"Thorn Bird" is an Australian family novel, with the love entanglement of the heroine Maggie and Father Ralph as the main line, depicting the story of three generations of the Cleary family, spanning more than half a century. Ralph, obsessed with the power of the church, falls in love with Maggie, the beautiful girl of the Cleary family. For the sake of the "God" he pursues, he abandons worldly love, but his heart is extremely contradictory and painful. With this as the center, the joys and sorrows of more than ten members of the Cleary family are also revealed. The plot of the novel is tortuous and vivid, the structure is tight and exquisite, and the writing is fresh and elegant. This work is known as Australia's "Gone with the Wind".
Cowlyn McCullough is an Australian contemporary writer of women born on 1 June 1937 in Wellington, New South Wales, Australia. Originally a medical student with excellent character and academic qualities, she was not willing to be a doctor and graduate student all her life, but she liked to write since she was a child, and her first novel was "Tim" published in 1974. In addition to The Thorny Bird, McCullough wrote twelve novels and a biography. She lives with her husband on Norfolk Island in the South Pacific, Australia.
The personality of each character in this novel is so distinct, so sharp, it seems that the character is doomed to future fate, or debauchery, or hard work, sacrifice themselves... They all just want to try to fulfill the people they love...
We all have something in our hearts that we don't want to give up, even if it makes us miserable to death. We are who we are, and that's it. Like the old Celtic legend of the bird with thorns on its chest, crying blood and vomiting blood, vomiting blood and dying. Because it had to be so, it was forced. Some things we know won't work, but we still have to do it. But having self-knowledge doesn't affect or change the outcome of things, does it? We made our own bushes of thorns and never stopped to calculate the cost. All we do is endure the pain and tell ourselves that it is well worth it.
If the personable Father Ralph had not seen at first glance a temperament for whom he had devoted his whole life to the little girl, after Meggie's girlhood had passed, she would probably have become the daughter of a wealthy farmer, married to the son of a clever and handsome farmer, and lived a happy and ordinary life.
Fortunately and unfortunately, Father Ralph was not the kind of saint he had hoped to be, he was an outstanding man, and only a brilliant man. He can't help but fall in love with what he finds beautiful, just as he can't help but pursue a career of excellence. Her beauty and his excellence cannot coexist in his life, so his collision with her can only be a kind of destruction, a joke of fate, a tragedy directed by God.
One sentence that always stuck with me was: In that moment, he forgot Meggie.
Father Ralph, who had been covered in silver after many vicissitudes, finally died in the arms of Maggie, who was also in his twilight years, and died in Drogheda's manor. It was Meggie's territory, and he did not die in God's arms, but in the last moment, in the moment of his departure, in the radiance of God, he forgot Meggie.
What is Ralph chasing? Or what are men all over the world chasing? Meggie knew, because they were all the same, "like a big furry moth, smashed to pieces in pursuit of a dazzling flame behind a piece of glass that could not be seen by the eyes." And if it really flew into the glass, it fell into the fire and burned to death. Although they stay in the refreshing night sky, they can have food and give birth to small moths, but they are not willing! They don't want to just get that! He turned back to pursue the flame, flapping his wings without any doubt until he burned himself to death! ”
Does Ralph not understand? It took him a lifetime to understand that nothing was worth pursuing. But though everyone knows that it is a thorn, everyone is willing to insert it into his chest; although every moth knows that it is fire, it still pounces on it without hesitation.
The rose is beautiful, but in the end it becomes ashes, and only thorns remain, and we pierce it into the chest, and at the moment when the thorns pierce in, unaware of the coming of death, are driven away and sung until life is exhausted and can no longer sing a single note. But when the thorn pierces the chest, we do know it, we know it, we know it, but we still do it, turning the rose into ashes and piercing the thorn into the chest.
