The Turning Essay

The novels ‘Big World’ and ‘Aquifer’ reveal deep insights into personal discoveries. Tim Winton explores personal discoveries of guilt through the narrators of both short stories. Both stories share similar traits, their main characters reflect on the past to discover their personal guilt. The narrator of Big World plans a road trip to escape from his home town and his failed final high school exams. He embarks on his trip, aware that his mother plans for him to repeat year 12 and begin a brighter future. The narrator discovers his incredible guilt for leaving his mother without considering her plans for him “there is an ache that is still there inside me” a metaphor implicates the emotion of guilt Winton conveys. Similar to Big World, Aquifer’s main character discovers personal guilt. His guilt is implicated through the death of neighbor, Allen Mannering. Allen drowns by accident in the local swamp after tormenting the narrator. The narrator witnesses the event, but does not help or mutter a word of it to anyone. Allen’s remains are discovered years later and the narrator can’t handle his guilt “it is as if I craved discovery, even accusation.” Symbolic of the guilt Winton implies “the past is in us, and not behind us, things are never over”. He knows he can’t escape his guilt. Winton emphasis’s the personal discovery of guilt through his characters past.

Winton reveals deep insight into personal discoveries in his short stories ‘Big World’ and ‘Aquifer’. Together the stories pose personal insights into the discovery of adventure. Much like Big World, Aquifer is based around a narrator who craves escape and adventure. The Narrator discovers adventure in the local swamp “ever wrinkle, every hollow in the landscape led to the hissing maze down there”. Winton’s implication of onomatapia describes the luring landscape and “reeds bristled like venetian blinds in the breeze” a simile incorporates the beauty of the swamp and its power to discover adventure. The