Grief and Human Connection Theme Analysis

Back at home the girls showed no interest in hunting Onebloods. Instead, he taught them to push hooks through frozen squid and hurl them out into the water, which they loved as much as he found it boring. And through sharing this banal activity with his daughters he somehow developed an affection for the activity itself, and found himself angling off the rocks even when the girls were away in Devonport, casting and catching and occasionally crying, but only when the mist was clear and he could see past the heads towards the tall spires where the seals still hauled out, or so he assumed.

Charlotte knows he thinks she’s gone crazy—he’s been throwing that jutting look at her every time he’s caught her sobbing in the gullies, flinching at the wind and throbbing in the fields. This look of judgement. This look of control. This look of I need to do something; she needs my help, when really (as far as Charlotte is concerned) he is the one who needs help, because what is she doing but grieving?

Charlotte’s neat nostrils are picking up a scent on the breeze: it smells of cleaning products, starch and artificial sweeteners. It is the smell of white-picket fences, of census-friendly families, of collared shirts at church, of people who gossip and chat and tell everyone everything, and she is marching back into the bus station and asking for a ticket that will take her further south.

I suppose if you were to suspect one of us, it would be Charlotte, the new hand—but, hard as I try, I cannot convince myself that she is responsible. Yes, behind her pale face there lurks a curious ferocity; and yet, she often wanders through the freezing fields alone after her work for the day is done; and yes, she occasionally seems to lose control of herself in fits of quiet emotion, eyes closed, hands clenched, small noises leaking through her gritted teeth. But it cannot be her; she loves the wombats more than Nicola does, if that were possible.

Everywhere the world would open up to him as it used to, huge and humbling; he would be dwarfed by its colour and power. He would forget the farmhands and the fire. In the shudder of his skin, in the run of his blood, he would feel the wonder again.

In a mind like his, grand acts will always trump honest words. There was a chance he’d understand this—a slim chance, but a chance nonetheless—the moment he saw the coffin. An epiphany might have dawned upon him: What am I doing? Is she even worried about her eventual death? What if she just needs someone to talk to? What if she just needs time? But this chance was destroyed the moment Levi picked the golden-brown pelt from Hough’s nibbled fingers. Now, with his fingers tousling the fur, with the uncommon warmth spreading from his fingers to his scalp, he has never been more sure of himself.

He parks beside the cottage and goes inside, where there isn’t much light and even less warmth, but there is, among the dusty shelves and boot-worn floorboards, the unmistakable pillowy feeling of coming home. Even in the midst of his rock-hard resolve, Levi cannot dodge this feeling. It reaches at him from the faded floral curtains. It snags him from the sagging bookshelves. It rises through the chipped tiles behind the old stove.

After all these years he was reduced to the same state he was in at the moment the woman, crouching by the riverbank, had first summoned him with the clash of two smooth stones.

So when Charlotte began leaking the fire he’d given her, he did nothing more than watch. When his son started unravelling, he intervened with only half of his flaming heart.

Just like their mother, they would eventually die. And he did not want to be close to them when they did.

The tree ferns blotted the sky and pawed at my face. Worms and beetles churned across the bracken floor. Water throttled in a stream; I was used to it crashing in waves. My mother found calmness there, down in the reaching, shading fronds, but all I found was a lingering distaste for wet soil.

Give me white-chopped seas full of salt and fury.

He blinks. Mum loved this place. He looks up at the canopy. It seemed right.

I take a gamble; with heat pulsing beneath my nails, I reach out. It’s not. But it’s okay. My palm lands on his naked shoulder. We need to leave. I’ll find you some help.

He looks at my hand. I don’t need help. I’m helping you.

Please, Levi. You can help me by coming with me.

You don’t understand.

The cloud’s rage howled on, pushing the storm east and west, north and south. Fields became bogs; ponds became lakes; wombats swam like water rats, and water rats cavorted like seals, drunk on the storm’s power. A muscly current turned Tunbridge into Nobridge. The Avoca post office was washed clean of all its letters. Hours after it broke over Notley, the storm reached the southern capital’s sprawling suburbs. It lashed the huddled houses before pouring onto the shiny docks, where fortuned of yachts clattered against weathered concrete.

I had not cried since I was a small child—not even at our mother’s cremation. But now my howl was joined by a rapid gurgle of other sobs, and tears, and the occasional moan. I didn’t know what was happening to me; I tried to maintain my composure, but failed; I failed as badly as I’d failed my sister. Somehow I ended up on the squeaky floor at the foot of the bed. My throat ached. I was punching the linoleum.