Wild pork and watercress #1

Title: Wild pork and watercress

Author: Barry Crump

Text type: Novel

February 2020

The novel Wild Pork and Watercress is a story that follows young Ricky Baker and his uncle Hec on their journey into the wild native Urewera bush in the North Island of New Zealand. Facing many struggles and challenges but sticking together through it all and overcoming them.

Throughout this novel, I found the character Ricky to be interesting. Ricky felt as though he was an outsider and not wanted by anyone “I always had trouble fitting in”. But after Bella died Ricky felt at ease with his uncle Hec he felt safe around him “they had a habit of glancing at one another every few seconds, for reassurance perhaps”. I felt Ricky to be interesting to me because of the way he copped with his issues, how he wouldn’t let the slightest thing get him down he would prove to set them wrong, which just really inspired me on his attitude towards life, I really felt as I could relate to feeling as though you don’t fit in, its as if society doesn’t accept you if you don’t meet certain standards of how you look or act, how much money you’ve got, what kinda job you work, and for Ricky, he felt he didn’t fit in because he was an overweight Maori boy “I was a bit overweight and not much good at sports and stuff like that”. Over time things are still the same, this book was written and published in the 1980s but stereotypes, standards are all the same if anything worse because we now have social media and tv shows to who we compare our selves I know for a fact I go on social media and look at people and wonder why I don’t look like them if I did how would my life change. But for Ricky, he just compared himself to people at his school.

Within the book, I really felt the message of how friendship and loyalty are very important in a person’s life and help a person to grow as we saw with Ricky, Ricky didn’t have many friends nor family and was really not in a good place in his life “I seem to have spent a lot of time standing in various offices while adults sat around deciding what was going to happen to me next” but he then came to realise that his uncle Hec wasn’t just his uncle he was his friend ‘he does look nice when he smiles”, from going into the bush the pair built and strong friendship and trusted one another more than they had ever trusted anyone else. This showed me how a good friendship can bring out the best in a person and/ or people and help them grow as individuals, how having at least one friend can help you do anything and achieve big things. I felt like this message hit home with me especially cause I have had issues with friendships in the past and reading this book made me realise how having toxic friends/friendships can make a big impact on your life and that you need good friends to help you and support you as a person. That’s what Hec did for Ricky they fought and bickered at times “I’m smarter than you, anyway,” I said. “you can’t even count 161 sheep”. but in the end, they were always there to support each other in times of need which is a key quality to a good friendship.

during the novel, readers were able to see that the main challenge that Ricky and Hec had to face together was the public, the outside world to them. they just wanted to do their own thing which was escape the outside world for a while but for them, the public, locals from around the area built up theories against them which they had to prove wasn’t true, that they weren’t “dangerous to approach” because the public began to think that two people going out into the bush for that long was suspicious “everyone’s been asked to keep a lookout for a middle-aged man and a young Maori boy”. Even when they met people along the way and let them know that they are fine and are just doing their own thing, people still didn’t believe them. Ricky and Hec also had the challenge of surviving out in the bush, they had to find ways to adapt and survive to the wilderness that they now had to call home for the next few, month, years “they’ve been missing in the bush for over three months”. Going into the bush was a way for Ricky and Hec to escape, escape all their problems for a while, which everyone wants to do, everyone has their own escape, for instance, my escape is just to listen to music to be able to forget about what’s going on for a while.

I believe that the title of the novel ‘wild pork and watercress’ is a titled fitted for the book it works well and has its meaning when out in the bush Ricky and Hec almost every night had wild pork “we needed to catch pork for us” and watercress to eat “we ate half of it with a big bundle of watercress”, that was their way of survival “we weren’t eating for the taste of it anymore, we were eating for the energy to get to the next hut”, without the supply of the wild boars roaming around and the watercress growing all around them, then they would have had a lot harder battle to fight trying to find a supply of food to eat. when I first read the title I didn’t understand how this would relate to anything in the book but after reading it I realised that the title is a major part and has a big impact of the main characters. it just reminds me of the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ which everyone does but you never know it might just turn out like this book and the title having great meaning throughout the novel.

I would highly recommend this novel to anyone and everyone from reading a bit about it on the back of the novel you think its the typical ‘boy’ book about hunting and survival where it is but its much more than that it’s about friendship “we’ve gone through all this together, we’ve got to stick together now”, trust but all through the eyes of a 14-year-old boy, Ricky Baker “we’ve got a few hassles coming up, but we can handle them. were okay now”. Going through his highs and lows of being out there in the thick Urewera country. which I think is a great story for readers to take away to see how different their life is to how Young Ricky and Hec’s was. To take away how hard and difficult it really is to live out in the bush for that long.

I really thoroughly enjoyed this novel and would read it again. After watching the movie ‘Hunt for the wilder people’ i thought I had some background on the book but was still happily surprised and shocked with what was different between the two. With watching the movie you don’t really take much away because its more for the comedy side but with reading the book you get the real meaning, get the insight of what it’s really like to be in their shoes.