In addition to being a place of economic and cultural importance in coastal towns in which The Turning is set, the beach also symbolizes the indeterminate and often unknowable line between phases of life. In the book, the moment when characters cross that line is the moment when things “turn.” While many of the characters only realize retrospectively when these “turnings” took place (if they realize at all), these turnings unfold alongside clearly devised social schema. Such is the case in the graduation beach parties many of the characters in the book attend, which mark and celebrate a turning point in their lives: the end of high school in Angelus and the beginning of their college lives, working in the meatworks, or even death.
The transitions that the beach symbolizes occur in more subtle, internalized ways, too. When Boner McPharlin’s legs are broken on the beach, what had for him been a dabbling in petty crime inseparable from his pranks and bad-boy attitude symbolically becomes a deadly serious involvement in an elaborate criminal conspiracy that he will not escape until it drives him insane, ultimately leading to his institutionalization. The site of this shift—on the beach—is no accident. Similarly, Raelene’s nighttime walks along the beach symbolize her desire for change, though it remains unlikely that anything in her life will improve, at least as long as she remains with Max. The same is true of the function the shoreline plays as Leaper attempts to drag Max, who has been injured in a shark attack, back to dry land; the beach in the distance not only symbolizes Leaper’s immediate desire to save his brother’s life and remove himself from danger, but also his hopes that their relationship—and its effects on his psyche—can change to become less toxic and cruel.
The Beach Quotes in The Turning
After five years of high school the final November arrives and leaves as suddenly as a spring storm. Exams. Graduation. Huge beach parties. Biggie and me, we’re feverish with anticipation; we steel ourselves for a season of pandemonium. But after the initial celebrations, nothing really happens, not even summer itself. Week after week an endless drizzle wafts in from the sea. It beads in our hair and hangs from the tips of our noses while we trudge around town in the vain hope of scaring up some action. The southern sky presses down and the beaches and bays turn the colour of dirty tin. Somehow our crappy Saturday job at the meatworks becomes full-time and then Christmas comes and so do the dreaded exam results. The news is not good.
But the blitz truck was gone and the tractor, too. A great mound of coals smouldered on the sand. Where the big tent had been there were bottles and cans and the smooth imprints of mattresses and bodies. The harvest, he thought. There must be rain on the way. He took the hook from his pocket. It was blunt and misshapen. It shone in the sun. Vic’s leg throbbed and burned. He looked out across the sea for the first sign of cloud, for any kind of signal of a change in the weather, but the sea and the sky were as pale and blue and blank as sleep, as empty as he felt standing there on the lapping shore.
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.
She was tired, yet it wasn’t ordinary fatigue. It was a deeper exhaustion. She was sick of herself, appalled at what she’d been thinking only minutes ago, ashamed of what she was, a mother who didn’t much care. Maybe someone like her didn’t deserve better than Max. She didn’t love him at all. But she was too scared to leave him, and not just because she was afraid of what he’d do to her or the girls if she did. No, she was really more frightened of being alone.
His brother rolled over. A fat red moon emerged from behind the highest, farthest dune. Frank felt sand in his shorts. His undies sagged, full and bulky with it, the way they were the day he pooped his pants at school. He remembered the way he had to wide-leg it to the toilets. With all the kids laughing. And how he locked himself inside to wait for his mother. How Max came in and said he’d kill him if he didn’t stop bawling and clean himself up. You’re adopted, he said, they found you on the tip, in a kennel. The day went on forever and their mother never came.
A bigger wave came upon them. Before Leaper could surrender to it he had to earn it. He kicked so hard he felt poison in his legs. But he got them the wave. Max’s head was loose on his neck.
They bellied down the long, smooth face and beneath them the reef flickered all motley and dappled, weaves of current and colour and darting things that were buried with Max and him as a thundering cloud of whitewater overtook them. The blast of water ripped through Leaper’s hair and pounded in his ears. The reef was all over him but he held fast to his brother, hugging him to the board, hanging on with all the strength left in his fingers, for as long as he could, and for longer than he should have.
The bedrails jingled as he shook.
But I’m solid, he said. Solid as a brick shithouse. Unreliable be fucked. Why they keep callin me unreliable? I drive and drive. I don’t say a word. They know, they know. Don’t say a fuckin word. Don’t leave me out, don’t let me go, I’m solid. I’m solid!
He began to cry then. A nurse came in and said maybe I should go.
The Beach Symbol Timeline in The Turning
