Cloudstreet

Winton challenges culturally informed beliefs and values by exposing inequities within an emerging Australian identity. In the cyclical novel Cloudstreet published in 1991, acclaimed Perth-born author Tim Winton narrates a capturing and heartfelt story. Two rural families are inadvertently brought together through two separate catastrophes to inhabit equally, a large house in the suburb of Perth known as ‘Cloudstreet’. Winton draws on a number of real historical events and situations in communicating the social and cultural dangers faced in 1950’s Australia. The shift towards Urbanisation is crucial in illustrating the change of values in Perth and how identities in society were threatened by this modification. Dialogue and point of view are used effectively to establish this threatening of identity.
The case of the Nedlands Monster was very much a defining moment for Perth. The city lowered its safety as a big country town, and raised its profile to new heights. “down the swept side path into the heartland where it smells of...vegetables and the hard labour of people...with his heart a-dance he comes wheezing”(pg367) .Through the effective use of dialogue cultural ideas are threatened. Winton uses connotative language such as “his heart a-dance” to reinforce the violent and dysfunctional nature of Edgar who was able to threaten Perth’s identity so strikingly without feeling any sense of apathy in doing so. How Edgar was able to manipulate a very vulnerable society was by challenging the resilience of not only working class people, but an entire society from the loss of security, optimism and innocence that the murders brought to Perth. “The town is in frenzy this is what it means to be a city...no one at night moves” (pg365). T...

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...derer himself, he compares the guilt of his son’s death to that of fishes incident and how terrible he treated himself because of it.

In Reading Tim Wintons hopeful saga, Cloudstreet, you are immersed in Australia; it is an important story in showing the change in values that urbanisation brought to Perth in the late 1950’s such as confidence and pride. But it was also a very anxious and fearful time period in terms of the Nedlands Monster and his impact in changing the current comfortable, breezy system Perth lived in. The role of women changed significantly with more women adopting more ambitious ideologies and engaging in the workforce something never seen before. But most of all it was important because it changed Australia’s priorities as a nation, it shaped the identity of individuals that we now see today, and it created a very unique Australian identity.