The novel, The Thorn Birds, is a very well written story about a family living
in a poorer section of New Zealand whose livelihood is shearing sheep. The money
for the family depends almost solely on the sheep. In the family, there is
Padraic Cleary (Paddy), the father of the clan. He is a likable man who commands
respect from his children and from those who know him. His wife, Fiona Cleary
(Fee), is a woman with a past who loves her children, respects her husband but
is living in a world that she did not want, but accepted it as her only possible
way of life. Then there are Fee and Paddy's children, Frank, Meghann (Meggie),
Hughie, Jack, Stuart (Stu), Bob, and the twins, Jims and Patsy, but the story
revolves almost entirely around their only girl, Meggie. When Meggie was about
10 years old, Paddy's older sister, Mary Carson, beckoned Paddy to come work for
her on her very large, very wealthy ranch in New South Wales, Australia,
Drogheda. The family fell in love with Drogheda, even though they had to put up
with drought, fire, and a climate that they were not used to. The boys in the
family lived for Drogheda, and were the main work force of the ranch, herding
sheep and cattle from one paddock to another, and working very hard during the
most profitable time of the year, the shearing season, and the most hectic, the
lambing season. Paddy was an immigrant from Ireland to New Zealand and was a
devout Catholic, along with most Australians. Upon arriving to Drogheda, the
Cleary family met Father Ralph, a friend of Mary Carson, a constant visitor to
Drogheda, and the local priest of the closest town to Drogheda, Gillabon. The
rest of the story rotates around the relationship between Father Ralph who later
became Bishop Ralph and finally, Cardinal Ralph, and Meggie. The Cleary family
lived through one of the worst droughts in Australia, and the terrible fire that
followed, destroying most of Drogheda's outer pastures and killing Paddy, and
Stuart in the process. They also had to deal with the problem of rabbits. The
rabbits were foreigners to Australia, and once introduced, reproduced out of
control due to the fact that there were no natural predators in Australia to
kill them. The rabbits, along with the kangaroos, were devouring most of
Drogheda's grazing land. Through it all though, Drogheda remained a constant
source of pleasure and money for the Cleary family. Meggie had two children,
Justine and Dane. Both very different in personality, and in looks. Meggie
marries a shearer turned stockman fo Drogheda, Luke O'Neill, and from their
marriage, Justine was born. Dane was from another man, but, the father, nor Dane
or Justine knew who it was, only Fee and Meggie knew that secret. The author of
Thorn Birds, Colleen McCullough, is a highly talented writer. Throughout the
novel, she describes the scenery with much detail. She should be an expert on
the topic, since New South Wales, Australia is her home. The detail and
description of the people and the places, which she goes deeply into, makes the
reader feel as if she is actually experiencing the same things as the
characters. She goes explains throughly as to how Drogheda is managed and how it
looks. Mrs. McCullough definitely knows what she's talking about and her writing
shows it. For work with the sheep never, never ended; as one job finished it
became time for another. They were mustered and graded, moved from one paddock
to another, bred and unbred, shorn and crutched, dipped and drenched,
slaughtered and shipped off to be sold. Drogheda carried about a thousand head
of prime beef cattle as well as its sheep, but sheep were far more profitable,
so in good times Drogheda carried about one sheep for every two acres of its
land, or about 125,000 altogether. Being merinos, they were never sold for meat;
at the end of a merino's wool-producing years it was shipped off to become
skins, lanolin, tallow and glue, useful only to the tanneries and the
knackeries. Mrs. McCullough's purpose for writing The Thorn Birds is not
entirely clear. She could have written the book to tell about the ways of the
Australian people like the outback stockmen. She could have intended to explain
what life in Australia is really like, the climate, the animals, etc. Another
alternative is that she could have written this novel to talk about the Catholic
Church and how man's desires are no match for an institution like the Church, or
try to describe how the Church really works. All of these topics are present in
her story and her points for each came across strongly and clearly. The reader
learns that Father Ralph becomes a Bishop due to the fact that he helped bring
to in large sum of money into the Church, and that Luke, a stockman at heart not
just as a profession, lives for his work. He is constantly on the move to find
work, never really wanting to settle down yet holding that image of a cozy home
in his head as an excuse to work harder. None of these points are lost to the
reader. McCullough seems to bring up the same topics, but never she never
actually repeats herself, she just offers a new side to the topic for the reader
to think about. This, thought the boys exultantly, was life. Not one of them
yearned for New Zealand; when the flies clustered like syrup in the corners of
their eyes, up their noses, in their mouths and ears, they learned the
Australian trick and hung corks bobbing from the end of strings al around the
brims of their hats. To prevent crawlies from getting up inside the legs of
their baggy trousers they tied strips of kangaroo hide called bowyangs below
their knees, giggling at the silly-sounding name, but awed by the necessity.
Luke looked at the deadly thing he gripped, which was not at all like a West
Indian machete. It widened into a large triangle instead of tapering to a point,
and had a wicked hook like a rooster's spur at one of the two blade
ends....Then, shrugging, he started work....Bend, hack, straighten, clutch the
unwieldy topheavy bunch securely, slide its length through the hands, whack off
the leaves, drop it in a tidy heap, go to the next cluster of stems, bend, hack,
straighten, hack, add it to the heaps...The cane (sugar cane) was alive with
vermin: rats, bandicoots, cockroaches, toads, spiders, snakes, wasps, flies and
bees....For that reason the cutters burned the cane first, preferring the filth
of working charred crops to the depredations of green, living cane. Even so they
were stung, bitten and cut....It took him the predicted week to harden, and
attain the eight-ton-a-day minimum... These two quotes not only show the detail
that Mrs. McCullough put into in her novel, but it tells the readers what types
of lives the people of Australia live. From the stockmen on the desert-like
Outback in New South Wales, to the cane cutters in the tropical forest of
Queensland, Mrs. McCullough tries to inform her readers about the real Australia
and the real people who live there. The Thorn Birds, published in 1977 by Harper
& Row is a book that I have already recommended to my friends and family.
The idea of the book is like that of Gone With The Wind. It revolves around a
very strong woman who is after a man that she can not have but wants very
strongly, and yet, at the same time, is trying to survive in her world. In Gone
With The Wind the heroine is Scarlett O'Hara living in the Southern United
States during the Civil War, for The Thorn Birds, it is Meggie Clearly living in
New Zealand and Australia around the time of the Second World War. Both women
settle for less then what they want, and both women end up getting their man,
but lose him due to their surroundings and who they are. In both novels, the
women have a strong link to their homes, Tara, and Drogheda. The land is who
they are, and they both return to their lands to find peace and happiness. The
writing in both novels is different, and the women too, are different, but the
underlying ideas in both are the same.