40 pages • 1 hour read
The Thorn Birds
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Part 1 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 1: “1925-1917 Meggie”
Chapter 1 Summary
The novel opens on the fourth birthday of Meggie Cleary. Meggie receives an intricate and ornate doll from her family, bought from a shop in nearby Wahine, a small town in New Zealand. Meggie has never owned a doll before, as her family is poor, and she doesn’t understand that dolls are meant to be played with. Her older brothers Hughie and Jack see her with the doll, and they take it from her and begin to destroy it. Meggie is devastated, “the grief in her heart new, for until now she had never owned anything worth grieving for” (6).
Frank, the oldest of Meggie’s five older brothers, is 15, and he is training as a blacksmith. While working in the barn, he remembers that today is Meggie’s birthday; he returns to the house, recalling the events that led their mother to buy the doll in the first place. He finds Meggie in tears and drags Hughie and Jack away from the doll; he reassures Meggie that the doll can be repaired. However, the doll’s hair has come loose, exposing the workings of the head’s interior. He promises Meggie again that the doll can be fixed.
Frank takes Meggie into the house, where their overworked mother Fiona, or Fee, is preparing a birthday dinner. Their father, Padraic, or Paddy, returns from his chores, and the family enjoy the meal. Soon, everyone except Fiona and Frank go to bed. Frank helps Fee with some of the housework, a “furtive, fearful game he and his mother played” (18), as Paddy forbids his sons to do women’s work. Frank laments the fact that there is no money for the younger children’s education; Fiona laments the fact that Frank and Padraic are in constant conflict. Finally, Fiona goes to bed after checking on all of her children, showing only her sons affection now that they are asleep: “Fee cast [Meggie] no more than a passing glance before leaving; there was no mystery to Meggie, she was female” (22).
Chapter 2 Summary
Everyone except Meggie and one of her brothers go to church on Sunday; Paddy is Irish Catholic, and Fiona, having left the Church of England in order to marry Paddy, tolerates his faith. Readers learn the history of Fiona’s ancestors who settled in New Zealand; her great-grandfather, Roderick Armstrong, was sent as a prisoner from England to Australia early in the 19th century. He was later sent to Van Diemen’s Land before he escapes to New Zealand. Rumors suggest that Roderick had survived his escape by resorting to cannibalism. He eventually fathered 13 children with a native Maori woman and made a success of himself. Roderick is remembered as “a remarkable, formidable man” (26).
Meggie and her brothers are late for Meggie’s first day of school in Wahine because she vomits from excitement. When Sister Agatha approaches them with the cane in order to punish them for their tardiness, Meggie speaks out, explaining that her brothers should not be caned because only she is to blame. The nun proceeds to whip their palms and fingertips with a cane. Later in the day, Meggie speaks out of turn, and when Sister Agatha tells Meggie to hold out her hands for a whipping, Meggie vomits all over Sister’s Agatha’s habit. Sister Agatha sends Meggie home, where Frank offers her comfort. Frank explains that all the Clearys get whipped, simply because they are poor.
At school, Meggie befriends a dark-haired girl named Teresa Annunzio, the daughter of a man who runs an Italian café. Their friendship helps Meggie to overcome her struggles at school. The nuns terrify Meggie because they reprimand her for biting her nails and force her to write with her left arm tied around her back so that she depends on her right hand. Because she has promised herself and her brothers never to cry when being whipped, Meggie internalizes her pain.
Fiona, while styling Meggie’s hair, “the most beautiful in the entire school” (45) discovers that Meggie has head lice. She proceeds to cut off all of Meggie’s hair and to treat the remaining tufts with kerosene. Paddy blames Teresa’s family for spreading the lice and heads out to confront them. This event ends Meggie’s friendship with Teresa and spoils her next birthday present: a tea set exactly like Teresa’s. From this incident, McCullough writes, “Meggie learned how dearly one could buy the desire of one’s heart” (45).
Late in 1917, during World War I, Frank tells the family that he wants to enlist. Meggie is dismayed, but she promises not to tell on him when he runs off to join, defying Paddy’s orders to remain at home and work. Paddy locates Frank, and, three days later, Frank is brought back in chains in shame and embarrassment. After dark, Meggie seeks him out in the barn. She comforts him as he weeps.
Part 1 Analysis
In these early chapters, McCullough uses distinct narrative strategies to engage the reader and to immerse readers in the landscape of New Zealand.
By focusing on the character of Meggie, McCullough shifts perspectives deftly across the points of view of different characters; in this way, the author introduces each character and their personalities through their relationships with young Meggie, positioning her as the protagonist. Readers begin learning about Meggie from Meggie herself as well as her four-year-old thought patterns, followed by Frank, her older brother. His thoughts reveal his own emotional depth and empathy, especially when Meggie is involved. Fiona’s point of view discloses her weariness and the absence of affection with which she regards Meggie. In contrast to Fiona’s coldness towards her daughter, Paddy, Meggie’s father, is warm and appreciative of Meggie’s beauty and innocence.
McCullough filters essential information to the reader through the perceptions of each of these characters. From Frank, the reader learns about the New Zealand landscape; as he travels from the barn to the house, the reader witnesses what he sees:
Where the curving hills scalloped the edge of the light-blue sky Mount Egmont soared ten thousand feet, sloping into the clouds, its sides still white with snow, its symmetry so perfect that even those like Frank who saw it every day of their lives never ceased to marvel (7).
From Padraic, the reader gets a sense of the family dynamic: “He nodded to Fiona, busy at the stove; he did not kiss or embrace her, for he regarded such displays of affection […] suitable only for the bedroom” (13).
McCullough uses exposition sparingly and skillfully. For the most part, she shows rather than tells the reader what is happening, but at times, she weaves in background material that deepens the readers’ understanding of the history and environment of the novel. Chapter 2, for example, begins with a description of the family’s weekly outing to attend church; three pages are then spent on background material all directly related to religious matters, like Fiona and Padraic’s interfaith marriage. These passages all contain crucial historical details that provide the reader with context, from the American Revolution to the mention of the year 1880, the year of Fiona’s birth.
Finally, McCullough uses physical character descriptions to offer readers insight into these characters’ personalities and histories. Padraic’s small build is “all steel and springs in build” (15), suggesting strength and resilience. Frank’s dark hair and eyes “had a foreign tang […] there was Maori blood on his mother’s side and in him it showed” (6), and thus, McCollough suggests his outsider status early on. In another example, Sister Agatha’s lips “were quite invisible, compressed into a single line of concentration on the hard business of being the Bride of Christ in a colonial backwater” (30), revealing the nun to be an unsmiling woman who takes her own dissatisfaction out on vulnerable individuals like the Cleary children.
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