Suffering is centrepiece in Tim Winton’s modern Australian classic, Cloudstreet. The novel depicts characters who struggle to overcome their woes, with various approaches employed by characters so that they can endure their pain. Winton glorifies the characters able to surpass their struggles through reconciliation and love, describing them as “whole” and “human” beings who acknowledge that life is the one thing constant in our existence; something to be grateful for. Those unable to completely conquer their misery do not truly live although they may endure. These characters either are so focussed on battling against pain, they cannot resolve it at the source, or chose a path of self-ruin and are diminished to “shadows”, eventually thriving on hatred and regret. The fundamental message of Cloudstreet is to reconcile and triumph over sorrow, allowing one to be content and complete in life.
Characters are criticised for turning to feelings of “pity”, “misery” and “hate” to carry on through their torment, neglecting the value of the life they have. Winton associates these self-destructive characters with the shadows that haunt Cloudstreet, alluding to them living a ghost-life or a half-life and gaining satisfaction from the distress of others. “Ghostly” Rose is likened to these apparitions during her period of depression after her miscarriage, she reflects on feeling “the shadow in her”, a “dark eating thing inside”. This link is strengthened when Oriel Lamb comments on Rose’s anorexic appearance, crying, “Lord, you look like a shadow”. Rose’s choice to live in her gaunt state is maliciously motivated to spite her mother, with Rose declaring “hating [Dolly] is the best part of being alive”. Ultimately, Winton condemns this defeatis...
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...rates Cloudstreet’s theme to overcome grief and properly value the sanctity of life.
The struggle of characters to cope with life’s tests is key to story of Cloudstreet. The enveloping pain each of the characters encounter strains their quality of life and they find themselves using various methods to counter this torment. Some characters embrace their suffering and in turn inflict it on others whilst some characters so strongly endeavour to combat their misery that they lose sight of ever bringing an end to their heartache. Those able to overcome their pain find themselves living an enriched and full life, with this ability to trounce desolation coming from a willingness to reconcile. Winton acknowledges that “we’ve all battled in the same corridor … time makes for us”; powerfully emphasising that Cloudstreet’s message to forgive and accept distress is universal.
People one can never really tell how person is feeling or what their situation is behind closed doors or behind the façade of the life they lead. Two masterly crafted literary works present readers with characters that have two similar but very different stories that end in the same result. In Herman Melville’s story “Bartleby the Scrivener” readers are presented with Bartleby, an interesting and minimally deep character. In comparison to Gail Godwin’s work, “A Sorrowful Woman” we are presented with a nameless woman with a similar physiological state as Bartleby whom expresses her feelings of dissatisfaction of her life. Here, a deeper examination of these characters their situations and their ultimate fate will be pursued and delved into for a deeper understanding of the choice death for these characters.
Throughout the lives of most people on the planet, there comes a time when there may be a loss of love, hope or remembrance in our lives. These troublesome times in our lives can be the hardest things we go through. Without love or hope, what is there to live for? Some see that the loss of hope and love means the end, these people being pessimistic, while others can see that even though they feel at a loss of love and hope that one day again they will feel love and have that sense of hope, these people are optimistic. These feelings that all of us had, have been around since the dawn of many. Throughout the centuries, the expression of these feelings has made their ways into literature, novels, plays, poems, and recently movies. The qualities of love, hope, and remembrance can be seen in Emily Bronte’s and Thomas Hardy’s poems of “Remembrance” “Darkling Thrush” and “Ah, Are you Digging on my Grave?”
Despite its prevalence, suffering is always seen an intrusion, a personal attack on its victims. However, without its presence, there would never be anyway to differentiate between happiness and sadness, nor good and evil. It is encoded into the daily lives people lead, and cannot be avoided, much like the prophecies described in Antigone. Upon finding out that he’d murdered his father and married his mother,
The speaker in “Five A.M.” looks to nature as a source of beauty during his early morning walk, and after clearing his mind and processing his thoughts along the journey, he begins his return home feeling as though he is ready to begin the “uphill curve” (ln. 14) in order to process his daily struggles. However, while the speaker in “Five Flights Up,” shares the same struggles as her fellow speaker, she does little to involve herself in nature other than to observe it from the safety of her place of residence. Although suffering as a result of her struggles, the speaker does little to want to help herself out of her situation, instead choosing to believe that she cannot hardly bare recovery or to lift the shroud of night that has fallen over her. Both speakers face a journey ahead of them whether it be “the uphill curve where a thicket spills with birds every spring” (ln. 14-15) or the five flights of stares ahead of them, yet it is in their attitude where these two individuals differ. Through the appreciation of his early morning surroundings, the speaker in “Five A.M.” finds solitude and self-fulfillment, whereas the speaker in “Five Flights Up” has still failed to realize her own role in that of her recovery from this dark time in her life and how nature can serve a beneficial role in relieving her of her
In Part Two of the poem, Williams questions grief as an emotion. He tries to indicate what exactly the emotion of grief entails, and maybe even what it should be. He comes to the conclusion that grief is not clear-cut, but rather like a roller coaster ride, up and down, coming and going in unexpected waves. Readers can identify with this, as we all know that grief is not an appare...
In today’s society not many people realize that they are thankful to wake up and live another day. Just imagine being lost at night in an area you are completely unfamiliar with. Imagine it being cold, and you having no clothing. You don’t have any money and you are starving. Now, all your ears hear are the screams of the one’s around you being killed. To add to the torture, you are unable to control your next move, nor the next. There is constant death, starvation, and suffering happening all around you, but you cannot do anything to help the situation besides fending for yourself to survive. This is the devastating and cruel world that Chanrithy Him’s When Broken Glass Floats introduces to its readers.
At other times, nature can be a source of solace for those who have suffered. Following the death of Gladys and Kate, Grainier looks to the horizon to seek comfort from his crushing loss. “All his life Robert Grainier would remember vividly the burned valley at sundown, the most dream-like business he’d ever witnessed waking – the brilliant pastels of the last light overhead, some clouds...
Toni Morrison's novel, Beloved, reveals the effects of human emotion and its power to cast an individual into a struggle against him or herself. In the beginning of the novel, the reader sees the main character, Sethe, as a woman who is resigned to her desolate life and isolates herself from all those around her. Yet, she was once a woman full of feeling: she had loved her husband Halle, loved her four young children, and loved the days of the Clearing. And thus, Sethe was jaded when she began her life at 124 Bluestone Road-- she had loved too much. After failing to 'save' her children from the schoolteacher, Sethe suffered forever with guilt and regret. Guilt for having killed her "crawling already?" baby daughter, and then regret for not having succeeded in her task. It later becomes apparent that Sethe's tragic past, her chokecherry tree, was the reason why she lived a life of isolation. Beloved, who shares with Seths that one fatal moment, reacts to it in a completely different way; because of her obsessive and vengeful love, she haunts Sethe's house and fights the forces of death, only to come back in an attempt to take her mother's life. Through her usage of symbolism, Morrison exposes the internal conflicts that encumber her characters. By contrasting those individuals, she shows tragedy in the human condition. Both Sethe and Beloved suffer the devastating emotional effects of that one fateful event: while the guilty mother who lived refuses to passionately love again, the daughter who was betrayed fights heaven and hell- in the name of love- just to live again.
During the process of growing up, we are taught to believe that life is relatively colorful and rich; however, if this view is right, how can we explain why literature illustrates the negative and painful feeling of life? Thus, sorrow is inescapable; as it increase one cannot hide it. From the moment we are born into the world, people suffer from different kinds of sorrow. Even though we believe there are so many happy things around us, these things are heartbreaking. The poems “Tips from My Father” by Carol Ann Davis, “Not Waving but Drowning” by Stevie Smith, and “The Fish” by Elizabeth Bishop convey the sorrow about growing up, about sorrowful pretending, and even about life itself.
The house Cloudstreet is deeply symbolic in Tim Winton's novel. It is the place where as the blurb suggests "for twenty years they roister and rankle, laugh and curse until that roof over their heads becomes a home for their hearts." Indeed, each aspect of the house develops its own personified characteristics from the fence "patched together from old signs" and the Lambs' rooms "like an old stroke survivor paralysed down one side". However, the library is the most significant room in symbolising the author's values and attitudes.
The accumulation implies the severity of the noise and juxtaposed against the silence of their old neighbours, Winton demonstrates his purpose: that the landscape shapes us and irrational emotions of fear and worry interfere with our receptivity to the landscape. The negative connotations of “uncomfortable”, “nervous”, “disapproval”, “resented” and “disgust” used to describe their neighbours highlight their lack of receptivity to their new landscape. The strained relationship with the neighbours continued into autumn and although displeased, the couple “took careful note of what was said”. The gradual acceptance emphasises the time required to fully accept the new people and their landscape, as well as the shift in perspective that is only possible with time.
Catherine and Heathcliff reveal their fervent devotion and affection for each other when the former is lying on her deathbed, and in those tender, moribund moments earnest and ardent confessions are made that signify their mutual adoration and are harbingers of Heathcliff’s adumbrative vengeance. Heathcliff suffers to see Catherine in such a ghostly state, and weeps at the idea of being without her, crying, ““Would you (Catherine) like to live with your soul in the grave?”” (151) In saying this he demonstrates not only his own pain at her imminent fate, but also their metaphorically entwined lives. He does so by connecting the departure of her soul to his own, claiming that when she dies, so too will he. Additionally, by mere fact that the normally stoic Heathcliff was found in a state of grievance over the unfortunate circumstances is indicative of the gravity and desperation that with her passing he regards. Nelly points out as much by her matter-of-fact remark, “...it seemed Heathcliff could weep on a great occasion like this.” (151) Therefore, Heathcliff’s anguish befo...
The novel Cloudstreet, by Western Australian born novelist Tim Winton is essentially a story revolving around how two rural families have come to live together at number one Cloudstreet. This novel’s themes are about finding one’s place in the world and the search for the meaning of life. As in this instance, Winton has successfully used setting and structure, crucial factors in any prosperous novel to help create a feeling of a real-life type atmosphere and perspective. This essay will demonstrate how Winton has used setting and structure to help develop and convey his themes.
While she is buying flowers for her party, Mrs. Dalloway has an existential crisis regarding the meaning of life and the inevitability of death. She reflects on the atmosphere of the London streets and her old suitor Peter Walsh as she reads some lines from Shakespeare’s Cymbeline. Mrs. Dalloway’s existential crisis demonstrates situational irony since the concept of life and death is quite deep and complex, yet she seems to live a shallow life consisting of throwing parties and picking which flowers to buy. Although she is contemplating her own mortality, Woolf’s word choice, such as “consoling,” suggests that death is positive and liberating, applying a light tone to a dark situation, adding to the irony. Mrs. Dalloway describes the trees,
The poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth is about the poet’s mental journey in nature where he remembers the daffodils that give him joy when he is lonely and bored. The poet is overwhelmed by nature’s beauty where he thought of it while lying alone on his couch. The poem shows the relationship between nature and the poet, and how nature’s motion and beauty influences the poet’s feelings and behaviors for the good. Moreover, the process that the speaker goes through is recollected that shows that he isolated from society, and is mentally in nature while he is physically lying on his couch. Therefore, William Wordsworth uses figurative language and syntax and form throughout the poem to express to the readers the peace and beauty of nature, and to symbolize the adventures that occurred in his mental journey.