Cloudstreet – A Review and Analysis
I suppose that this text is deeply influenced by the quite fashionable traditions of post-colonial literature; that body of work finding a voice for those traditionally silenced in the traditional and mainstream body of literature. Cloudstreet provides a voice and in the process idealizes ordinary working-class life, largely uneducated, insular but genuine and honest.
Cloudstreet also provides a truly vivid and moving symbolic representation of Aboriginal Australia in the almost magical appearances of ‘Blackfella’ as a kind of ‘Gandalf/Dumbledore’ moral compass and ‘wisdom agent’ device. The ‘Blackfella’ gives advice to the characters, suggesting a quick return home and warning Sam not to sell out Cloudstreet, ‘Too many places are busted… places are strong… important.’ This also reflects Winton’s use of traditional Aboriginal attitudes towards ‘place’ as part of identity and a larger collective soul and belonging.
The images of totem spirits and the ghosts or spirits that live within Cloudstreet also reinforce Aboriginal conceptions of time as a non-linear, polychrome and interactive entity. Images of totem spirits develop, for example, where one Aboriginal is perceived as ‘both bird and man’, and another spirit acting as Fish’s guardian angel is described as: ‘A dark man comes flying down a tree, you see the whites of his eyes and they tingle with whispers of glory’, and just before Fish’s death and spiritual salvation, ‘a black man leaves the trees like a bird and goes laughing into the sun with a great hot breeze blowing away. rolls from the roof of the world.’
Background
First of all, the text was written in the late 1980s, you will find some similarities between the texts memorable and sometimes comical subversion of traditional gender roles and archetypes and the ideas promoted as part of third-century feminism. wave… dogmatic notion of female identity. Third Wave feminism differs from earlier feminist movements, intellectually, in its promotion of a diffuse, open-ended, all-encompassing idea of the feminine… This particularly resonates with Winton’s acceptance of her two extreme women who dominate much of the novel. .in accepting Dolly’s sexual and alcoholic excess and Oriel’s authoritarian excess.
Secondly, Winton was part of a subversive discourse celebrating ‘aboriginality’ and Cloudstreet’s publication coincided with a broad shift in Australian attitudes towards Aborigines best represented by the landmark Mabo case which established native title in 1992 and rejected the legal principle of Terra Nullius.
Another important aspect of Cloudstreet is undoubtedly Winton’s deep, if sometimes unorthodox, Christian faith, this is reflected in the continual references to biblical stories, and even at times Winton’s language resonates with a succinct but profound that perhaps reflects the Bible. You, the reader, have enormous scope to take what you want from these references… for example, I’m told that Quick’s characterization mirrors that of the ‘Prodigal Boy’ story and perhaps his departure from home reflects the years of Christ in the desert’… and then the reader is challenged with the more explicit biblical references, for example, the images of the holy communion in the car with Quick and the ‘Blackfella’, the ‘Blackfella’s walking on water and Quick’s luck with catching fish….the list goes on… I guess for me, forgive me for being blunt, but the central ‘message’ is undoubtedly what the reader will make of this intertwining of the spiritual and the real within Cloudstreet… I felt this was the central conflict if you will within the text symbolized with Fish’s struggle with the dichotomy of the Real and the Spiritual… This is further evidenced by the joining of the Cloudstreet title symbolizing final resolution/compromise or reconciliation n between the real, magical and spiritual ethe with the mundane reality of a life geared around the material.
The question of literary status
One would think that this eternal question and the apparent subjectivity in the answer about whether a text constitutes literature would rank higher in any kind of evaluation of any text. For a change, I would suggest that the main evidence of Cloudstreet’s status as a seminal and profound part of the Australian-and indeed English-speaking literary canon, is its success spanning over thirty years, showing that it was not simply successful as a kind of political manifesto for changing social attitudes and perceptions during the 1980s and 1990s related to gender, class, spirituality and Aboriginality… has captured the soul of Australian life through its unnerving attention to detail and its singular ‘locality’…it has truly established a claim to reflect the universal…
Final revision
Cloudstreet is one of my favorite books, there is something appealing about its focus on heady questions of spirituality, something comforting about its central juxtaposition of the magical alongside the mundane, perhaps there is room for spiritual renewal in all of our daily lives. .
I’m not sure my entire article/rambling has done much in terms of analysis on its superficial cover-up… of the incredible polysemy within Cloudstreet and even less justice to the idea of a ‘review’ with its implied expectation of some kind of judgment or evaluation… but I feel the best I can do in terms of ‘finding a negative’ in Cloudstreet is to identify what was not comforting to me… the aspects of the text that were slightly off-putting… and I would like to remind you the highly subjective and ultimately meaningless value of such a sentiment… however, I will persist a little longer in trying to convey to you…
What put me off was the implicit endorsement of social stratification found in the text, much like One Day of the Year, in the way Cloudstreet identifies and then values the working class… but in the end, the how Quick and Rose are coerced. returned to the fold of his family…forced away from dreams of climbing the rung of the social hierarchy…I disagree with the one-sided rejection of middle-class values as pretentious in Toby Raven’s characterization . …Overall, the suggestion here is that class is, in the end, a meaningful and legitimate delineation of humans based on compatibility…Rose can’t connect with Toby…No, she can only connect with ‘the their own’… their working class peers… Isn’t this a bit unfair… And then there is the idea that the author takes a slightly condescending position as part of the hegemony that perpetuates the stratified class, as a means of maintaining an obedient class, uneducated and insular forced labour….
I appreciate your attention, if you have managed to submit to the entirety of my meandering and infuriatingly fragmented diatribe… I would only suggest in my defense that I have done exactly that, capturing fragments of my reaction and reading of Cloudstreet, it being impossible to do much more with a text so open, diverse and significant. Cloudstreet will undoubtedly remain a classic in the canon of Australian literature, and Winton’s place among our country’s authors is undoubtedly unique and deeply respected… I really enjoyed reading this harrowing novel!