An Existentialist Reading On The Theme Of Freedom In The Thorn Birds

As one of the most important litterateurs in the twentieth century, Colleen McCullough, both awriter and a doctor, turns out to be unique in literary world. Her works cover a lot of subjects,including history, medicine, literature, etc. The Thorn Birds is just such a good example to illustrateColleen McCullough’s view of freedom. With her unique perspective, she captures the dramaticchanges in society and human nature of a country far away from the Second World War, preciselydescribes from three ways the main characters’ confirmed pursuit of freedom under the socialrestriction and prejudice after various choices and fights.Satrean existentialism principles---freedom, choice, and responsibility---will be applied to theanalysis of the fates of characters in The Thorn Birds. Sartre views that existence precedes essence.An individual himself defines his own essence. If a man, when confronted with a particular case,cannot make a free choice according to his own will, we cannot afford to assume it to be authenticexistence. Therefore, an individual is absolutely free when he chooses his following action. Its basisis the fact that we can stand back from our lives and think deeply about what we have been doing.Human beings should be as responsible as they are free. Our whole life is an ongoing choice and thefailure of choice is itself a choice which we are equally responsible for.The main purpose of this study is to illustrate the theme of pursuing freedom in ColleenMcCullough’s The Thorn Birds. In order to demonstrate the freedom theme, Ralph, Marry Casson,and Maggie’s pursuit for freedom is analyzed in detail to show their attempt to find their truefreedom.There are numerous factors to prevent human beings from enjoying their free will, or worse,deprive them of their freedom and their ability to pursue freedom. Free choices, made by anindividual, an existing being reflecting universal essence, won’t immune to numerous factors---interference from physical world, temptation from material profits, and dissatisfaction with one’sinner desires.This thesis is to reveal the human’s frustration and aspiration for freedom, taking for examplethe three main characters who make different free choices during their fighting against their toughlife through self-loss, suspicion, confusion and resistance. Colleen McCullough suggests throughthe novel that pursuit freedom is the continuous process of selection, and different choices will leadto different journey of life. Additionally, subject consciousness plays an important part in free choices---it is the autonomy of selection that the freedom of choice really means. There is notthe slightest doubt that the pursuit of freedom will be bound to be accompanied by correspondingresponsibilities, which are characterized by humanitarianism and assumed for both the individualand all the others. Meanwhile an individual should delve into his inherent vice and achieveself-construction to step onto the road to freedom. It is the way to search for the value of anindividual’s existence that one should abandon the substance temptation and get rid of the control ofinternal desires.With the existentialist reading to the theme of freedom in The Thorn Birds, we obtain thefollowing conclusions: on one hand, an individual, whose choice is related to everyone and is morethan personal, always exists in an organized situation, and makes his choices ceaselessly. On theother hand, while he makes a decision this freedom of choice is characterized by humanitarianism---it exists as a relative and justified freedom rather than chooses at will.