Materialism In Tim Winton's Dirt Music

Has anyone here ever gone through the motions of a day, not really there? Read pages of text and not remember a single word afterwards? Been in the middle of a conversation then realise suddenly that you have no idea what's being talked about?

Lifelike and intriguing characters are an integral part of literature, resonating and relating with us readers to give insight into human nature and how it interacts with the modern world. I've come to learn that in this time of consumerist constructs and artificial medicants, the concept of reality can sometimes blur.

Connections with others and with life can dull, and by shaking off the shackles of materialism and rediscovering the baser parts of the human condition they can be restored. In Tim Winton's Dirt Music, I followed the character Georgie Jultand's awakening through the story.
In the opening she has a husband and children, and yet what should be happiness in their family scene is instead tainted by diction such as “Vegemite” and “VHF,” tying their relationship to materialism.
The boys refer to her derogatorily as “stepmother,” mixing the positive connotations of motherhood with emphasis on the unreal connection.

Sensory imagery in “vodka burned in her belly, shaky with caffeine,” illustrates the negatively consuming effects of the controllers that she is forced to resort to in order to get any way through life. Her withdrawal is apparent in the symbolism as she “bent down to the shadow of the dog,” portraying how she is living in a shadow of herself.

Lu Fox, the “shamateur, the fleet equivalent of a scab” is the break from constructed order that Georgie is craving, juxtaposed against the 'high end' consumerist values of her husband's like, “people with a million dollars' worth of boat and licence, a new Landcruiser every season, whose TV's were the size of
pianos.”

The irony that “a real fisherman's woman wouldn't have hesitated about reporting something suspicious” once again highlights Georgie's detachment, and the throwaway tone of the closing line “besides, she never had been much of a joiner” demonstrates her casual but omnipresent need for distinction.

The symbolism in “get those jeans off” conveys the temporary respite from materialism that Geogie's extramarital affair allows her, the more primal desires overriding the social imposition of marriage. But after Lu leaves the medicants reassert themselves in the accumulation of “brandy, bourbon, scotch, liqueurs, champagne,” numbing her once more.

The irony in “reconciled to how things really were” reveals Georgie's resignation even after one glimpse of the light, back to the half-lived life that she believes is inescapable. But bit by bit she begins to make her way to the surface once more.

Georgie “the little mound of dirt, she ate it,” symbolically consumes a fundamental ingredient of the natural world that comes from Lu, and later goes as far as to, again symbolically, “fill her wine-glass with water,” replacing her artificial doses with the most basic building block of life, representing her developing re-engagement.

Finally, it is her deepest connection, the most intimate exchange of life and breath as she “fell on Luther Fox, pressed her mouth to his and blew,” that takes her to the truncated final sentence that sums up her ending, “she's real.”
The complex character of Georgie Jutland is a vital part of Tim Winton's novel, communicating the uncertain definition of realism and the significance of the baser aspects of life.

In this manufactured world, Georgie found her way through a ghost in the machine, a not-entirely legal man and affair that brought her from a semi-present unfulfilled life, to awaken free from the bindings of medication and social constructs. All that's left to ask is, what about me? What's my reality?