40 pages • 1 hour read
The Thorn Birds
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Symbols & Motifs
Meggie’s Doll
In the opening scene of the novel, Meggie receives a beautiful doll as a birthday gift; two of her brothers all but destroy the gift, and she cries tears of devastation. The boys cause the doll’s hair to fall off, revealing the interior of the skull, which is Meggie’s horrific introduction to the strange, inner workings of the mind. Meggie’s first experience with loving something of her own leads to a crisis of her own tender heart, foreshadowing heartache to come.
As a child, Meggie herself is treated like a doll. Her mother Fiona curls her hair and fixes a large bow on her head before school to draw attention to Meggie’s admirable locks and her winsome beauty. When Meggie catches lice at school from her best friend Teresa, her mother shears her scalp to stop the lice from spreading, and Meggie ends up hairless. The sight of Meggie in this state causes Paddy to burst into tears; his beautiful doll is damaged, and he reacts just as Meggie reacts when her doll’s hair falls from her scalp. Paddy’s disappointment at his daughter’s distorted appearance reveals the importance of Meggie’s beauty to him and to other men in her life to come.
The Oil Painting of Fiona’s Grandmother
For Fiona, the portrait of her grandmother symbolizes Fiona’s old life and the aspects of that life Fiona lost when she married Paddy. When the Cleary family moves into the main house at Drogheda, Fiona gives the painting a prominent position. The hanging of the portrait signifies, for Fiona, a change in her own fate after the death of Mary Carson. Of all the redecorations of the house, the hanging of the portrait is the final step, formalizing the change in Fiona’s status.
The painting of the aristocratic woman, dressed in expensive finery, hangs over the fireplace in the main room of the main house on Drogheda, and it also functions as a constant reminder to Fiona of her previous life. Fiona disgraced her family by falling pregnant by a married man; if Fiona had not fallen in love, a portrait like this one might someday exist of Fiona herself.
The Thorn Bird
The story of the thorn bird originates in Celtic legend. According to the legend, the thorn bird deliberately seeks out a sharp thorn on which to impale itself. In the throes of death, the bird is able to sing melodies far superior to other those of other birds. The moments before the bird’s death are ones of pure beauty. Ironically, only pain and the immediacy of death can produce such beauty, which makes the legend a fitting symbol for many of the characters of the novel.
At the beginning of the book, the legend is available as an epigraph, setting the emotional temperature of the novel. Meggie and Fiona refer to the legend at various points in the novel, emphasizing the emotional turmoil that characterizes their lives. The women can relate to the thorn bird, a representation of the pain necessary for the creation of sublime beauty; at the end of the novel, Meggie points out that they, as humans, have sought out the pain with the knowledge that suffering will bring beauty, and vice versa.
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