Tracking the Tassie Tiger: Extinction and Ethics in Julia Leigh’s The Hunter (original) (raw)

Abstract

Kvr-re CnnNB lntroduction ultR Lett;g's The Hunter is not an easy read. The problern is not so much the prose style as the way it asks difficult questions, and its difficult protagonist. The novel, frrst published in 1999, is set in Tasmania, in a time that the contemporary reader might readily identify as 'now'. Its main protagonist, also the novel's only focalizer, is an elusive man who calls himself "Martin David, Naturalist,"r with whom it is difficult to identi$r, not least because he is in no way a naturalist: "Martin David, Naturalist" is in fact the hvnter of the r.rovel's title. It is, however, through this awkward characler that the novel is able to ask difficult questions about extinction and related ethical issues: For M, as "Martin David, Naturalist" is usually referred to,2 is hunting the Ta^smanian (or Tassie) tiger. The intriguing aspect that makes such questions possible is that the last known specimen of Thykrcinus cynoc'ephalus died in captivity in 1936. Further, the animal functions as a symbol for a number of things, mostly linked with Tasmanian culture: in my analysis of The Hunter, I will read the thylacine (another name fbr this indigenous animal) as a symbol for a colonial past and for changing beliefs in nature.

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