Brakey Character Analysis in The Turning

Brakey is a 15-year-old boy and resident of Cockleshell, a hamlet across the bay from Angelus. Brakey lives alone with Brakey’s mother, a lonely, bitter woman who is convinced that everyone will abandon her, as Brakey’s father did. An average student, Brakey avoids doing his homework but enjoys reading. He is not particularly popular at school but is hardly an outcast either. Brakey develops an unexpected obsession with his neighbor, Agnes Larwood, watching her fish for cobblers each evening, which eventually grows into a strange, stilted friendship. Brakey worries that he is acting in an abnormal or perverted way, and after Agnes rejects him, he develops lifelong issues in his relationships with women. After the Larwood house burns down and Brakey moves to Perth, he lives in fear of running into Agnes on the street.

Brakey Quotes in The Turning

The The Turning quotes below are all either spoken by Brakey or refer to Brakey. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:

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In the old days, when they were kids, they played together off and on, the way you do when there are plenty of kids about and you find yourself falling in with someone for an hour or so. Cockleshell was bigger then and much more lively. With the meatworks and the whaling station still operating, the string of houses along the shore was full. It seemed that there were kids everywhere and they ran in a loose mob, roaming the bush and the estuarine flats in search of entertainment. Their hamlet had its own sign out on the bay road back then. Cockle Shoal. But then as now people called the place Cockleshell and that’s what Brakey knows it as.

Related Characters: Brakey, Agnes Larwood

Related Symbols: The Beach

Page Number and Citation: 115

Explanation and Analysis:

Brakey has the rest of his life to remember Agnes Larwood and the hunger he had for her those weeks the year he turned fifteen. He’ll live to see Cockleshell disappear altogether and the luxury estate, Spinnaker Waters, take its place. Until she dies, his poor lonely mother will punctuate all talk of human affairs with the tart summation that they all leave in you in the end. Yet he often wonders about Eric Larwood, the man who wouldn’t leave. They dragged the charred shell of him out on a vinyl sheet. Agnes and her family bedded down one last time at Brakey’s place but nobody slept. Next day the Welfare people came and they were never seen in town again.

Related Characters: Brakey, Agnes Larwood, Brakey’s Mother, Eric Larwood, Agnes’s Mother

Page Number and Citation: 130-131

Explanation and Analysis:

Brakey Character Timeline in The Turning

The timeline below shows where the character Brakey appears in The Turning. The colored dots and icons indicate which themes are associated with that appearance.

Brakey, a 15-year-old boy, is watching a girl named Agnes Larwood from a peppermint grove on... (full context)

Brakey is unsure how long to stay out. Brakey’s mother is anxious and lonely, convinced that... (full context)

The next morning, at the bus stop, Brakey notices Agnes watching him. As they board the bus she confronts him, asking why he... (full context)

Walking out, Brakey runs into Agnes. They discuss Mr. Benson’s suicide, and Brakey joins Agnes fishing, even though... (full context)

By the next evening Brakey has recovered and joins Agnes once more, this time with shoes. Once again, they do... (full context)

Brakey wakes up to screams, “like [in] the old days.” Getting out of bed, he realizes... (full context)

Brakey Character Analysis

Brakey Quotes in The Turning

Cockleshell Quotes

Brakey Character Timeline in The Turning