Topic: Scission explores the joy and pain of living. Discuss. Tim Wintons collection of short stories, Scission, explores both the joy and pain of living. The stories portray the joys of life as arriving unexpectedly, in common, everyday situations. There is a common link of discovery: discovery of yourself, of others, of God. There is also pain present from the very beginning, the Book of Job quote plainly imploring an end to suffering, mirroring many of the characters in Scission.
Clearly, Scission is also about the darker side of life, about suffering, in relationships, and spiritually. The joy in Scission comes without warning, where happy emotions were not expected. Fittingly, it seems to be the innocents in Wintons stories who experience this joy. Thomas Awkner, the boy whom everyone, even his family, had thought was unintelligent and incapable of all but the simplest tasks, misunderstood and mistreated, finally finds happiness in the discovery of himself, the discovery that he is an individual, his own person. Perversely, it is in disobeying his fathers commands that he regains faith in himself, finding that he didnt sink like a stone. Faith is a common bond in Scission, with many of these joyful moments centring on spirituality.
Albie in A Blow, A Kiss, realised that God could touch someone because of his faith in his father, even through traumatic experiences such as the motorcycle accident. In Neighbours, a birth is the catalyst for an outpouring of raw emotion, a young man finding that, despite all of modern lifes technological advances, it had not prepared him for the simplest miracle of all: life. Symbols of spiritual awakening run through these stories. In Thomas Awkner Floats, it is the Bible, an obvious reference to Christianity and spirituality and in A Blow, A Kiss, it is the Tilley lamp, the light conveying illumination. On the flip side, pain is also explored in Scission, realistically portrayed as coming largely through relationships yet, contrastingly, can also come through spirituality and faith. The relationships in Scission are largely ones of power, of kisses like blows mothers and wives, of domineering husbands and fathers, and of timid, always cowardly sons. Inevitably, it is the weak that are hurt.
The Essay on Act of Faith
The story ‘Act of Faith’ is one of the short stories in Irwin Shaw’s anthology of short stories titled ‘Five Decades’. There are 63 stories in the anthology which were written in a span of five decades, the time for which the title is derived. In this story, which is the thirteenth in the anthology, Irwin explores the theme of racial prejudice. Intricate in the story line is the notion that all ...
The pain can be physical, such as in the case of the big, burly masochistic McCulloch in Scission dominating his wife, or mental as in the case of the son, in Wake. The father-son relationships are interesting in the way that the sons yearn for their fathers approval, yet receiving only painful rebukes, condescending looks that conveyed contempt mixed with pity. This family-caused pain is far subtler in the females. Wives and mothers wield invisible power subversively, from behind the scenes. They can suffer pain, too, but silently, gritting their teeth and moving forward, as with Rosemary McCulloch in Scission. Scission holds a contrasting view of spirituality, showing the dangers of going too far, slipping into mindless devotion, as shown in McCullochs almost automatic counting of his wifes advertisements sins, building up to a violent climax, devoid of all reason.
Appropriately, it is the modern things in life that cause pain. Money is an object of devotion in Getting Ahead, the title becoming a mantra or a prayer of sorts, causing pain and frustration when the mothers plan fails, halting their progress towards fiscal security. In Scission, Tim Winton has artfully juxtaposed two emotions at opposite ends of the human spectrum: joy and pain. These two themes are perfectly exemplified through events such as the birth in Neighbours, a moment of epiphany for both man and woman. Using this effective literary device, Wintons stories mirror life and reality, showing the reader that living is not merely happiness or suffering, but rather a bittersweet mixture of the two..
