Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Turning, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Trauma and Memory
Family, Violence, and Love
Addiction
Belonging and Escape
Regret and Forgiveness
Summary
Analysis
In November in Angelus, a small town in Southwestern Australia, the end of high school comes and goes. Despite the celebrations, including “huge beach parties,” the transition is disorienting for the narrator of “Big World” and his friend Biggie. The excitement quickly settles into boredom, as gray, rainy weather covers the town. The narrator and Biggie begin to work full-time at the meatworks, where they had previously only worked part-time. Both of them receiving disappointing exam results that foreclose any possibility of leaving for university, and as their lives become routine, the narrator worries they will be stuck in Angelus forever.
This opening scene sets this chapter (and much of the book) in a small, coastal town in southwestern Australia, whose inhabitants face dwindling economic prospects. As the narrator consciously expresses, Angelus is a place to leave; staying is seen as a kind of surrender to fate, or, in the case of his poor exam results, a defeat. The narrator also presents his friendship with Biggie as a key element of both their lives, binding them together for better or worse. As the symbolism of the disappointing beach parties suggests, the turning point of graduating high school has proved, for the narrator, to be a false promise, and the new life he hoped for has failed to arrive.
Themes
While Biggie and the narrator of “Big World” have been saving up together for a car, the narrator dreams of running away up north to warmer and more tropical parts of Australia. He slowly convinces Biggie to join him, and after one day of particularly gruesome work in the meatworks, they buy a dilapidated VW van, put in their two weeks’ notice, and leave town without telling anyone. They plan to only tell their families once they are safely past Perth on the way north, to avoid anyone stopping them; the narrator’s mother will be hurt and try to guilt him into returning, but Biggie’s violent father will beat him. Once they are on the road, however, doubts begin to creep up on the narrator.
Despite the narrator’s fear of being stuck in Angelus forever, his dream of sharing a tricked-out car with Biggie shows how, up to this point, he has adapted his vision of the future to his and Biggie’s friendship and his surroundings. As it becomes clear that life could indeed go on like this forever, however, the narrator realizes that he wants a different future for himself. While Biggie does not share the narrator’s concern with hypotheticals—he feels that he is exactly where he belongs—he does share the narrator’s visceral disgust at the difficult, unrewarding labor of the meatworks. The narrator further emphasizes the gulf between himself and Biggie when he describes their very different family lives.
Themes
As they drive, the narrator of “Big World” reflects on his relationship with Biggie, who is his best friend despite the deep differences between them. Their differences are made especially clear as they pass Perth; Biggie was born and raised out in the country, and has no interest in the big city, which he does not understand. The narrator, on the other hand, is from the city and has always felt like an outsider in Angelus. He intended to move back there for university but was prevented from doing so by his failed exams, which pushed him to consider suicide. This is a disappointment he feels he will never be able to explain to Biggie, who has never been able to envision a life for himself outside Angelus.
The narrator’s reflections on his friendship with Biggie continue to emphasize not only the contrast of their personalities, but also the personal histories that formed those personalities. Biggie was born and raised in Angelus, so he has a different relationship to the city’s stifling environment than the narrator; while he is just as capable of desiring escape, he does so for distinctly different reasons. For him, the desire to leave stems more from an innate need to escape than a clear understanding of where he does and does not belong. To the narrator, on the other hand, Angelus has always been an aberration, a thing that gives rise to mixed feelings given his sense of loyalty to Biggie.
Themes
Still moving north, the narrator of “Big World” considers the secrets he and Biggie keep from each other, their incompatible hopes and dreams. The narrator wants to see the wider world, and he cannot picture Biggie with him in these fantasies. His mother is especially suspicious of Biggie, who she thinks is holding him back. Despite their differences, however, he affirms that Biggie is one of the most loyal people he knows, and indeed “saved [his] life.” The narrator also fantasizes about working outside up north. While the pay on farms is poor, the work has a sense of freedom that the meatworks lacks, at least in his imagination. The narrator associates working in the sun, with the seasons, with a sense of freedom and escape.
The private hopes and dreams that the narrator and Biggie do not share underscore how their distinct backgrounds shaped them into radically different people, a division that their tight-knit friendship obscures but does not overcome. Lacking other friends or close connections, the narrator is able to ignore this fact. Only his mother presses the point, and while he does not engage with her claims, he does not dismiss them either. Rather, he avoids acknowledging the fundamental disconnect between himself and Biggie by focusing on the past—Biggie’s loyalty—or an imaginary future, one he knows will most likely not come to pass.
Themes
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In a flashback, the narrator of “Big World” explains how he and Biggie became friends. New to town at the beginning of high school, where his parents had just moved as teachers (his father later left his mother and him), the narrator was brutally bullied by another boy named Tony Macoli. Not wanting to make trouble for himself or his parents, the narrator endured Macoli’s torment without reacting, even feeling responsible for it. Macoli’s violence escalated, until one day, suddenly, Biggie intervened to protect the narrator, hitting Macoli and getting suspended for it. After this, the narrator began doing Biggie’s homework for him as repayment, and they quickly became close friends, going on frequent camping trips together to escape their town and peers.
The origin of Biggie and the narrator’s friendship not only clarifies how their lives became intertwined, but it also explains how the narrator is able to resolve his contradictory impulses to escape Angelus and find a new life, and to maintain his friendship with Biggie despite their incompatibilities. This section also introduces the theme of trauma; both Tony Macoli’s bullying and Biggie’s protection left a lasting impression on the narrator, coming to encapsulate a wide range of emotions that he associates with his move to Angelus. Biggie, too, appears here as more disaffected than he initially seemed; while he is strong, unlike the narrator, he is also an outcast. Also unlike the narrator, he does not have a personal narrative he can consult to explain why he does not belong.
Themes
Despite their closeness, the narrator of “Big World’s” friendship with Biggie has foreclosed other relationships, particularly with girls. The narrator felt he had a genuine connection with one girl in particular, Briony Nevis, but ultimately nothing came of it: he chose to maintain his friendship with Biggie rather than start a new relationship with Briony, as the two were, or at least felt, mutually exclusive to him. The narrator wrote poems to Briony, revealing the creativity and intelligence he mostly keeps hidden in his friendship with Biggie. Indeed, the narrator believes their friendship is what caused them both to fail their exams; Biggie never had to study because the narrator did his work for him, and the narrator lowered his own standards to match Biggie’s, leading to failure for both of them.
Revealing for the first time some of the concrete, negative consequences of his codependent friendship with Biggie, the narrator demonstrates a clear awareness of what parts of his life he has foreclosed—and an equally clear sense of disappointment about that fact. Understanding his friendship with Biggie as an obstacle to romance allows him to view the friendship as an obstacle to other achievements, too, for both himself and for Biggie. The narrator gets closer and closer to the idea that for his life to change, his friendship with Biggie must end, but he runs away from this realization just as he and Biggie run away from Angelus.
Themes
The narrator of “Big World” and Biggie finally stop for gas and to use the phone; while the narrator calls his mother, who begs him to come home, Biggie decides not to make a call. When the narrator returns to the van, Biggie has been joined by a lost backpacker named Meg. Meg joins them, and the narrator can see that Biggie is falling for her. The two of them sit together as the narrator drives, observing that Meg is not very smart and has an unpleasant odor, but Biggie is captivated, nonetheless. In a flashback, the narrator recalls a beach party on the last night of school, and the sense of possibility he still felt, encapsulated in the beautiful image of a burning kite. At the same time, at that party he missed his chance to go over to Briony Nevis, passing out drunk instead. That morning, he and Biggie swam in the sea, and despite their hangovers felt that the future was theirs for the taking.
The narrator reinforces the differences between his and Biggie’s family lives, as well as how these differences have resulted in their different personalities. For the narrator, escape from Angelus is a journey of self-discovery—about finding his “true” self. For Biggie, is a desperate, final attempt to live a different life, one that deep down he seems to not truly believe is possible. Meg’s appearance frustrates the narrator, who has given up budding romances for Biggie and expects the same in return; although, in truth, he does not really expect Biggie to even have the opportunity. This leads him to recall his final missed chance with Briony Nevis. He also recalls the disappointment of the most recent major turning point in their lives—graduating high school—which did not yield all the big life changes he thought it would.
Themes
Meanwhile, Biggie and Meg are smoking a spliff (a marijuana cigarette), talking, and singing in the back of the car, as the narrator of “Big World” grows increasingly frustrated. Slowly, the narrator begins to understand Meg’s appeal for Biggie: for once, Biggie feels himself to be the smarter of the two. The narrator realizes how similar this is to his own relationship with Biggie, an uncomfortable recognition. This reflection is abruptly cut off, however, by a new, different kind of smoke, as the narrator realizes their van is on fire. Pulling over, they desperately get their things out before it explodes, but the van continues to burn slowly as the sun sets. Meg rolls another spliff for them to smoke, and they watch the sunset, waiting.
The narrator’s frustration manifests as an expression of a deeper feeling—discomfort with his own actions. Realizing that his friendship with Biggie is not just a hindrance to his own life, but also, in part, a mistreatment of Biggie, he understands the futility of their journey north. Real circumstances quickly reinforce this psychological revelation when the engine fire brings the journey to a halt.
Themes
The narrator of “Big World” cannot picture a spatial or temporal end to the quiet, endless waiting, or the horizon, but, in a flash forward, narrates events to come. In a few hours, he will overhear Biggie and Meg having sex in their sleeping bag together and he will cry. In a week they will abandon him, and he will head home to retake his exams. In a year, Biggie will die in a mining accident, and the narrator will read at his funeral, which Meg will not attend. The narrator will grow up, have a family, and see Briony Nevis at the store. One night, he will see on TV that Tony Macoli is Australia’s richest banker. In the moment, however, he cannot picture any of this and does not care, as they watch the expanse of the landscape around them.
With his dream of running north put to a stop, the narrator finds his vision of the future strangely open and empty. He feels that anything is possible, and, because of that, nothing is conceivable. Most inconceivable of all is the actual future that will come to pass, both tragic and prosaic, which the recounts in sharp contrast to the endless, open sky.
Themes
