76 pages • 2 hours read
Tim WintonThe Turning
Fiction | Short Story Collection | Adult | Published in 2004A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more. For select classroom titles, we also provide Teaching Guides with discussion and quiz questions to prompt student engagement.
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Vic Lang
Vic Lang is a character that is driven by an obsession with things he can’t understand. As a young man, he experienced two significant losses: the death of his younger sister to meningitis, and the disappearance of his father. Even before that, though, he is a young man who is wracked with anxiety about the world around him, particularly his hometown of Angelus, which is slipping into drugs and crime after the whaling industry dries up. As his father recedes into alcoholism and disappears altogether, he becomes convinced that he must be the protector of the family, a belief that stays with him through adulthood.
In his early adult years, this manifests in trying to protect his mother’s honor as she works as a house cleaner to support them, and it drives his desire to become a public defender and stand up for “the little bloke” (228). This extends to his marriage to Gail, who had a difficult childhood in her own right—Vic has a history of obsession with “damaged goods,” and Gail wonders if their relationship is built out of the same pattern that includes his relationships with Melanie (who has a severed ring finger) and Strawberry Alison (who has a prominent birthmark on her face).
When Vic’s mother gets cancer, she sends him to fetch his decades-absent father. Seeing him again, and then losing both of his parents within a short period, leads Vic back into his old obsessions, which puts a strain on his marriage and causes him to deteriorate both physically and mentally. Though Vic is ultimately able to let go of the crushing need to protect others for a moment at the end of “Defender,” a part of him will always be the young teenager standing at the window with a loaded rifle, waiting for the danger to arrive.
Bob Lang
Bob Lang spends much of the time period covered in these stories in absentia, first because the stress of his police work and the corruption he is facing leads him to drinking and being emotionally unavailable to Vic, and then because he leaves the family for nearly three decades. It’s only in “Commission” and “Fog” that a picture of Bob emerges: a broken man who is clear-eyed about his failure as a father but has no tolerance for self-pity. His stoic life in a shack, where he’s been sober for fifteen years, is a kind of penance, and he tells Vic that he doesn’t kill himself only because he “had this feeling the world was inviting me in… luring me towards something. Life, I dunno” (232).
Bob wanted nothing more in life than to be a police officer, and finding out that the police station he worked for was rife with corruption was too much for him. He believes himself a coward, and he believes he deserves his life in isolation, though he says that his sobriety was pointless until Vic shows up asking him to go face his wife one last time. Ultimately, Bob fades out of Vic’s life as quickly as he returned, disappearing back into the wilderness and falling down an open mine shaft, a likely suicide.
Boner McPharlin
Boner lives in the background of many of the stories in the book, either as the host of the end-of-year bonfire that serves as a turning point for many characters, or else as the expelled student who has his legs broken for mysterious reasons. It’s not until late in the narrative that Boner comes into focus as an abused young man living with his father (who likely murdered his mother) and running drugs for the local police. For unclear reasons, the police turn on him, breaking his legs, and later, when they fear he might talk, he is committed to an institution for the remainder of his life.
The way in which the stories introduce Boner gradually, first as a rumor, then a symbol of Angelus’ decline, and finally as a fully-realized, tragic figure, can be read as a call to empathy for a character who might otherwise be seen as part of the problem. When he is finally revealed at his bonfire, he is triumphant, reeling in a shark and spearing it himself in front of the partygoers, but this is the same party that leads to the death of two teens by drunk driving, and Boner’s life quickly becomes much worse. In the end, even his only friend, Jackie, is unable to see him for who he is; the rumors about him are too powerful, and it’s too easy to believe he’s beyond redemption.
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By Tim Winton
