Expository Essay- Hawaii's Last Hope

Healy Crews

Ms. Romano

4 AP English, 6th Period

21 May 2014

Hawaii’s Last Hope

The Descendants by Kaui Hart Hemmings goes beyond detailing the issues of a man dealing with death and the raising of his children to describe the racial tension that has plagued Hawaii for centuries. When Matt King has to decide between selling his family’s acres of unblemished Kauai land or preserving it and protecting the Hawaii that his ancestor’s knew, he ends up also caught in the crossfire of those who want to make money from the sale, and those who feel that parts of Hawaii should remain unindustrialized. His conflict represents the racial tensions in Hawaii, which began when Captain Cook first stepped onto Kauai’s shores. As it turns out, Hawaii isn’t the peaceful set of islands it seems to be. Instead, underlying tensions based on socio-economic and racial differences remain a major issue.

Before Hawaii was annexed into the United States, the islands had their own government and and natives were very successful. Today “Native Hawaiians [...] have been pushed to the margins. And it's not a nice place to be [...] Those margins include high incarceration levels, very little land ownership and poor education” (NPR). Matt King is a direct descendant of the royal family of Hawaii, but also of an American, which upsets many Hawaiians, who don’t feel he deserves to control their land. This puts him in a tough position, because on top of his mixed heritage, he also has a lot of money, which makes it hard for native Hawaiians to identify and sympathize with him. The same issues of land ownership, race, and income haunt real life Hawaii too.

Like his ancestor, Princess Kaiulani, Matt King represents a “last hope” for Hawaii. That hope is for Hawaii to return to a beautiful and independent nation, where Native Hawaiians have power and freedom. In the years before Hawaii’s annexation “keeping European powers out of Hawaii became a principal foreign policy goal” for the royal family (US History). When that failed, Hawaiians turned to Kaiulani, who “became the first member of the Hawaiian royalty to receive the kind of training traditionally given to the children of European monarchs” (Hawaiian Roots). Despite her European-like upbringing and Scottish father, Kaiulani remained loyal to old Hawaii and remained anti-annexation until her death. Matt King lived in a similar way, with all of the privilege that comes from being part of a wealthy white family, but the love for Hawaii that came from growing up Hawaiian. When King decides to keep the land he’s restoring a piece of old Hawaii and giving back a tiny bit of power to the frustrated natives, which is what makes him the second “last hope” for Hawaii. 

The issues in Hawaii do go beyond arguments over the preservation and ownership of land. Soci-economic and racial tensions are deep seeded in Hawaiian life, because of the anger Hawaiians felt over annexation. However, Hemmings is saying that as long as there are people who care about preserving the nature and cultures of Hawaii, there is always hope that one day Hawaii can be the peaceful group of islands that it is meant to be.