Henry Lawson's nihilism in 'The union buries its dead'

Abstract

Henry Lawson’s “The Union Buries Its Dead,” one of the most anthologized Australian short stories but one that has received very scarce individual attention, breaks away from the traditional bush narrative as sponsored by the nationalist Sydney Bulletin. The reason, this paper argues, is in the author’s nihilistic attitude to life that is distilled through the voice of his narrator. The nihilism depicted is of the “social” and passive type deranging both politics and religion, accepting the meaninglessness of both life and death and the impossibility to undertake any project into the future. Such an underlying attitude provides the story with a universal appeal that overcomes the limitations of its otherwise local character.