Cloudstreet Character Analysis

Australian writer, Tim Winton’s iconic novel ‘Cloudstreet’ chronicles the lives of two working class Australian families who come to live together in One Cloud Street, a suburb of Perth, Western Australia. Cloud street encompasses critical Australian themes of family relationships, finding values within the stimuli of life and through this finding your cultural identity and exploring themes of religion and spiritually. Winton has cleverly examined the historical background of our country to incorporate an accurate allegory of the Australian identity into the novel and its characters.

Throughout Cloudstreet, there are numerous concepts that portray the Australian cultural identity as Winton attempts to tell a story of the "typical Australian".
Reading this novel feels familiar as Winton considers the concept of luck, Aboriginal spirituality, and the search for the meaning of life, in which are all Australian ideas that he expertly portrays. Both spirituality and religion concepts are widely coherent into the core of the novel and are depicted through the Australian notion of luck. Arguably luck has been almost etched into the Australian consciousness as a common working superstition, it is a form of relgiion for both familes. The Pickles family, specifically Sam, relies on the "shifty shadow of God" (pg.12) where as the Lambs turning to a game of "spinning the knife" (pg.53) that acts as their metaphorical life compass. After Fish drowns, Oriel once a devoted and "god fearing" Christian, begins to question her faith and the reliability of believing in God. Once Fish is resuscitated, only "some of him comes back" (pg.32) both lester and Oriel are forced to abandon God and Christianity, instead turning to luck in order to endure their circumstances. This draws on the common “Aussie battler” tradition, of which a working class person overcame challenging situations through perseverance, faith and steadfast determination. In terms of the Australian cultural identity, Winton has again taken an important and recognized historical Australian idea and shaped it to evoke feelings of familiarity and intimacy between the readers and the characters of Cloudstreet.

Winton presents the values and attitudes of Australian life by asserting these attitudes and values at the Australian society to provide readers an understanding of the characters and their culture in an attempt at pushing his own interpretation of them.
In Cloudstreet, Winton has effectively used the role of the woman and the man to express more modern attitudes and values of Australian life. Prime example of this are Lester and Oriel, the stereotypical man of the house, usually expected to go out, and work hard for money to support his family, and come home to his wife and kids, instead in Cloudstreet, he plays the complete opposite role. Lester is portrayed as a sensitive man who cooks and cleans regularly, whereas Oriel, his wife, has most of the control over the household and the one who wears the pants between both of them. Oriel is the compliment of Lester, as she has all the qualities you would expect to find in a man, she is strong, independent and determined, working hard to improve the family business. As it can be seen, Winton has effectively taken a step away from the traditional stereotypes of, "the man and woman of the house," and presented to readers the "typical Aussie household". Cloudstreet can also be observed from a feminist perspective which reveals the cultural context of women and the gender-based nature of Australian society in post World War 2 Perth. Australia was a male centred society as was much of the industrialised world and the value of women
was restricted by their sexuality and their role as nurturers. Winton provides an insight into the feminist idea by reflecting it in the lives of the female characters: Rose, Dolly and Oriel.

The spirit of the people of Australia is captured through the use of idioms such as ‘carn’ and ‘fair dinkum’, this is known as slang, short phrases that have long gone from the Australian language by now.
The use of language in Cloudstreet allows the text to be interpreted from a historical perspective. The texts integrity is accentuated through the vernacular as it captures the spirit of Australia and criticises a modern society. This allows readers to identify significant developments in the
nation.