Tony Palmer's Break Of Day

"Break of Day" is a novel written by Tony Palmer. The story follows the life of Murray Barrett through the track of Kakoda during WW2 and his childhood with his brother Will. This essay, explores how Tony Palmer depicts the theames of family, death and bravery. The novel illlustrates the difficulties of family, the trials that come with death, even moving into a new life and how bravery can come from everyone at any time.

In the novel Tony Palmer demonstrates the meaning of family. Firstly, Uncle Jacks life is a mystery to Murray. No one is Murray's Family will talk about his Uncle's life in the war, his mother even gets worried when Murray asks her about it. It's not until he and Will find the Viking tin with all the medals and papers from the war. Other people

When Ada's mother died it effected her family. Since her mum died, her farther has been drinking a lot from the grief of it all, causing Ada to give up her childhood to take care of her siblings and as she states in the novel "I feel like I'm trapped". The way her famliy was living, was so bad that her brother Owen ran away to the coast. Murray took the death of his farther, when his dad died in the fire, really hard; not just because it was his dad but because Murray could have felt that it was his fault. If Murray never fell in to the boars pen his father would have not have broken his hip and would have been able to get away from the fire. Finally the novel shares how the death of his old life changes him. The cowardice of Uncle Jack illustrates how it changes Murray's life, from the boy who grows up in a rural town working on a farm, to a solder in a war, to the man in a hardware store. Through the time in the novel, Murray's life changes so much, in a way it will never be the same again from the choices and events that he has made. Tony Palmer uses these examples to demonstrate the effects and new beginning of things that come from