It’s summer 1965 in a small, hot town in Western Australia, just days out from Christmas and the New Year. 

Overseas, war is raging in Vietnam, civil rights marches are on the streets, and women’s liberation is stirring – but at home in Corrigan Charlie Bucktin dreams of writing the Great Australian Novel.

Act One

We are introduced to Charlie, 14 years old and bookish.  He is reading under the light of his hurricane lamp one night when a figure appears in the dark and moves toward Charlie’s window. Jasper Jones, 16, and constantly in trouble has come to Charlie’s window.  Jasper has stumbled upon a horrible crime and needs Charlie to prove his innocence as well as solve what happened to Laura Wishart. 

Laura is found hanging from a tree, her face badly beaten.  Jasper is certain that someone must have killed Laura and desperately needs Charlie’s help.  Charlie is reluctant – how can he be certain that it wasn’t Jasper Jones that killed Laura – but when he hears of Jasper’s great love for Laura he knows that he has to help clear his name.  He’s gotta get brave. 

The audience is reminded of the Vietnam War, but for Jeffrey Lu the most important news is Doug Walters in his Ashes Test debut. Every now and then the local boys will let him pad up.  Then they take bets on how many times he gets hit.  Even the coach gets in on it. 

Laura Wishart’s younger sister, Eliza, and Charlie become closer and share a great love for books. Charlie dreams of faraway places and of being a writer living in New York City.  However, for Charlie it is hard to shake the image of Laura Wishart’s dead body. He wants answers but most of all he wishes he could see Jasper Jones again.

Act Two

Jasper Jones stealthily moves toward Charlie’s window and taps lightly on the window.  Jasper’s face is bruised - the police are beginning to believe that he killed Laura and want know where they can f ind her body.  Christmas has just passed, but Charlie tells us “everything and nothing happened in the past week”.  There is growing suspicion and tension amongst the townspeople and they are finding people to blame. 

Tomorrow will be the last day of 1965 and Jasper and Charlie execute a plan to get Mad Jack Lionel to confess that he murdered young Laura Wishart. They know it’s risky because the rumour in the town is that he has killed a young woman before.   But when they confront Mad Jack Lionel they uncover a long forgotten secret.  Mad Jack Lionel is actually Jasper’s grandfather and the young woman killed was Jasper’s mother Rosie. She was killed in a car accident when Mad Jack Lionel was driving her to hospital. Jasper was only a baby at the time. 

Charlie discovers his mother with another man and confronts her.  They speak meaningfully for the first time ever.  She is leaving and Charlie seems to understand her reasons.  Mrs Bucktin leaves, never to return.  Eliza Wishart needs to confess something to Charlie.  She walks him all the way to the site where Laura was hanged.  Eliza knows what really happened and blames herself.  She shows Charlie and Jasper Laura’s suicide letter.  It breaks Jasper’s heart, they were meant to run away together.  There is some solace found in knowing what really happened to Laura Wishart, but the truth doesn’t make it any easier. 

Charlie executes a cunning plan to steal five peaches from Mad Jack Lionel’s tree (nobody knows that now Charlie has a friendship with Mad Jack and has been having dinner at his place every Sunday with Jasper Jones). Charlie sets the new town record for peaches stolen from the tree and cements a bully free year for himself and a chance for Jeffrey Lu to play in the town’s upcoming cricket match. 

Watch the film adaptation of Jasper Jones

Characters

Women’s Liberation, Divorce and Violence Against Women

In 1960s Australia, women were also discriminated against on the grounds of their sex and gender.  Inequality in public and private spheres was profound. The contraceptive pill had been introduced in 1961 but it was only available to married women and some doctors refused to prescribe it at all. Divorce was legal, but until the Family Law Act was passed in 1975 women who wished to divorce their husbands had to prove specific grounds for divorce rather than simply citing irreconcilable differences. 

When Mrs  Bucktin leaves Mr Bucktin because they don’t love each other anymore she is making a choice that will be judged harshly in the eyes of Corrigan and the wider Australian community.     

CHARLIE: Mum… do you even know how to play bridge? 

MRS BUCKTIN: I’ve never played a game of bridge in my bloody life. She laughs genuinely. 

MRS BUCKTIN: You’re a good man Charlie. I love you, my darling. Sorry. 

Act Two, Scene Nine

Laura has been abused by her father. Violence against women is shockingly prevalent around the world, and is more likely to be perpetrated by an intimate partner, family member, or other known male. The work of Rosie Batty in Australia, and the worldwide #metoo movement have brought this issue to the fore in recent years, and more people are talking about it than ever before. 

The Vietnam War, Communism and Conscription

War had broken out between communist North Vietnam and democratic South Vietnam in 1959 so by the time we meet Charlie Bucktin the Vietnam War had been raging for six years. In 1965, in an effort to stop the spread of Communism, America and her allies began sending troops to Vietnam. Young Australian men were conscripted to serve in Vietnam under the Menzies government’s National Service Scheme and Australians were divided over the issue of conscription and whether or not Australia should be involved in the war. In the 1960s thousands of people demonstrated, sometimes violently, against the government.  

MR BUCKTIN suddenly reappears from behind the newspaper 

MR BUCKTIN: It’s heating up in South-East Asia. Poor buggers. Maybe we should drive into the  city and go to one of those marches. 

MRS BUCKTIN: Drive all that way to take a stroll with a bunch of hippies? You’ve gotta be   bloody joking. 

Act One, Scene Six

Racial Inequality

Jasper Jones is a sensitive 16-year-old boy who has open, honest friendships with both Laura Wishart and Charlie Bucktin, but he is discriminated against by the people of Corrigan because he is indigenous. 

JASPER: This town thinks I’m an animal, Charlie. They think I belong in a cage and now here’s  the perfect chance for them to do just that. 

Act One, Scene Two 

Australia has a dark history in its treatment of Aboriginal Australians. During the latter part of the 1960s more and more Australians were beginning to call for recognition of Aboriginal civil rights and in 1967, two years after the events that take place in the play, a referendum was carried which allowed Aboriginal people to legally be counted as a part of the population. This was an important moment in the civil rights movement, but it wasn’t until 1975 that the Whitlam Government’s Racial Discrimination Act made it illegal to discriminate against a person on the grounds of a person’s race or until 1992 that the High Court’s Mabo decision overturned terra nullius. It wasn’t until forty three years after Charlie Bucktin met Jasper Jones that Prime Minister Kevin Rudd issued a public notice of apology for the mistreatment of Australia’s Indigenous people.

Because Jeffrey Lu family and his family are Vietnamese immigrants they also experience racial  discrimination in Corrigan. In Act Two, Scene Eight the audience learns that Mr Lu has been attacked by four men from town and in Act One, Scene Two Charlie describes a vicious attack on Mrs Lu. 

CHARLIE: At a meeting at the Miners’ Hall last night, Mrs Findlay, the publican’s wife, screamed at   Jeffrey’s mum. Told her to go back to where she came from. Then she pulled out a big chunk of Mrs Lam’s hair. Apparently one of Mrs Findlay’s sons got drafted. Everyone rushed to her after it happened… but no-one helped Mrs Lu. 

Act One, Scene Two 

The Immigration Restriction Act had been in place in Australia since 1901 and this act allowed for white British migrants to be preferred above others, excluding people from Asia and the Pacific from migrating to  Australia. For many people in Corrigan there would have been little understanding that migrant families such as the Lu family could actually enrich Australian culture. 

JEFFREY: Charlie… my family in Vietnam got killed yesterday. 

CHARLIE turns, stunned 

CHARLIE: What? 

JEFFREY: My aunt and uncle. Their village got bombed. 

CHARLIE: Your family got blown up? 

JEFFREY nods. 

CHARLIE: Did your aunt and uncle have children? 

JEFFREY: A boy and a girl. They’re really little. They’re okay. My dad has been on the phone all             night trying to get them to come here and stay with us but it’s hard to do that sort of thing. 

Act One, Scene Seven 

FAMILY IN JASPER JONES

"Jasper Jones" is a coming-of-age narrative that examines different dynamics within families, the ways in which families can be both supportive and destructive, and the impact of family on personal growth and identity.

One way that the theme of family is explored in "Jasper Jones" is through the relationships between the main characters and their families and the way people are shaped by their family life. For example, the protagonist, Charlie Bucktin, has a close but confusing relationship with his mother and father. Charlie loves his parents but feels a sense of distance from them both. There are parts of his parents lives that Charlie does not fully understand and he struggles with the tension between his parents and the breakdown of their marriage. 

The narrative also examines the impact of family on personal growth and identity. Jasper is burdened by the neglect he experiences from his father, the absence of a mother-figure in his life and the racism he experiences because his mother was Aboriginal.  These experiences impact the way the Jasper view himself and his place in the world.

Furthermore, "Jasper Jones" also portrays the ways in which families can be abusive and terribly destructive of youth and innocence. Laura's abuse from her father and Eliza's guilt at knowing about it but not knowing what to do - is at the core of the tragedy of this story. Charlie's mother also has a fall from grace when she is caught cheating on her husband.