Introduction: Multi-award winning Australian novelist, Tim Winton’s book, ‘The Turning’ published in 2004, provides an insightful and fascinating reading experience. ‘The Turning’ is set around the Second World War over a span of 20 years in Perth, Western Australia. Winton utilises diverse language and literary techniques/devices where he creates a stunning collection of connected short stories about turnings of all kinds. This is developed through setting, character, and theme to effectively engage the targeted audience. Winton establishes theme as a major technique in three relatable short stories, ‘Big World’, ‘Sand’, and ‘Damaging Goods’ as he focuses on the relationship and connection between characters. A key theme in Tim Winton’s unpredictable short story collection, ‘The turning’ is about the brotherly relationship between Fred and Max. One of the major issues with this relevant theme is action. Paragraph 1: The first short story, ‘Big World’, engages readers through its major theme of …show more content…
Both characters want to escape north due to their failure in school exams and their “crappy Saturday job at the meat works” (page 1) which had become full time since Christmas. Winton creates a sense that the characters feel trapped, “The southern sky presses down...”. This is indicating that the characters and consequently the audience are feeling a sense of being trapped. Their idea of travelling north is created through the old fantasy of “sitting under a mango tree with a cold beer, walking in a shady banana plantation with a girl in a cheesecloth dress” instead of being “anchored to the friggin place, stuck forever”. The boy’s relationship is bonded through similar attributes and desires. The feelings and actions of the characters makes the theme and issue relevant to teenagers in real life, therefore, the teenage targeted audience is