Whether it’s fate, a higher power, or something unexplainable, both families in Cloudstreet can sense that their lives are touched by something greater than themselves. But far from being a foreign or alien influence, the supernatural elements in the novel only add more depth and color to the everyday, human experiences the characters encounter. The Lamb family’s religious faith is shaken and all but destroyed by the disappointing “miracle” of Fish’s resurrection, which leaves him mentally impaired for the rest of his life. The Lambs struggle with their fading Christian faith throughout the novel, as the seemingly supernatural events that occasionally happen around them never seem any more useful than the pig in their backyard that inexplicably speaks in tongues.
But eventually, Lester and Oriel come around to a new version of their faith that’s been shaped by their experiences at Cloudstreet and informed by love and respect for their fellow human beings. In this way, their religious belief becomes less about expecting God to intervene on their behalf and more about living a life that they consider godly on principle. The novel’s other supernatural events reflect this idea. The ghosts, visions, and strange occurrences that the families experience are mostly there to guide the characters towards what they already know to be true; magic never solves their problems, even if luck plays a role. The supernatural elements provide surreal, metaphorical imagery, but they’re also portrayed as real, tangible events, such as Quick’s glowing or the house’s haunted library. These bizarre events are as real as every other part of the characters’ lives, seamlessly woven into the ordinary events to steer the Lambs and the Pickleses toward better, more fulfilling lives.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Religion and the Supernatural ThemeTracker
Religion and the Supernatural Quotes in Cloudstreet
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?
The sky, packed with stars, rests just above his head, and when Quick looks over the side he sees the river is full of sky as well. There’s stars and swirl and space down there and it’s not water anymore—it doesn’t even feel wet. Quick stabs his fingers in. There’s nothing there. There’s no lights ashore now. No, there’s no shore at all, not that he can see. There’s only sky out there, above and below, everywhere to be seen. Except for Fish’s giggling, there’s no sound at all.
He wondered what he’d done to turn Quick away. He secretly hoped for an end to it like the return of the son in the story and it made him wonder if he wasn’t still half believing. Those Bible stories and words weren’t the kind you forgot. It was like they’d happened to you all along, that they were your own memories. You didn’t always know what they meant, but you did know how they felt.
He knows he’s not crazy, he’s convinced of it, and he’s right. But he’s not firing on all six, that’s for sure, because as he lies there, buckled and ready to stop breathing at any moment, he knows he can’t decide how he feels—enlightened or endangered, happy or sad, old or young, Quick or Lamb.
How you longed, how you stared at me those thundery nights when we all tossed and the house refused to sleep. It’s gone for you now, but for me the water backs into itself, comes around, joins up in the great, wide, vibrating space where everything that was and will be still is. For me, for all of us sooner or later, all of it will always be. And some of you will be forever watching me on the landing.
Every important thing that happened to him, it seemed, had to do with a river. It was insistent, quietly forceful like the force of his own blood. Sometimes he thought of it as the land’s blood: it roiled with life and living. But at other moments, when a dead sheep floated past, when the water was pink with storm mud, when jellyfish blew up against the beaches in great stinking piles, Quick wondered if it was the land’s sewer. The city had begun to pile up over it as the old buildings went and the ugly towers grew. But it resisted, all the same, having life, giving life, reflecting it.
I’m behind the mirror and in different spaces, I’m long gone and long here but there’s nothing I can do to stop this. Every time it happens, on and on in memory, I flinch as that brow flinches with the cool barrel suddenly upon it. The sound goes on and on and matter flies like the constellations through the great gaps in the heavens, and I haven’t stopped it again.
The room goes quiet. The spirits on the wall are fading, fading, finally being forced on their way to oblivion, free of the house, freeing the house, leaving a warm, clean sweet space among the living, among the good and hopeful.
I’m a man for that long, I feel my manhood, I recognize myself whole and human, know my story for just that long, long enough to see how we’ve come, how we’ve all battled in the same corridor that time makes for us, and I’m Fish Lamb for those seconds it takes to die, as long as it takes to drink the river, as long as it took to tell you all this, and then my walls are tipping and I burst into the moon, sun and stars of who I really am. Being Fish Lamb. Perfectly. Always. Everyplace. Me.
