Serpent’s nest (Symbol)
The narrator often refers to the location of the Phantom house on top of a serpent spirit’s nest. The serpent’s nest is a symbol of ancient Aboriginal spirituality. According to the culture of the Aboriginal residents of Desperance, the serpent is a creation spirit. This spirit is creative but it also has a volatile, destructive power. This power follows the dramatic seasonal changes in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The narrator establishes a parallel between this beautiful yet dangerous spirit, the Phantom house, and the character of Angel Day.
Sea eagles/seagulls (Symbol)
When Will tries to rescue Elias’s body and boat, he is surprised to find the sea eagle that always accompanies Elias when he went fishing. The sea eagle represents a guardian angel that remains with Elias, from life to death. The bird also represents the connection between the earthly realm and the spirit world. This is evident when Mozzie and his men enter an ancient cave in order to bury Luke and Tristum Fishman and Aaron Ho Kum. When Will releases the canoes bearing the boys’ bodies, many seagulls appear. They beat their wings in order to help bring the boys’ bodies safely from earth to the spirit world.
Clocks (Motif)
Clocks are a recurring motif in Carpentaria. At the outset of the novel, when storm Leda hits, all of the clocks stop ticking at the same exact time. Later, Angel Day finds a large mantelpiece clock at the dump. Angel believes that if she brings the clock home then her children will finally go to school on time and achieve success. In this way, clocks represent the white, colonial, and capitalist idea of time, which stands in contrast to the ancient and millennial time of the natural world.
Cyclone (Motif)
Cyclones hit Desperance every season, and the novel features quite a few of them. At the outset of the novel, storm Leda alters the town and frightens its residents. The cyclone casts a strange red hue over everything and brings all clocks to a stop. At the end of the novel, an historic storm wipes out the whole town of Desperance, and the significance of this motif becomes clearer. The motif of cyclones represents divine justice, since the narrator indicates that the ancient spirits send cyclones to punish people who break Aboriginal law and harm the natural world.
The Aboriginal Mary (Symbol)
The Aboriginal Mary is a symbol of Angel Day’s hybrid relationship to white Christian culture. On the one hand, Angel accepts the image of the Virgin Mary into her home. She hopes the statue will grant her access to the same fortune and privileges that white people enjoy. However, Angel repaints the statue as a Black Aboriginal woman that resembles her. In this way, the statue ultimately becomes a symbol of resistance to the imposition of Christianity and white settler culture, as well as a celebration of Aboriginal beauty and power.
