Title: Blueback
Author: Tim Winton
Source: Picador Pan Macmillan Australia
Date: 1999
Context: This is a semi-biographical novel as the author grew up in similar circumstances. It’s a short story about a boy growing up. It relates the author’s own childhood as Tim Winton grew up in similar circumstances. Essentially it is a fictitious recount of his years growing up and his relationship with the ocean and land in which he lives.
Audience: Everyone from ages about 10 and up
Purpose: To entertain
Synopsis of Text:
Abel Jackson’s life is intimately entwined with the environment in which he lives.
Throughout his childhood, Abel and his mother Dora have depended on Longboat Bay for
all that they need. The waters and land of the Bay both sustain and enrich their lives.
Despite this idyllic image they lead a hard, basic life. The story is tied in with the life of a Blue Groper named Blueback, who is there when Abel is young to when Abel has children and is Abel’s companion in both a physical and mental way.
Ideas relevant to Belonging:
Abel Jackson has lived in Jackson bay all his life and he’d “wither up and die without this place… This is my place. This is where I belong.” This is indicative of belonging to a place or home. Also relevant is how people connect to the land and sea. Abel and his mother live in harmony with the sea while other divers strip it bare. Abel and his wife do not belong as academics in the outside world.
Techniques used to present relevant ideas:
1. The author uses imagery that evokes a very real sense of knowing Abel in the novel. The vivid descriptions of the reef “Tiny silver fish hung in nervous schools..” allows a reader to really connect with Abel to experience his environment. A reader becomes more sympathetic toward Abel, his home and surrounds and facilitates a reader to connect and be there with him.
2. Winton compares the city where “ all the trees were gone bulldozed long ago”, and Abel’s home...