Family and Identity within Cloudstreet Olivia Clare 12th Grade

It is through Tim Winton’s primary characters, including Quick and Rose, as well as the manipulation of other literary elements that concepts such as family and identity are explored within Cloudstreet (1991).

The concept of family is universal to any time period, and Tim Winton’s honest approach to exploring family life within Cloudstreet has ensured the novel’s lasting value to an Australian audience. Winton clearly presents two very different families with contrasting values: the Pickles and the Lambs. Rose and Quick within these families demonstrate a lack of belonging to Cloud street, which is why they are essential in revealing the growth and change that the Pickles and Lambs experience over the twenty-year course of the text. Quick’s survivors guilt following Fish’s near death leaves him lost and with low self-esteem, his connection with his family completely detached, “Jesus I hate this family stuff. It makes me sick. I don’t need this.” The truncated sentences and simple syntax reflect Quick’s poor education and lower-class upbringing, and his rejection of emotion is very similar to that of his hard-hearted mother, Oriel, with whom he has an ever-maturing relationship. Rose’s relationship with her mother is far more...