CHARACTER BASICS
Jan. 31st, 2023 02:37 pmThe thing about Harry 'Breaker' Morant is that he's something of a fictional character based on a fictional character.
All that we know of the life of the real Morant is what we've gleamed and picked up from second-hand tales that've been twisted time and time again in their telling. Plenty of those tales were started by Morant himself, and no one knows what he is, though he was certainly a dab hand at making people believe him to be something fairly impressive.
It's hard to say, really, how much of him lies rooted in fiction and how much is reality. He never helped- most of his supposed family history has been denied by the very people he claims to be connected to, and very little of anything that has been said about him has ever been corroborated beyond further anecdotes.
Over the years he's become a symbol for many things. A roguish, insouciant man by portrayal (and perhaps, if some of the stories might be so believed, by nature), what little can be said for certain is that he was one of the best Breakers in Australia at the time when he lived there, that he volunteered for a war under an Empire that would see him shot for the crime of killing the enemy, and that if he is indeed a work of fiction, then that he must be a damned fine one indeed.
Resources:
◌ Wikipedia page
◌ Poetry
◌ Scapegoats of the Empire
◌ 1980 Movie
◌ 'The Truth about Harry'
◌ The Court-Martialled Australians
All that we know of the life of the real Morant is what we've gleamed and picked up from second-hand tales that've been twisted time and time again in their telling. Plenty of those tales were started by Morant himself, and no one knows what he is, though he was certainly a dab hand at making people believe him to be something fairly impressive.
It's hard to say, really, how much of him lies rooted in fiction and how much is reality. He never helped- most of his supposed family history has been denied by the very people he claims to be connected to, and very little of anything that has been said about him has ever been corroborated beyond further anecdotes.
Over the years he's become a symbol for many things. A roguish, insouciant man by portrayal (and perhaps, if some of the stories might be so believed, by nature), what little can be said for certain is that he was one of the best Breakers in Australia at the time when he lived there, that he volunteered for a war under an Empire that would see him shot for the crime of killing the enemy, and that if he is indeed a work of fiction, then that he must be a damned fine one indeed.
Resources:
◌ Wikipedia page
◌ Poetry
◌ Scapegoats of the Empire
◌ 1980 Movie
◌ 'The Truth about Harry'
◌ The Court-Martialled Australians
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