Thornhill’s Place Analysis

Encountering Conflict Analysis

Thornhill’s inner conflict

Despite all his success, Thornhill began to feel a sense of unforgiving guilt for his treatment of the natives. He is considered the richest man in the area, a dream desired since he was a child in poverty. Yet his accomplishment came at a cost, for his family and himself. He no longer spoke to Dick and his relationship with Sal grew apart. Furthermore, Thornhill’s unresolved conflict with the natives is conveyed through his encounter with Long Jack. He offers Jack help in hope of reconciliation between the two. However Jack ‘never put on the britches or the jacket…the clothes lay decaying into the dirt’ [pg 328]. The exaggeration of time interpreted through the words ‘never’ and ‘decaying’ forebodes that the time for reconciliation has yet to come for Thornhill.

Everyday, Thornhill watches through his ‘spy-glass’ [pg 330] and ‘telescope’ towards ‘the top of the cliffs, where the forest stopped as if sliced off, seemed an empty stage’ [pg 333]. The cliffs are used as a metaphor for a stage to depict that Thornhill is ‘the audience’ and is always ‘watching’ and ‘waiting’ for the presence of the natives. This brings him ‘a measure of peace’ [pg 334] as he struggles with his own conflict that he dispossessed the Indigenous people of their land. His remorse and guilt for his past actions create an inner struggle that provokes him to ‘sit on, watching, into the dark’ each night in hope for a reconciliation.

Conflict between the natives and settlers

The divide between the settlers and natives was prominent and after the massacre, only drew them further apart. The limited use of dialogue, ‘this me, my place’ [pg 329] emphasises the scarcity of communication between Long Jack and Thornhill. The use of ‘they’ and ‘them’ sets up a dichotomy between the natives and settlers, conveying that the conflict between the cultures is still present and unresolved.

Conflict with the land

Thornhill’s alienation from the environment also illustrates his unresolved conflict with the land. Although Thornhill built a ‘foursquare, immovable…estate’ [pg 330], he acknowledged that his home was insignificant against the great Australian backdrop. Even though he aimed to perfect his home, there was always something at fault, ‘some [things] were too big, others too small’ [pg 315]. Thornhill believed that the land was ‘creased and furrowed’, as though it was dissatisfied at his presence. However, the land was home to the natives since they blended into the forest as though they were a part of the nature. From Thornhill’s reflection, it is as though the white settlers would never belong to the landscape.

Conflict with social hierarchy

With his prosperity, Thornhill was well aware that he was subject to other mens’ jealousy; he ‘knew that feeling now: the feeling that whatever a man wanted, he could have’ [pg 316]. As someone who had spent a lifelong attempted to prove his position in society, ‘Thornhill had never grown tired of being called Mr Thornhill. Never heard it without a pulse of pleasure.’ Regardless of the satisfaction his status offered him, Thornhill was unable to escape remnants of his past. During his first portrait, the up side down book illustrated in his hand was an embarrassment to him, for it reminded him that he had not been bred in ‘clean’ [pg 321] Kent, but in low-browed houses in destitute England. It shamed him to allow any others to know his history. Due to this insecurity, Thornhill continued his battle with social views and status, even when he had created a distinguished life for himself.

Key Passages

Thornhill's guilt

“The finished place was not quite what Thornhill had pictured…He knew it was there, and his children might remember, but his children’s children would walk about on the floorboards, and never know what was beneath their feet.” [pg 316]

“A penance, it had occurred to Thornhill…it was as if the dirt was consolation.” [pg 327-329]

“As each day ended he sat in his favourtie spot on the verandah, the spu-glass in his hand, watching the sunset glow red and gold on the cliffs…Even after the cliffs had reached the moment at sunset where they blazed gold, even after the dusk left them glowing secretively with an after-light that seemed to come from inside the rocks themselves: even then he sat on, watching, into the dark.” [pg 333-334]

Important Quotes

Thornhill’s conflict with owning land

“It was not called Darkey Creek now, but Thornhill’s Creek.” [pg 314]

Thornhill’s inner conflict with his past actions

“Thornhill remembered hunger well enough. He though a man who had once known hunger would never forget it.” [pg 328]

 “…he sat on here felt at times like a punishment.” [pg 333]

“This bench, here, where he could overlook all his wealth and take his easer, should have been the reward.” [pg 334]

“Too late, too late.” 

“…he sat on, watching, into the dark.” 

Conflict with social hierarchy

“William Thornhill was something of a king.” [pg 314]

“His wife had become something of a queen, celebrated for her Christmas entertainments, complete with Chinese lanterns and string bands.”

“Thornhill had never grown tired of being called Mr Thornhill. Never heard it without a pulse of pleasure.” 

“He had the lions put high on the gatepost sy they could not be seen well. They were not what he had planned, but there was no mistaking their message: Watch your step, you are on my place now.” [pg 316]

“He knew that feeling now: the feeling that whatever a man wanted, he could have.” 

“The complicated satisfaction it gave him was something he did not try to share with her.” [pg 318]

“He had so often been on the wrong side of such a wall.”

“He had never ridden himself, but he had made sure his children were taught to sit a horse the way the gentry did.” [pg 330]

Resolution of conflict with social hierarchy

“The pads of muscle around his shoulders were growing soft and the calluses on his hands, that he had always thought he would take to his grave, were nothing more than a thickening of the skin.” [pg 320]

Conflict between natives and convicts

“There was nothing that a man might hide behind.” [pg 315]

“That wall – higher than a man, and with only one gate in its perimeter – kept out everything except what was invited in.” [pg 318]

“A person was entitled to draw any picture they fancied on the blank slate of this new place.” [pg 319]

“This me…my place.” [pg 329]

Conflict between Thornhill and Sal

“Sal had long since stopped marking marks on the tally-tree, and the lines she had already drawn had grown over, swallowed into the fabric of the trunk.” [pg 316]

“He let the phrase go when she used it, turning the conversation elsewhere…” [pg 317]

“He did not spell out to her what they both knew: that they were never going to return to that Home.”

“…things that remained unasked between them, and unanswered.” [pg 318]

“…a space of silence between husband and wife.” [pg 324]

“he had not thought that words unsaid could come between two people like a body of water.” 

Conflict between Thornhill and Dick

“…Dick would not…meet his eye.” [pg 326]

“There was a moment of cold nothing where the open flesh could be seen, and then the ache came on.” 

Conflict between Thornhill and Blackwood

“Blackwood would not speak to Thornhill, only sat with his head down.” [pg 325]

Conflict with the environment

“Her day became a battle against the sun that would draw the moisture out of the ground, the hot wind that would dry the leaves.” [pg 319]

“The harsh whistle of the breeze in the river-oaks, the rigid stalks of the bulrushes and the reeds, that hard blue sky: they were unchanged by the speck of New South Wales enclosed by William Thornhill’s wall.” [pg 331]

“Without the advantage of a human figure over there, it was as slippery as a mirage.” [pg 332]

“…intricate lanscape that defeated any white man.” [pg 333]

Adaptation to the environment

“In sleepless nights it would not be that foreign river called the Thames tat they would follow down through the bends into sleep, but their own Hawkesbury.” [pg 317]

“Sal had never said it in so many words, but she would not leave them, those native-born children.” 

Natives’ connection with the land

“…Jack’s hand caressing the dirt. This was something he did not have: a place that was part of his flesh and spirit. There was no part of the world he would keep coming back to, the way Jack did, jus to feel it under him.”  [pg 329]

“It was as if the very dirt was a consolation.” 

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