Analysis Of Breath, A Blow A Kiss And Sand By Tim Winton

Jack Davis’ ‘Honey Spot’ outlines the interaction between the Winalli family and Peggy and the Ranger, and the media article ‘Brisbane Tent Embassy battle goes on as Elder stands up for his rights’ by the National Indigenous Times Online discusses the arrest of an Indigenous elder after practising his culture at the Tent Embassy site in Musgrave Park. There are many common themes discussed throughout both ‘Honey Spot’ and ‘Brisbane Tent Embassy battle goes on as Elder stands up for his sovereign rights.’ Whilst both very different styles of text the themes of stereotype-driven misconceptions, Indigenous cultural practices being frequently frowned on by non-Indigenous Australians and rigid beliefs about environmental protection inhibiting Aboriginal

Australia is filled with many different aspects in which makes it the country it is today. I believe it is important to study texts that explore aspects of Australia by studying texts such as ‘The Club’, by David Williamson, a play written in 1977 about an Australian football club and movies such as “The Castle”, directed by Rob Stitch in 1997, about the daily life of an Australian family when their happiness is threatened when developers attempt to buy their house to expand the neighboring airport. Both these texts show us what Australian life was like in the past. By us looking at themes such as language, tradition and the mateship shown we are able to explore different aspects of Australia that make it what it is today.

The award winning Australian author, Tim Winton’s recent collection of seventeen short stories ‘The Turning’ provides a perceptive and pleasurable reading experience, compressed within one novel. These overlapping and linking stories explore the extraordinary turning points in ordinary people’s lives as stunning portraits of a small coastal community. Winton utilises varieties of language and formal techniques such as, theme, character and setting, to effectively engage and discover the central characters of ‘The Turning’. Winton’s use of different language techniques, and distinctive texts, engage the audience to the messages of his short stories. The three stories that connected effectively to the audience via character development were,

The notion of the contemporary indigenous identity and the impact of these notions are both explored in texts that have been studied. Ivan Sen’s 2002 film ‘Beneath Clouds’ focuses on the stereotypical behaviours of Indigenous Australians highlighting Lina and Vaughn’s journey. This also signifies the status and place of the Australian identity today. Through the use of visual techniques and stereotypes the ideas that the Indigenous are uneducated, involved in crime and the stereotypical portrayal of white people are all explored. Similarly the notion of urban and rural life is represented in Kennith Slessor’s ‘William Street’ and ‘Country Towns’.

Gray uses the images of an “Aboriginal, not attempting to hitch, outside town” to emphasise the discomfort and disconnection he feels with land and the environment around him. This image is very strong as it shows his disempowerment towards the environment. He feels lost in this town so he moves away from the foreign constructions.

Australia’s identity has always been a complicated one. Starting with Aboriginal genocide, 1800’s cowboys and villains, two world wars and a bunch of poems describing them, it makes it difficult to conclude on what being an ‘Aussie’ really is. Thankfully, the two thought-provoking poems Nobody Calls Me a Wog Anymore by Komninos Zervos, and My Country by Dorothea Mackellar both use their discerning selection of themes to reflect modern attitudes in some extent. Along with their themes, Nobody Calls Me a Wog Anymore and My Country both use their story to capture the attributes modern Australians possess to some degree.

The representation of Indigenous Australians in fiction and nonfiction texts are influenced by a range of factors. In the contemporary world of multicultural Australia, there has been a variety of ways groups of people are represented in texts. The Indigenous population is often portrayed in ways that strengthen harmful stereotypes. However, there are also a variety of positive outlooks and portrayals expressing their strength and achievements. In texts studied in year 8 English, the representation of Indigenous Australians in Crow country are characterized as outcasts and reflect cultural distinction. Newspaper articles regarding “Adam Goodes” demonstrates how preconceived thoughts from many Australians destroys sporting stars outlook upon

Australia is also seen through the contrast of Jim and Ashley’s cultures – Jim living in Australia all his life, and Ashley being educated in England. Ashley is seen as higher class than Jim, because Ashley owns land, received a better education, while Jim is working class, and was educated in a one room school. Ashley’s classical taste in music suggests an education, also.

Australia’s living treasure and author Tim Winton’s collection of short stories, ‘The Turning’, provides the audience with an insightful and engaging journey into the overcoming of many challenges. Through the three short stories ‘Abbreviation’, ‘Damaged Goods’ and ‘On Her Knees’, Winton emphasised the issues around self-discovery, the overcoming of negative past experiences and the challenges that come with self-sacrifice. By creating an intriguing character; Vic Lang, that is present in all three stories, and by utilising a variety of language and literary techniques, the audience becomes occupied into the exploring of Australian life. By his use of evocative, reminiscent language and illustrative way of communicating key events, Winton cleverly

Winton conveys the previous mistreatment of indigenous Australians to continue to permeate the conscience of modern day Australia. Magic realism is employed through Winton’s portraying the “invasion” of the house on Cloudstreet being depicted to echo the indigenous response to the first fleet through the house “protesting” through “floorboards” “grinding” subsequent to the Pickles family “step[ping] inside”, empowering his message by presenting an almost palpable reaction to his audience. Moreover, Winton further incorporates magic realism in illustrating his concern for the enduring effects of the mistreatment of indigenous Australians through the “girls” and “hags shadows” lingering in the house’s library. By presenting such an extraordinary

Writing from residences in countries at great distances from Australia, Winton developed a longing for his home and more specifically for an Australia of the past. His homesickness made him rediscover through his memories an Australia which he loved, which was slowing evolving into a country which was unrecognisable to his childhood. In Cloudstreet, Tim Winton reflects on Australia’s landscape which is quickly being turned into a suburbia which seems disjointed from natural state of the Australian land. Similarly the culture of the Australian community and sense of camaraderie is presented as integral to an Australia which Winton is increasingly nostalgic about throughout the novel.

My chosen text reveals that life in Melbourne during the era in which it is set was difficult and not as simple as I expected it to be. The author described life on ‘The Plenty’ as different to anywhere else as it had the “tang of eucalyptus mixed with horse sweat and saddle soap. It was a cattle property, mainly, with some sheep, on land full of gullies and ridges. The rhythm of life here was based on the men going out on the horses every morning. Up at dawn, porridge and salt in the early sharp light, and back in the evening tired, sweaty and smelling of the

ate Grenville’s best selling 2005 book The Secret River, directed by Neil Armfield and adapted by Andrew Bovell, is a shocking, scandalous – not to mention thrilling - insight into the historic events of the settling of Australia. This ambitious new play teaches us the truth behind what really happened between the two groups the ‘Dharug’s’ and the white settlers and by the use of Aboriginal dialect we are placed in the perspective of one white man, leaving the theatre in a deafening silence.

Being the home of the ‘bushman’ the Australian bush was a place for ‘real’ and tough men. The literature of the time concentrated on, and romanticized the notion of a dangerous and isolated life in the bush. Historian Russel Ward analyzed the Australian Identity in his 1958 novel ‘The Australian Legend’, noting the influence the distinctly Australian geography had on its inhabitants. Hypothesising that the bushman identity was shaped by the difficulties pioneer Australians faced in regards to integrating themselves into their new environment (Ward & Hurst, 2003). The romanticised hardships of life in the bush were prominent in literature of the time, Henry Lawson’s preface for My Brilliant Career emphasises this, he describes the bush as a place “where people toil and bake and suffer and are kind”(Lawson, 1901). Lawson’s representation of the bush environment is also illustrated in his works of fiction; his short story ‘The Drovers Wife’ characterizes the Australian outback in a similar way:

Manga and Anime, that found brilliance at the dawn of the digital age, have now moved on from the realm of popular culture to playing a powerful role in shaping the transnational memory of Japan in the twentieth century. Two wonderful examples of the role these two mediums now play in shaping our collective and transnational memories of WWII are the semi-autobiographical manga work, Showa by Mizuki Shigeru and the stunning Anime film The Wind Rises by Hayao Miyazaki. Both works place the protagonists in the turbulent Showa era, while concurrently following the lives of men directly involved in Japan’s war effort. Showa and the Wind Rises tap into, what historian Carol Gluck termed in Operations of Memory, Japan’s official and public memory of the war. However they are far from the “heroic narratives” that gained favor right after the war. (gluck 49). While the content of heroic narratives differ nation to nation, they all evoke the same sense of “national unity by effacing experiential difference, creating whole nations of partisans, resistant’s, anti-facists – and above all victims (gluck 50). Showa and The Wind Rises escape the constraint of heroic narratives, by interjecting personal memory into vernacular and public memory. The works artfully craft micro-perspectives and add the personal memories of Mizuki and Miyazaki to shed light upon the real human qualities of the