FREE ESSAY ON THE THORN BIRDS

THE THORN BIRDS

The Thorn Birds
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.