her younger siblings, and provides the emotional support that neither of her parents offers her or her siblings. In this way, she takes on a nurturing role and Duff contrasts her with Beth before Grace’s death.
However, Grace is still a teenager with concerns over her attractiveness. She often compares herself to white girls and showcases internalized racism, like Beth: “Well I ain’t beautiful, but I’m black. Black as that sky up there. Well, not really, but I’m black even for a Maori. Hate it too. I hate it. Being black” (79). Finding herself lacking and robbed of opportunities informs much of her animosity towards the Tramberts, specifically their young daughter, who can play the piano. Duff presents her feelings as a sense of betrayal for society quashing her potential because of her heritage. When she is raped, Grace loses her natural curiosity and turns first to drugs. When that is denied, she dies by suicide. Her emotional journey constitutes the rising action and climax of the novel. Even in death, however, Grace helps her family, as she becomes the reason behind Beth’s behavioral changes.
Nig Heke is the eldest son of Beth and Jake Heke and the eldest brother of the Heke siblings. To his younger siblings, Grace especially, Nig is something of a hero figure. Duff presents him as a tragic hero for going down the wrong path and meeting his downfall because of a fatal flaw. While he seems to have a special love for Grace, he lives outside of the family unit for most of the novel. He’s strong like their father, but without the explosive temperament. Violence against women is shown as a commonplace occurrence in the narrative, but Nig is one of the only male characters who is reticent to beat women—something that puts him at odds with the work demanded of him when he joins the Brown Fist. Nig is not, in fact, his real name, as Grace explains that the name “Nig” is possibly a nickname: “he only got called Nig by some uncle of Dad’s as a compliment. Man, some compliment” (79). Unlike his sister and father, Nig has a copper complexion, yet his name is an allusion to a racist slur against Black people, another example of the internalized racism that Duff represents in the novel.
Nig’s main ambition is to be a patch member of the Brown Fists, but rather than wanting a sense of power, Nig’s desire (and tragic flaw) lies in wanting to belong to a stable, structured community—something he’s so far lacked throughout his life. The appeal of the gang, however, soon loses its novelty. The reality of the violence committed on repossession jobs and in gang warfare disturbs him, though not enough to quit the gang itself. When Nig returns from an escorting job gone wrong, he dreams of his ancestors beating him to death for choosing the coward’s way and embracing a fake sense of warriorhood with his tattooed face, a counterfeit of their chiseled moko tradition: “And their tattooed faces were deeply etched, whilst his manhood markings were but lightly marked” (183). Though he is of age, Nig is a child looking for a stable family. When he dies, however, it is not the Brown Fists who honor him but his mother’s newly revitalized community that sends him off to greet his ancestors. His funeral creates a sense of resolution in an otherwise ambiguous ending in the novel.
Boogie Heke is the second-eldest son of the Heke family. Duff makes Boogie antithetical to the “toughness” that the boys are meant to exhibit in their community. Although the women in his family love him as he is, according to Grace, the men in their family and community judge him and find him lacking. Where Jake is strong and violent, Boogie is, by comparison, meek, prone to crying, and eager to please everyone. It’s how he earned his nickname, “out of contempt because he was scared of the Boogie Ghost as a kid, more scared than normal, terrified in fact. The rot’d set in early” (24). Even the petty thefts of which he is accused are not necessarily of his own volition: “Oh it’s not fair. Boogie plays the wag from school because half the time he’s scared of being picked on, or he’s being led by other kids and he’s too afraid to say no” (28). Boogie is a foil for the tough, male characters in the novel—namely Jake and Nig—and Duff uses Boogie to make them seem fiercer and physically stronger by comparison.
Boogie, however, has no one to defend him. Jake more or less disowns him for being too “weak”; his brothers do not help him; and his mother cannot be relied upon. More than the other Heke children, with the exception of Grace, Boogie represents the direct impacts of their parents’ addictions and abuses. Neither parent shows up for his court case to speak on his behalf, and though his mother makes a valiant effort to visit him at the state-run Boys Home, Boogie is left alone, abandoned, waiting, and hoping despite it all. He is absent for most of the novel which highlights the disconnectedness among his Māori community. He reappears to perform a proper waiata for Grace’s funeral which adds to the poignance of his removal from the community building at the end of the novel.
Te Tupaea is a secondary character in the narrative who only appears after Grace’s death. He is the paramount chief of Beth’s clan and acts as Pine Block’s mentor and teacher once Beth organizes her weekly meetings for “Self-help.” He is a chief by birth. Beth doubts him at first glance:
He wasn’t tall, nor particularly distinguished. Just an ordinary man who’d been born with chiefly status, […] and even given the Maori he spoke in, Beth was thinking the chief was ill-suited to the role, and thinking it was proof of this inheritance thing that you can’t make a leader from poor material to start with (118).
Te Tupaea’s physical appearance is part of the realism of the novel: He is not striking or “distinguished.” However, he proves Beth wrong, suggesting that Duff presents a realistic rather than fantastical picture of community building and engagement.
Through his speeches, Te Tupaea demystifies Māori cultural identity for the people of Pine Block and gives a nuanced history lesson on the Māori that highlights Māori figures, dates, and events instead of the British ones taught in their school systems. With Mavis, he imparts knowledge of their hymns, teaches them hakas and proper ceremonial traditions, and restores their pride. When the time is right, he steps away so that Pine Block may come into its own. Duff uses Te Tupaea to resolve the theme of Distorted History and Disconnection from Cultural Identity.
The Tramberts are secondary characters in the narrative that serve as a distorted reflection of the Heke family. The Tramberts are a Pākeha, affluent family with a grand estate and many sheep to rear. Though little information is given about the family other than the wife’s great beauty and the daughter’s ability to play the piano, the Tramberts nevertheless serve as a constant reminder of The Effects of Socio-Economic Inequities faced by the Māori community. Duff also uses them as a vehicle through which to depict Pākeha people’s perspective of Māori people. Mr. Trambert is quite surprised to see the stereotypical depictions of Māori as a spiritually “troubled” people proven wrong at Grace’s funeral.
Duff’s small inclusion of the Tramberts also indicates that the many assumptions Beth and other Māori characters make about Pākeha can be more nuanced. There are commonalities that they share, specifically in grief, since Mr. Trambert also lost a daughter in much the same way as Beth did hers, although it is unclear whether this information is shared with anyone other than the reader. At the end of the narrative, the Tramberts come to symbolize the budding possibility of true partnership when they donate part of their land for Pine Block’s new rugby field.