Secrets

by Tim Winton

TEXT ANALYSIS

 Year: 1985 «Scission and Other Stories» (Australia);

 Type/Genre: short story;
 Tendency: realism ;
 Themes:
 Neglect: Kylie's mother had a new husband. She was interested in her husband but forgot her child;
 Coping with the absence of a parent: This story gave the example of the child who had the problems in a family.
When I read it, I thought about how to solve the problems;
 Loneliness: The little girl usually separated herself from her family and stayed alone. She liked to think about her
father. These thing show me that her felt lonely;
 Plot structure:
 Exposition – from the exposition we get acquainted with the main character Kylie, her mother, her stepfather
Philip. There are several functions of setting in the story:
o reveals certain features of the character. It shows us, that Kylie missed her dad and didn’t understand why he
didn’t live with them;
o helps lo evoke the atmosphere of freedom and loneliness;
o reinforce characterization by paralleling the actions. Kylie didn’t have enough love and she always was lonely
reflection of the inner state of a character;
 Complication - there are several moments of complication in the story:
o Kylie found an egg. She looked back at the house. No one was watching. She knew what it was to have a
secret now;
o She found another egg. Each day Kylie saw another egg added to the nest up the back. The secret became
bigger every day;
o The hen began sitting on them. Kylie suspected something new would happen;
o Kylie took her photoalbum outside to the well, opened the lid and with the book stuffed into the waistband of
her shorts,went down the ladder with slow, deliberate movements;
o Kylie was forbidden to go to well but she went there;
 Climax – is at the moment when Philip caught Kylie down the well on a Sunday afternoon. One moment she was
alone with the must, the next, the well was full of Philip’s shout. He came down and dragged her out. He hit her. He
told her he was buying a padlock in the morning. It’s the crucial moment of the story. Everything became clear;
 Resolution – is when Kylie chicks into a cardboard box and dropped them down the well. The hen squawked
insanely around the yard, throwing itself about, knocking things over, creating such a frightening noise that Kylie
chased it and hit it with a piece of wood and, while it was still stunned, dropped it, too, down the dry well. She
slumped down on the lid and began to cry. The back light came on. He came down and dragged her out. He hit her.
She felt so unloved by her mother that she wanted the hen and chicks to feel the same pain that she felt, and because
they were her secret that Philip and her mother still don’t know about, she dropped them down the well so they
would never find out about her secret. Kylie cut her head off the «knowing» photograph and poked it through a hole
in the flyscreen of the window because part of her secret has gone and she has given up. She realizes that the photo
isn’t reality and she doesn’t have a secret anymore;
 Conflict: 2 types: internal (man against himself) and external (man against man) conflict in the story.
Because of the lack of love from parents Kylie displaced her family on a family of hen. She tried to build a
new family, with love, trust and with their own secrets. The family of hen is the parallel to Kylie’s family and
at the end of the story we see that when Philip hit her and everything became bad - in the hen’s family
happened the same;
 Textual categories: divisibility, cohesion, coherence, prospection, anthropocentricity, conceptuaslity,
informativeness, completeness, modality;
  Narration:
 a straight line narrative presentation, where the events are arranged as they occur, in chronological order; third-
person narrative;
 story told by the observer-author presented in the pictorial form. The observer-author pictures the scenes, but he
tells of what anyone sees and hear in his position without entering into, the minds of any of the characters, without
analyzing their motives;
 Compositional speech forms:
 narrative proper;
 description:
o portrait: Kylie: «Kylie saw herself, ugly and short and dark», «She was small, dark-haired, with her hands
propping up her face»; Philip: «He smelt of cigarettes and moustache hairs», «…his feet were the shape of
pasties…»; mother: «Her mother was a tall woman with short hair like a boy. One of her front teeth had
gone brown»; hen: «…thinner and more raggedy than the others. She had a bloody comb and a furtive way
of pecking the ground alertly and moving in nervous bursts.»;
o landscape: «Because the loungeroom was a jungle of boxes and crates inside one of which was the TV, she
went straight to her new room.», «The yard was long and excitingly littered with fallen grapevines, a shed,
lengths of timber and wire, and twitching shadows from big trees. It wasn't a new house, but it was new to
her.»;
 System of images: there are several characters in the story. The main one is Kylie, and there minor characters:
mother, Philip, father and hen:
 An image of protagonist calls up a visual picture of a little girl Kylie, who want smb to love her, but nobody paid
attention to her and she looked for hens and eggs. Several artistic details suggest a wholelife story. Thus “ugly and
short and dark beside her” shows us that she didn’t love herself. She thought her mother more beautiful. The
author characterizes her both directly: «Kylie saw herself, ugly and short and dark», “She was small, dark-haired,
with her hands propping up her face” and indirectly through actions: “Kylie was forbidden to lift the lid. It was
off-limits. She was fascinated by it”, “She sneaked kitchen scraps and canary food up the back each evening and
lay awake in bed wondering what would happen”, characterizes her as a person, who wanted to find out smth new.;
“She sat on the fence, sharing the secret with the hen” - she likes the mother hen so much because it won’t judge
her, it was easier to her to believe hen, than her own mother; “She went down every day to sit and think or to flick
through the album”, “It made her think Philip and her mother were stupid” shows us that she loved and missed
her previous life and didn’t like to live with Philip. Philip and her mother left her alone. «She was happy» - shows
us that because of her mother broke up with her dad, she didn’t love her and didn’t understand why did she do this.
That’s why she caught a secret of eggs, because her mother didn’t pay attention to her and didn’t give love and
respect to her. She felt so unloved by her mother that she wanted the hen and chicks to feel the same pain that she
felt;
 Philip is the minor character of the story. Several artistic details can give us a picture of him: «He smelt of
cigarettes and moustache hairs» , “his feet were the shape of pasties “ tells us that he smoked a lot and wasn’t
neat. He also characterized indirectly through actions: “Philip laughed at the things she said”, “spoke quietly to
one another and drank from the bottle” - he didn’t love this girl and didn’t take her seriously because he didn’t
interested in her life, only her mother, cigarettes and drunk interested him. ”Philip caught her down the well on a
Sunday afternoon. He had decided to weed the garden at last; she wasn’t prepared for it. One moment she was
alone with the must, the next, the well was full of Philip’s shout. He came down and dragged her out. He hit her.
He told her he was buying a padlock in the morning.” - he even hated her, when she did smth he banned because
she wasn’t his daughter. Kylie was not prepared when Philip decided to weed the garden at last. This shows that
Philip is also a lazy person;
 Her mother characterizes both directly: «Her mother was a tall woman with short hair like a boy. One of her front
teeth had gone brown» and indirectly through actions: she didn’t pay attention to her daughter. She only made
love with her new boyfriend and had a good time with him. That’s why Kylie looked fir hence;
 Hen is characterized both directly: «thinner and more raggedy than the others; She had a bloody comb and a
furtive way of pecking the ground alertly and moving in nervous bursts» and indirectly through actions: It is a
parallel character to Kylie’s mother. She looked for hen, feed it and waited for chicks;
  The tone: the tone that describe the relations between the author and the subject matter is ironic. It’s achieved
by irony of situation. The tone that describes the relationship between the author and the reader is familiar. It
is achieved by features of spoken lge (“puff-chested”, “rooster”, “Mum”, “Dad”, “raggedy”, “kicked”,
“sneaked”,“scraps”,“blowpipe”,“chookhouse”);
The statement when Kylie found the eggs the author used adventurous tone because it was smth new and
interesting for her. The tone when Kylie started to found more and more eggs is cryptic because she decided
to look for them and she didn’t know what will happen. The tone when Kylie was viewing her photo album is
wistful because she didn’t understand why they live without her father and she tried to recall in her mind a
picture of him. The tone that describe when the hen began sitting on eggs and Kylie suspected something new
would happen is hopeful because she read in encyclopedia that there will be chicks and she was in
anticipation of it. The tone when Kylie was forbidden to go to well but she went there is protesting because
she didn’t listen to this ban and she didn’t want to listen to him, because she didn’t love him and respect;
The prevailing tone of the story is pessimistic. In the whole story we see melancholic words and phrases,
such as “with the book stuffed into the waistband of her shorts”, “flecks of rust”, “whispering a long way
down”, “the sky was a blue disc above growing smaller and paler”, etc.
 Textual level of actualization:
 Title: one-word title;
o Function of the title:
 It serve as a means of conveying the author’s message. This title is actually formulate the author’s message;
 The title serves as a means of focusing the reader’s attention on the most relevant details;
 The title characterizes the protagonist;
 It serves as a means of foreshadowing;
 Artistic details: emotionally coloured word «secret» (the semantically relevant word is the most frequent one in the
story), this can be supported by a sentence: «Philip laughed at the things she said. Her mother only listened to her
with a smile that said you don't know a single true thing.»; repetition of the word «tin» -
translated from Latin, this means "durable, resistant.";
 Proper names: Kylie, Philip (simple names);
 Author’s message: The message of a literary work is conveyed through the system of implications, such as
implication, symbol, presupposition. The author’s message isn’t a solution of the problem raised in the story.
His intention is not to suggest a certain solution, he wants only to raise the problem and focus the our
attention on it. The message of the literary work is not suggest any solution, it is pose the problem and reveal
its relevance;
 The linguostylistic analysis proper. The effect of the text is achieved with the help of:
I Phonographic analysis
 Text segmentation into paragraphs;
 Capitalization of letters in the title «SECRETS»;
 Highlighting of words in the title;
 Phonetic SDs/Instrumentaton: alliteration («…They were fat, white birds with big red combs and bright
eyes…»), assonance («…Next day, Kylie got up onto the fence and crabbed all around it looking into the
neighbours' yards. …»);
II Lexical analysis
 The words are stylistically neutral, but reach in connotations. The vocabulary includes standard colloquial words;
 Borrowings: «moustache», «verandah» ;
 Epithets: «long», «warm», «quiet», «splintery», «precious», «thinner», «bloody», «nervous», «happy»,
«galvanized»;
III Syntactic analysis
 Sentence Type: the author uses a simple short sentences («Her mother and Philip were inside.», « She looked
back at the house.», « No one was watching.», « He smelt of cigarettes and moustache hairs.», « The holidays
stretched on.», «Philip and her mother left her alone.», «She was happy.»), as a reflection of actions and
appearance of characters, and complex and compound sentences («One of her front teeth had gone brown and it
made Kylie wonder.», «When everything on her plate was gone, Kylie left the table.», «She was angry when the
piebald rooster beat them down to the ground and jumped on their backs, pecking and twisting their necks.», «The
 hen squawked insanely around the yard, throwing itself about, knocking things over, creating such a frightening
noise that Kylie chased it and hit it with a piece of wood and, while it was still stunned, dropped it, too, down the
dry well.»);
 Chain repetition: «She thought about the egg as she lay in bed. She was thinking about it when she fell asleep.»,
«They were fat, white birds with big red combs and bright eyes. They clucked and preened and ruffled and Kylie
grew to like them.»;
 Extended repetition: « It wasn't a new house, but it was new to her.»;
 Polysyndeton: «Kylie saw herself, ugly and short and dark beside her.», « The people behind had a little tin shed
and a wired-up run against the fence in which hens and a puff-chested little rooster pecked and picked and scruff
led.», «They clucked and preened and ruffled and Kylie grew to like them.»;
 Short Parenthesis: «All his colours were angry colours; he looked mean.», «Something rose in her chest: now
she knew what it was to have a secret.»;
 Anaphora: «She thought about the egg as she lay in bed. She was thinking about it when she fell asleep.»,
«Sometimes she found herself looking for him in the pictures. Sometimes it was a game for her; at others she
didn't realise she was doing it.»;
 Epiphora: «Right down at the bottom was something that looked like an engine with pipes leading from it. Slugs
and spiderwebs clung to it.»;
IV Semantic analysis
 Simile: «Her mother was a tall woman with short hair like a boy.», «It was like being a drop of water in a straw or
a piece of rice in a blowpipe…»;
 Metaphor: «…and twitching shadows from big trees.», «Something rose in her chest…», «Kylie thought his feet
were the shape of pasties.», «…loungeroom was a jungle of boxes…», «…were angry colours…», «The sky was a
blue disc…», «She had a bloody comb…»;
 Personification: «…with a smile that said you don't know a single true thing.», «The sun winked off it in the
morning.», «The encyclopaedia said so.»;
 Metonymy: «He smelt of cigarettes and moustache hairs.»;
 Symbols: the eggs is compared as her family when she is lonely and a new life; the well is compared as the special
places of Kylie; the photos is compared as memories of her past, she misses; Kylie’s cutting of the photo be
compared as feeling that she does not understand her motherand she did not want to be part of the family;