Big World By Tim Winton Summary

IQE Charts for Module A – Tim Winton’s Short Stories and The Poetry of Zohra Saed.
Theme/Value: Identity
Context and text (Tim Winton)
Technique & Quote
Explanation
Technique & Quote
Context and text (Zohra Saed)

“Big World” is a story of two boys’ lives as they finish school and assert their independence in the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Context: Grew up in small towns in WA. Working class background. Father was a police officer and great story teller. Educated at university. Christian.
Idiom: “the old girl will crack a sad on me”; “[Biggie’s] old man will beat the shit out of him”.
First-person narration/colloquial language/dismissive tone: “Biggie’s results were worse... he couldn’t give a rat’s ring”; “[his mother’s plan for him to return to school] I’ve blown all that off now”.
Value: identity is formed through human experiences as well as the influence of family and friends.
Winton:
Protagonist caught between two worlds: his family’s (mother’s hopes for her son) and his town’s anti-intellectualism.
Colloquial language reflects and evokes the sense of place and class (working class).
Dismissive tone contrasted with awareness of family hopes and values reveals the still forming attitudes and identity characteristic of late adolescence.
Saed:
The persona is both observer and participant in her family’s gathering. It is through poetry that she makes sense of and finds her place in the world (identity).
Figurative language: Saed mixes objects of her homeland (e.g. specific foods like pine nuts and perfumed tea) with family history and memory to show that culture and even vicarious experience contributes to an individual’s sense of
identity.

Figurative language: “the warmth of pink tea has coaxed out family legends”; “I taste the past from which we have escaped with our lives”; “For years I have traced their voices, arranged them into stanzas”
“Voices: Archive of Spines” is a brief glimpse at an Afghani-American family gathering through the eyes of the persona/narrator. The occasion reveals the wounds of the family’s past and the healing had through shared memories.

Context: Afghani-American (arrived at Brooklyn, US at age 5). Home schooled by her father. MA from Brooklyn College. Draws inspiration from family and is affected by her familial and cultural past, present and future.

Theme/Value: Family
Context and text (Tim Winton)
Technique & Quote
Explanation
Technique & Quote
Context and text (Zohra Saed)

Theme/Value:
Context and text (Tim Winton)
Technique & Quote
Explanation
Technique & Quote
Context and text (Zohra Saed)