Tim Winton Case

The idea of identity is very complicated and distinctive, as it explores a person's characteristics. Some of these ideas are explored in Tim Winton's 'My Father's Axe', 'Thomas Awakener Floated' and a poem called Despised And Rejected by Christina Georgina Rossetti.

Tim Winton who is the composer of 'My Father's Axe', a short story that explores the narrator's life and how the change and development takes place relating to his identity as he grows up.This is a story of how a son looks up to his father as a role model but shatters when his expectations aren't met. A example that describes a son's heroic expectation from his father in this relationship is ''I heard his body grunt and saw his red arms whiten...he added to the motion,tugging,jerking, gasping until the whole bush cracked open and birds bust from all the trees''. This quote tells us that the narrator sees his dad as a strong heroic man. The technique that is used in this example is onomatopoeia and imagery. The composer has used this techniques to make the readers visualize how much effort the father has put into his work and made him sound strong, so with the son, the reader also conveys the father as a heroic role model.

As the narrator grew up his parents expected more from him, as his father started to stay away from home for along period of time all the responsibilities came on the narrator, the son. This change in his life also changed his identity as he went from a kid to 'the man of the house'. An example is ''he left me with responsibilities of fueling the home.... My mother called me the man of the house, which frighten me a little. A technique that was used in the example was emotive language as the narrator expresses his fear of becoming a 'man', which indicates that he wanted to remain the young boy , who's father did everything for him.This was a challenge for him as his father, his role model gave his responsibilities to the narrator and now he had to carry out the responsibilities like his father did.

Furthermore, when his father was leaving them behind he got tears in his eyes, this shattered the expectation of the narrator as a person he looked up to that was strong, heroic and confident role model was a soft and sensitive person all of a sudden. An example that indicates this is ''Another time my father...began softly to weep on our front step. I shattered great piles of she oak until it was dark and my arm gave out''. The composer once more uses emotive language to express the situation, he uses words like weep and shattered to express the pain of leaving a loved one and an anger of pain after realizing that what we think is not always right and everyone has a soft side to them.

The second short story that I chose was also a Tim Winton composed story that was called Thomas Awkner Floated. Thomas Awkner is very uncomfortable within himself. His a person that is very clumsy, has low self esteem and is very socially awkward. The story is also about how he is very insecure

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