Cloudstreet follows two families, the Lambs and the Pickleses, as they move into number one, Cloudstreet and live the next 20 years there. Throughout the novel, there's a constant tension between what happens by chance and what happens as a result of a conscious choice. Both of these forces affect the characters’ lives, and it’s difficult to say which is stronger. But more importantly, the tension between luck and choice highlights the characters’ differing beliefs about personal responsibility. For example, Sam Pickles believes strongly in the power of luck and fate, taking after his water-diviner father by listening to his intuition and heeding the “Shifty Shadow” that seems to warn him of dramatic shifts in his fortune. Because of his belief in luck, Sam holds the view that people’s lives are largely steered by the whims of fate, and that no one is ultimately in perfect control of who they are or what path their life takes. His daughter Rose, on the other hand, doesn’t share this belief; indeed, she sees Sam’s way of thinking as a convenient excuse for both of her parents to dodge their responsibilities and explain their failures. Rose argues that anyone can change if they choose to, a sentiment echoed by Oriel Lamb’s proactive views on life.
This tension is largely what distinguishes the more judgmental and high-strung characters like Rose and Oriel from the rest; they believe that everyone is responsible for making their own luck. But even Oriel has her doubts, as she watches the spinning knife and wonders if everyone really is powerless against the whims of random chance. However, both chance and choice often serve as sources of hope for the characters. Sam remains confident that his bad luck will change, while Rose and Oriel find courage by believing in their own competence instead.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Chance, Choice, and Personal Responsibility ThemeTracker
Chance, Choice, and Personal Responsibility Quotes in Cloudstreet
Some people are lucky, she heard him say. Joel, he’s lucky. Got a good business. His hayburners win. See, I got me ole man’s blood. Dead unlucky.
Rose yawned. Until your luck changes.
Luck don’t change, love. It moves.
She wondered if it wasn’t really the way things were, everything just happening by chance in this sorry world. That knife spinning. She thought about her poor dead brother and the ashes and bones of her mother and sister, of Fish, the farm and every other bad turn that led to this night in a strange street and a makeshift kitchen.
I only believe in one thing, Les, Sam solemnly uttered. Hairy Hand of God, otherwise known as Lady Luck. Our Lady, if she’s shinin that lamp on ya, she’ll give you what you want. There’s two other things people say are worth believin in—the Labor Party and God, but they’re a bit on the iffy side for my money. The ALP and the Big Fella, well they always got what I call a tendency to try an give ya what they think ya need. And what a bloke needs most is to get what he wants most. Ya with me?
Well the Shadow was on him, the Hairy Hand of God, and he knew that being a man was the saddest, most useless thing that could happen to someone. To be alive, to be feeling, to be conscious. It was the cruelest bloody joke. In the dark, night after night, he raised his mangled fist to the sky and said things that frightened him.
The blade turns and turns, slow, slower and Lester thinks—is this all there is to it? Just chance, luck, the spin of the knife? Isn’t there a pattern at all; a plan?
Rose. People are… who they are.
Then they should change! People should do things for themselves, not wait for everyone else to change things for em!
You can’t beat your luck, love.
No, you have to be your luck. There’s nothin else, there’s just you.
Oriel reared with sudden passion: No you don’t. You know about boats. You can’t steer if you’re not goin faster than the current. If you’re not under your own steam then yer just debris, stuff floatin. We’re not frightened animals, Lester, just waitin with some dumb thoughtless patience for the tide to turn. I’m not spendin my livin breathin life quietly takin the good with the bad. I’m not standin for the bad; bad people, bad luck, bad ways, not even bad breath. We make good, Lester. We make war on the bad and don’t surrender.
They’re gonna come looking for him. The police, the screaming, hurting family, the whole defeated city. You have to be a winner. Even the short and ugly and deformed, they have to win sometimes. He’s winning, beating them all. A little truckdriving bloke with no schooling, he’s killing them in their beds and they’re losing at last.
