Big World By Tim Winton Summary

IQE Charts for Module A – Tim Winton’s Short Stories and The Poetry of Zohra Saed.
Theme/Value: Identity
Context and text (Tim Winton)
Technique & Quote
Explanation
Technique & Quote
Context and text (Zohra Saed)

“Big World” is a story of two boys’ lives as they finish school and assert their independence in the transition from adolescence to adulthood.

Context: Grew up in small towns in WA. Working class background. Father was a police officer and great story teller. Educated at university. Christian.
Idiom: “the old girl will crack a sad on me”; “[Biggie’s] old man will beat the shit out of him”.
First-person narration/colloquial language/dismissive tone: “Biggie’s results were worse... he couldn’t give a rat’s ring”; “[his mother’s plan for him to return to school] I’ve blown all that off now”.
Winton:
Protagonist caught between two worlds: his family’s (mother’s hopes for her son) and his town’s anti-intellectualism.
Colloquial language reflects and evokes the sense of place and class (working class).
Dismissive tone contrasted with awareness of family hopes and values reveals the still forming attitudes and identity characteristic of late adolescence.
Saed:
The persona is both observer and participant in her family’s gathering. It is through poetry that she makes sense of and finds her place in the world (identity).
Figurative language: Saed mixes objects of her homeland (e.g. specific foods like pine nuts and perfumed tea) with family history and memory to show that culture and even vicarious experience contributes to an individual’s sense of