Written by: Laurestina
""Scission", by Tim Winton explores the joy and pain of living." Discuss.
The collection of short stories by Tim Winton, titled “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 these 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 the commands of his father that he regains faith in himself, finding that he did not "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 the technological advances that are a part of modern life, 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 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 the approval of their fathers, 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 McCulloch and his almost automatic counting of his the sins in the advertisement featuring his wife, 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 plan of the mother 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, these stories mirror life and reality, showing the reader that living is not merely happiness or suffering, but rather a bittersweet mixture of the two.