Tim Winton is one of Australia's best-known writers internationally, working with the genres of fiction, travel stories and books for children. Being a good psychologists he understands precisely

SECRET

Tim Winton is one of Australia's best-known writers internationally, working with the genres of fiction, travel stories and books for children. Being a good psychologists he understands precisely what children think, how they feel and what they really need. In his short story “Secret” Tin Winton tells about a girl who takes hard the divorce of her parents and her new life.

The first element of the plot structure is the exposition which is scattered throughout the whole story. Here we get acquainted with Kylie, a small girl and we learn that her parents had divorced and her mother now lives with another man, Philip, in a new house. The story is set in the new place where the family had moved to. To my mind the function of the setting is that of reflection of the inner state of the character. The new house symbolizes the new start in her life, the changes. The street is “leafy and quite”, just like the girl herself, at the first glance. The yard is long and excitingly littered with fallen grapevines, a shed, lengths of timber and wire, and twitching shadows from big trees. So we may say the girl finds the place exciting because as any child she is curious. But the fence is grey and splintery, and the loungeroom is a jungle of boxes and crates inside one of which was the TV, which suggests the girl isn’t enjoying the mess in her life. Besides, there is a galvanized tin cover of the bore well in the back of the yard, which frightens us and represents something rather dangerous.

The moments of complications start from the very first sentence of the story. The girl finds an egg and decides to keep it secret. Then she finds the second egg. So each day Kylie saw another egg and the secret became bigger every day and at last she had ten of them. At the same time she developed a habit of lifting the tin of the well and getting inside where she could think about her father, watch the album and have some privacy.

One Sunday afternoon Kylie was caught by Philip in the well. Her secret was found out. There were many shouts and threats and the man even hit the girl. This moment of complication is the most tensed in the story and approaches us to the climax. That day the chickens hatched and at dusk Kylie put them into a cardboard box and dropped them down the well. Then she hit the hen and threw it in the well as well, closing the lid. This is the turning point of the girl’s change. This is the result of the strain she has been under, kind of revenge for her sufferings. Still we don’t know how it will affect her personality. Then comes the climax of the story. It is the act of cutting off the photograph and throwing it out. This act underlines that Kylie will never be again the person she used to be and that her conflict is over, though we don’t actually know what she will be like in future, as there is no denouement. We don’t know how her mother would react, whether she would listen to Kylie and help her or this is never to happen.

So we see that the story has a straight line presentational sequencing because al events are depicted in chronological order, but we come across a flashback in the story, telling us about how Kylie first saw the well in the yard.

Every plot is based on a conflict. The main type of the conflict in this story is internal, the conflict within the girl who doesn’t like the change in her life, who misses her dad and hates the person who has come to substitute him, and moreover hates her mother for doing it to her. Still Kylie decides not to show her feelings to anyone (perhaps she thinks there is no use; perhaps she has already tried several times but in vain), she withdraws into herself, she finds her secret and for some time it becomes the most important thing in her life. But of course it could not always be like that, so when she is deprived of her secret she revenges. The author wants to show us how a child sees the situation of divorce, that for him it’s a tragedy capable of influencing there future life.

The choice of the author which type of narration to use contributes to the aim of the story. The author uses third person narrative and the narrator is the omniscient author as there is the internal analysis of events. Something rose in her chest: now she knew what it was to have a secret. She thought about the egg as she lay in bed. She was thinking about it when she fell asleep. Sometimes she found herself looking for him in the pictures. Sometimes it was a game for her; at others she didn't realise she was doing it. Besides the author is detached as he conceals his own point of view, and limited, as he shows us only the thoughts of the girl.

Moreover, closer to the climax of the story the author stops giving us information about what Kylie was thinking about when she did all those things, so the readers are to pass their own judgments. So the readers know about the inner world of the protagonist in the beginning but it’s up to them to decide what was the real reason of Kylie putting the chickens in the well and throwing away her photograph.

The author uses different means of characterizing the protagonist, but all of them are indirect.

There is the presentation of the character through actions. By her actions we may judge that Kylie is suffering a lot and is in need of attention. She always looks through her photo album and that means she is eager to return her past way of life together with her father. She is very reserved, and calm, she holds all her feelings inside. Then there is the description of the world around her, which was discussed when we told about the functions of the settings.

All these means of characterization enable the readers to understand the image of the protagonist.

The tone the author assumes towards the subject-matter is sad and gloomy. It is achieved with the help of such word combinations as: and excitingly littered with fallen grapevines, and twitching shadows from big trees. Philip spoke quietly, safe but cold, All his colours were angry colours; he looked mean, thinner and more raggedy, moving in nervous bursts thirty-six feet deep and very dangerous, the scraggy bed wondering what would happen, pit which smelt sweaty and dank narrow, rusty ladder, the sound of the wind ugly and short and dark, cold and climbed out of the well, full of Philip’s shout a frightening noise, hen squawked insanely.

The tone the author assumes towards the readers is familiar as there are no indices of official style.

The tone the author assumes towards the subject-matter is somewhat dramatic, sad and sorrowful. Such epithets as excitingly littered, twitching shadows, angry colours, nervous bursts, frightening noise create the atmosphere of threat and loneliness. Besides there are some cases of a polysyndeton (a puff-chested little rooster pecked and picked and scuffled, They clucked and preened and ruffled and Kylie grew to like them, the raggedy hen pecked and chased and kicked by the others next door, ugly and short and dark beside her) which also contribute to the atmosphere of the story. There are some repetitions as well like her mother left her alone, stopped from feeling lonely, she was alone with the must and safe but cold, she grew cold.

To understand the message of the story we should also consider the symbols used in it and the title of the story. In this case eggs can be view upon as the symbol of the girl herself, the hen – her mother, the ugly rooster – her step father. The well symbolizes the black period of life the girl is having at this moment as well as the consequences. The family album is connected with the previous life of Kylie.

The title of the story orients the readers towards the subject-matter as well as characterizes the girl, who now no longer has any secrets but is a great secret herself.

Summing up we may state that the message of the story is: Parents shouldn’t leave their children neglected, on their own, no matter what the circumstances are, because the result may be dangerous and evil, as it had happened to Kylie.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-04