The open sky, both during the day and at night, symbolizes a sense of possibility and scale, alternately invigorating the characters of The Turning, or conveying their despair. The sky forms a sharp contrast to the expansive and often rugged or even bleak landscape in which the characters find themselves, with the sea, the desert, or the low mountain ranges of southwestern Australia opening up before them for miles and miles. The open sky’s symbolism is most clear at the conclusion of “Big World”; as the narrator of “Big Word” delivers a monologue that shifts seamlessly from the endless expanse of the horizon to the as-yet unknowable events of the future, emphasizing his confused sensation of being both entirely free and entirely adrift.
The open sky continues to reappear throughout The Turning, expressing the scale of the world and the relative smallness of humanity; the personality, circumstances, and even particular moods of the characters code how they receive and interpret this understanding, with the feelings it prompts ranging from life-affirming to deeply depressing. For Raelene, the open sky—at night—becomes the object of her yearning for spirituality, and in this form symbolizes her inability to find true belief. Raelene’s case makes clear the connection between the open sky and the beach, and therefore the moment of “turning” the latter symbolizes. Seen from this perspective, a thin, often immaterial division separates characters from the possibility and freedom the future could offer them. In Raelene’s case, she refuses to cross this division when she refuses to leave her husband Max.
Conversely, the conspicuous lack of open sky in “Fog” symbolizes Bob Lang’s feeling that he has no other options, as well as his sense of being trapped—in Angelus, in his career, under threat—that is the root cause of his alcoholism, depression, and eventual departure. The book’s optimistic conclusion, however, emphasizes the ways that a character’s relationship to the dizzying scale of the world can change. A young Vic Lang, left alone after Melanie’s departure, looks out at the open sky and feels empty. As an adult, however, despite all the trauma he has endured, Vic looks out at the sky at sunset and feels happiness, hope, and if not peace, then at least the knowledge that a sense of peace is something he can one day achieve.
The Open Sky 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.
Right then I can’t imagine and end to the quiet. The horizon fades. Everything looks impossibly far off. In two hours I’ll hear Biggie and Meg in his sleeping bag and she’ll cry out like a bird and become so beautiful, so desirable in the total dark that I’ll begin to cry. In a week Biggie and Meg will blow me off in Broome and I’ll be on the bus south for a second chance at the exams. In a year Biggie will be dead in a mining accident in the Pilbara and I’ll be reading Robert Louis Stevenson at his funeral while his relatives shuffle and mutter with contempt. Meg won’t show. I’ll grow up and have a family of my own and see Briony Nevis, tired and lined in a supermarket queue, and wonder what all the fuss was about. And one night I’ll turn on the TV to discover the fact that Tony Macoli, the little man with the nose that could sniff round corners, is Australia’s richest merchant banker. All of it is unimaginable.
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.
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.
No, he decided. He’d say nothing. It was what he was best at now. When you’ve lost your pride there’s nothing left to say.
He lay there to wait it out. At the first break in the fog he’d take the camera up the rock and set the flash off at regular intervals. Eventually he’d guide the vollies up to where he was. It’d come out alright. They wouldn’t freeze to death. The girl, Marie, would forget her blubbering fear because she’d get her rescue piece on the front page. She’d have her victim, her ordeal, her stoic hero. It’d be a great story, a triumph, and none of it would be true.
Pull!
He led but did not fire. He thought of the boy lurking behind the curtain. The skeet hummed off into the twilight. It was important to know he could resist the urge.
Again? Called Fenn.
Yeah, said Vic. Pull.
He hit both targets and felt his face crease into a smile that tested every scab. This was different. It was strangely untroubling in its pointlessness. Fenn was right. Nothing got hurt.
He stood there firing until Keira went inside and the smell of roasting lamb wafted across the grass. He blasted away, pull after pull after pull, until he was covered in sweat and they were out of ammo and he realized that darkness had fallen around him and he was happy.
The Open Sky Symbol Timeline in The Turning
