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Tim Winton
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A BRIEF TEXTUAL ANALYSIS OF SOME ASPECTS
OF TIM WINTONS THAT EYE THE SKY
an essay by Carolyne Lee (This is an example of a textual analysis using feminist deconstructivist theory - and, in true deconstructivist style, the views expressed in this essay are not necessarily those held by the author.)
The first paragraph of Tim Wintons novel That Eye the Sky (1) yields some interesting language for the feminist reader/critic embarking on a little close textual analysis.
But first perhaps I should define this person, the feminist reader (presented here in the third person). It has been said () that the user of feminist criticism is suspicious, always alert for traces (in the texts that she reads) of the sites of the linguistic constructions of ideological stances, asking the question whose ends are being served here?
And so that this question can be applied to this piece of text - this paper (note the passive voice here a ruse, similar to the use of the third person voice with which I began this paper, in which many narratives are told, and behind which author/subjects hide their subjectivity/proclaim to be ideologically neutral. But consider this isnt the fictional I also a ruse?) - I must declare that SHE, our feminist reader, is also me the I, and the eye, of THIS text. But who, I ask, is the I, - could it be, for example, the twelve year old narrator? - not to mention the eye, of That Eye the Sky? But the important question to be put, I believe, is whose ends do/es he/they serve? The answer to this question will have to wait.
But I/she should not be duped into thinking that the first paragraph of the narrative of this novel constitutes the first piece of text in the book. Several blank pages earlier, and framed on both sides by blank pages, is a quotation From the otherworld of action and media, this interleaved continuing plane is hard to focus; we are looking into the light - it makes some smile, some grimace.Les A. Murray, Equanimity
The word that jumps out at me from this quote is light, and I am immediately mindful of the phrase see the light. My dictionary gives four meanings for this phrase, but I have chosen meanings three and four as relevant here to accept or understand an idea; realise the truth of something. And to be converted, especially to Christianity. () I intend to see if the meanings chosen have any congruence with the meanings I shall make from some of the text of this novel.
It should be made clear that I am not interested in Wintons intention in choosing that quotation, nor in his intentions with the novel as a whole. It is a foolish critic, in any case, who professes to know such things; for surely it is an impossibility to ever know what an author intended. (4)
This is not to say that I will not reveal biographical details of the author, insofar as I judge them to be helpful in making meaning of the text. (For example, I know that Tim Winton is not, say, twelve, but thirty years of age. (5) But these details will be equally as relevant as the biographical details of the reader or critic - in this case me - in this quest for meaning. And it must be recognized that the biographical details of both parties are discursive constructs and not a key to meaning in themselves. (6)
A word or two about meaning is probably in order here. Meaning is always political. (7) And so when I talk about meaning, I do not do so in order to fix it, for all time and across all contexts, but rather to show its location in a particular text, in the light of that texts relation with other texts, and to insist that this meaning is not only plural but constantly deferred in the never-ending web of textuality in which all texts are located. (8)
This is, of course, a deconstructive stance, originating from the work of Jacques Derrida. Derrida argued that all criticism is predicated on specific philosophical precepts, () something which now seems self evident to the feminist critic. However, there are still critical texts to be found, based on the liberal-humanist precept, in which no speaking subject declares herself/himself, in which there are claims to be ideology-free and gender-neutral. A feminist poststructuralist stance holds that, No representations in the visual and written media are gender-neutral. They either confirm or challenge the status quo through the ways they construct or fail to construct images of femininity and masculinity. (10)
All this having been stated, I will now return to Wintons first paragraph. As I mentioned at the start, this paragraph contains some interesting language. Several characters are, in fact, introduced here. There is the I, Ort, the child of Dad (incidentally, the first word in this narrative), and there is Mum. Mum is initially described in terms of her bum (it moves around when she laughs, its like an angry mob). In fact, the word bum manages to appear twice in this first paragraph. The word pills (which I take to be a colloquial term for testicles, but for which I can find no corroboration in my dictionary) appears also, but they are owned by Ort and are something which the rooster apparently goes for...when you collect the eggs. We are told it is a mean rooster, so obviously the rooster should not be doing this we thus learn that pills are precious to their owners and should not be attacked.
This type of ingenuous schoolboy language with its traces of gutter humour, congruent as it is with the character of Ort, the twelve year old narrator, has conveniently identified two of the main characters entirely in terms of aspects of sexual dimorphism. And all in the first paragraph.
The word bum makes its next appearance on the following page, where we learn that the name Ort, short for Morton, is also the family name for bum. Tegwyn, Orts older sister, makes her appearance on page 1. After the description of her piano playing and her brown plaits comes the following Shes got big boobs - they look like pigmelons - bigger than Mums. Mums are like two socks full of sand.
What is the feminist reader to make of images of pigmelons and socks of sand? (They are certainly not objects which one might regard as precious, like, for example, the pills mentioned earlier.) I can find no entry for pigmelon in my dictionary, but from having lived for eight years in Western Australia - the setting for this novel - I believe that pigmelons are large fruit resembling watermelons but which are not for human consumption; these useless (to humans) objects are frequently fed to pigs hence their appellation.
At the very least, then, pigmelon is a strange word to choose (and chosen by whom? I/Ort?) for a body part without which the human race would not exist. The counter-argument to this (however implausible) might be that imagery is often randomly chosen. But it should be mentioned here that it is at those borders of discourse where metaphor and example seem arbitrarily chosen that ideology breaks through. (11) The next sexual body part to make an appearance in this text is a penis, on page forty. It is the penis of Henry Warburton. Its his thing, his old fella. Its real big and fat, up out of his pants like a periscope. An interesting choice, periscope a useful instrument, surely, since it gives its user all-round vision.
The scene thus set, Orts own old fella appears two pages later. There it is, me old fella with its nine black hairs, sticking up just like that old mans under the bridge. Ort then spends some time bawling, but shortly after he notices something over the house. Like a cloud. Like a cloud. It glows, just sitting over the roof. Hell! Its bright as the moon. A moment later, Ort is informed by his mother that his father is awake, and some lines later in the narrative his father, awake but totally unable to function independently, is brought home from hospital. Am I to assume some connection between the penises, whatever it is sitting over the roof, and the return of Orts now damaged and dysfunctional father?
I will mention here an interesting structural feature of this novel. It is at the end of chapter five, which is also the end of part I, when Orts mother says that Sam is awake. Chapter six, at the start of which Sam is brought home, is the first chapter of part II. Part II ends with the family, together with Henry Warburton, having Christmas dinner in the bush. Part III begins with Henry, who has now been staying with the Flacks for some weeks, screaming and crying, with his old fella sticking up like a flagpole. At Henrys direction, Ort, who has got up to see what the noise is, goes back to bed in his own room, where light from the full moon and the cloud on the roof come pouring in through the curtains like its milk from a bucket. Again, there is this textual juxtapositioning of an erect penis, a phallus, with this light-producing whatever-it-is on the roof. And this book has three parts in all a trinity.
After Orts father, Sam, is brought home, Henry Warburton appears and says he has come to help them with Sam. His main activity is giving Sam his daily bath. Ort appears to begin to relate to Henry as a father figure Dad looks so small, like hes my little brother now and my new dads taking him to the bath. (p. 7)
On page 87 Henry finally states his purpose I havent meant to be deceitful; God has sent me here. When Ort asks him why, Henry says, To love you. Henry then talks and talks to Ort and his mother, Alice. The content of this talking is related in the words of Ort
He talks and talks about this bloke Adam and this bloke Eve who had no clothes on and it didnt matter cause they ate fruit and talked to a snake and it was a bad thing, and everything went wrong-oh. And how you can see God but you cant. And all these stories about God in burning bushes and piles of fire and tornadoes and little clouds. Stories! Piles of em. He tells stories like youve never heard boy. About God getting sad when no-one loved him, and him just waiting around keeping things going, waiting for someone to like him, and then getting angry and crying and making a flood with his tears. This bloke Noah and his boat...Another one about a kid fighting a monster...All the time hes talking about this bad in people and God wanting people to love him but they cant because of all this black bad in them like in an apple... (p. 8)
Henry then admits that he is an evangelist, and tells Alice and Ort about his life. You could actually say youve SEEN THE LIGHT, Alice says (my emphasis). And it apparently doesnt take long for Alice and Ort to do the same. It is no surprise when, several pages later, on page 5, Henry baptises them in the river ...in the name of the Father, Son and Spirit.
Tegwyn, Orts older sister, is, in her mothers words, a harder nut to crack. Henry spends a lot of his time talking, arguing, fighting with her. Dont try your religious crap on me, boy. Dont come the crapper with me... she tells him on one occasion. (p. 17) Is this supposed to mean she is one of those who ...cant (love God)...because of all the black bad in them like in an apple...? After all, a type of fruit was used as a simile to describe her breasts. (Interestingly, perhaps, I find that a colloquial meaning of melon is a stupid person, or fool.) (1)
But it is possible that all these meanings are, at best, irrelevant, because - as I noted earlier, when I discovered that nearly all the people in this text are characterised in terms of aspects of their sexual dimorphism - Tegwyns most distinguishing feature is her femaleness. It is true that Alice is also female, but she is a wife and mother and therefore - according to Christian ideology - safely domesticated, (1) even asexual (after all, her breasts are socks of sand hardly a sexual image), certainly less sexually female than her daughter, at any rate. She is also pure; she resists the temptation to form a relationship with Henry (pages 116 & 141).
So Tegwyn, defined very early in the text as female, and then characterised throughout by her extreme churlishness (and occasionally, masochism) is a convenient construction in a text which seems to have something to do with getting the characters who people it to see the light. In fact, if the first female, Eve, had not led Adam into original sin, humanity would still be in the Garden of Eden, and no one would need to be shown any light. Within this discourse, according to one critic, this myth of feminine evil (is) a foundation for the entire structure of phallic Christianity. (14)
The word which appeared twice in the first paragraph of this text needs to make a reappearance here, as it does towards the end of the novel. Ort looks in on Tegwyn and sees that she and Henry are in bed together, asleep. Later, when Ort looks in again, he sees Henrys hairy bum up (p. 147) and he hears Tegwyn making a noise and the bed squealing. When words fail, there is always the phallus.
The next day, everyone is very quiet and even Tegwyn sits quietly on the verandah, painting her nails. The day after that, Orts grandmother dies, Henry and Tegwyn have run away, but theres ...this mist...Through all the holes and cracks in this old house, theres stuff coming in. Its like cloud but its light. (p. 14)
And in the midst of all this light, as Ort is rushing about with the bottle of safflower oil and the Bible, tears appear in Sam Flacks eyes. He too, from within his coma, has seen the light. The oil, I imagine, is to anoint, to consecrate Orts father, truly born again.
I will finish my text - but a partial itinerary of the meanings which inhere in another text - with an attempt at the answer to the question I put on page one (Whose ends are being served here?). This answer is perhaps to be found in the meaning of the word consecrate it is to make or declare sacred, to dedicate to the service of a deity. In this case the deity is the father-God of Christianity one of the religions which could be said to help serve our global religion of patriarchy
NOTES
Tim Winton, That Eye, The Sky. McPhee Gribble, 186.
A Kolodny, in Toril Moi, Sexual/Textual Politics. Routledge, 185, p.7.
The Macquarie Dictionary.
Chris Weedon, Feminist Practice and Postrstructuralist Theory. Blackwell, 187, p.18.
Young Winton For Real, The Age, 1..87.
Weedon, op.cit., p.16.
ibid., p.18.
ibid., p.164.
ibid.
ibid., p.101.
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, In Other Worlds Essays in Cultural Politics. Routledge, 188, p.77.
The Macquarie Dictionary.
Mary Daly, Beyond God the Father. Beacon Press, 17, p.85.
Julie Garland, Devilish Ms-conceptions, in The Age, 1.4.8.
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