Topic: "Cloudstreet dwells on the human desire to find meaning in life.
Tim Winton expresses many themes in his novel "Cloudstreet", one of which is about finding one's place in the world and the search for the meaning of life. Basically all of the main characters in the novel experience this desire and battle to find it.
In the beginning of the book, Oriel Lamb is a devoted religious woman, though all of this changes after Fish's accident. She cannot come to terms with the fact that her son was brought back crippled. She questions why there is evil in the world and why good people have to suffer. Oriel does not understand why God had punished her since she was such a devoted and hard working woman. She becomes disappointed and angry with God, losing trust and almost excluding him from her life. She begins to surround herself even more with work and she appears to take on God. However, Oriel withdraws from her family, to live in the tent, for her own thoughts, where she feels she belongs, in her head, her "country", has become confused. She has to fight the battle of knowing what to believe in. Oriel mentions, "I want the miracle finished off. I demand it, and I"m gonna fight to get it." It appears as if she is beginning to understand Fish's fate. .
Dolly Pickles also struggles with her life. She is stuck in drunkenness and promiscuity and is very despondent. Dolly does not have a good relationship with her children or her husband for that matter. Rose, although being loyal, has a sense of hatred towards Dolly. It seems that Dolly did not marry Sam out of love as much as out of necessity and this leaves her empty and unsatisfied with her life. Dolly often goes down to the train tracks and looks out at them, to where they stretch as far as the eye can see and wishes she was anywhere else, but there. Dolly yearns after something that isn't there in her life, but she can't do anything about it, so instead she wallows in self hatred and drinking.
