40 pages • 1 hour read
Colleen McCulloughThe Thorn Birds
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1977A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 5Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 5: “1938-1953 Fee”
Chapter 14 Summary
Meggie returns to Drogheda with Justine, and her mood quickly improves: “For Drogheda was home, and here was her heart, for always” (428). Despite an initially lukewarm reception from Fee, she adjusts to being home again, and she awaits the birth of her second child. Justine is 16 months old when Meggie delivers a son; immediately, she notices her baby’s resemblance to Ralph, as “he had Ralph’s hands, Ralph’s nose and mouth, even Ralph’s feet” (432). She names him Dane.
Meanwhile, Ralph visits the Vatican, wishing to confess to Cardinal Vittorio that he has broken his vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. He tells the Cardinal of his fears that God will not forgive him for his sins and that he cannot forgive himself. The Cardinal suggests to Ralph that he be less hard on himself. They discuss the possibility of war: Ralph has seen black shirts in Rome. Cardinal Vittorio explains that these are the cohorts of Mussolini. Cardinal Vittorio keeps Ralph in Rome, needing an inscrutable diplomat, and he disregards Ralph’s sins in light of a much more pressing concern: the rise of fascism and Nazism in Europe.
Chapter 15 Summary
A wireless radio set provides Drogheda with international news; the family hears that Hitler has invaded Poland, but they feel secure on Drogheda. Soon, however, the war creeps closer to home when they learn that Great Britain has joined the war against Germany, and so must Australia. Though several of the Cleary men are eligible to join, Jims and Patsy will be encouraged to enlist. Soon the young men find themselves in North Africa.
Back at Drogheda, another drought means that Meggie has to work the paddocks seven days a week. Her children survive her absence and continue to flourish, which upsets Meggie. As the war intensifies, Japan shows heightened aggression, and Australians feel that the war is much closer than they previously thought. Fee and Meggie receive news that Jims and Patsy will be sent home, but a sudden policy shift means they will remain in North Africa with their division. They engage in a bloody, twelve-day battle, and they emerge victorious after “the biggest and most decisive battle of the North African theater” (457). Jims and Patsy are granted leave, after which they will be shipped to New Guinea to fight the Japanese. Once home, the family notices that they have changed: “[H]ardship, battle euphoria, and violent death had made something out of them Drogheda never could” (458).
In Italy, Mussolini has been overthrown, which puts Italy at risk of Nazi aggression. While Ralph and Cardinal Vittorio discuss the possibility of helping the Pope out of the Vatican for his safety, they suppose he would never leave; furthermore, they have to concede that the Pope is a great admirer of German culture and civilization. When a German general visits them, Ralph and the cardinal ask him to guarantee that Rome, even if Germany invades, will not be destroyed. Ralph promises the general that he won’t regret his decision to spare Rome, entering into a deal with the German general that protects the Vatican.
Meanwhile, Jims and Patsy are sent to New Guinea. The men relax, believing that the Japanese have left the island. Patsy spies a bird that he believes is native only to Drogheda, and he chases it, putting himself in the sights of a remaining Japanese sniper; he is shot. A medic later determines that Patsy will survive, but he will not be able to have children due to the damage caused by his injury. Patsy goes home to recuperate, and the family hopes that Jims will be sent home as well.
Chapter 16 Summary
The war ends on the same day that rain falls in Australia for the first time in ten years, ending the longest drought in Australian history. The rain is “like a benediction from some vast, inscrutable hand, long withheld, finally given” (479). The family begins to resupply their livestock to restore their business. Meggie receives a letter from Luke; he tells her that he is still working and saving money, and he wonders if she might come back to him. Meggie immediately dismisses his request, decisive in her decision to live without him; neither will she return to Luke nor will she divorce him because divorce is not permitted according to the laws of Ralph’s church.
When Justine turns eight, and Dane seven, Fiona tells Meggie that she knows that Dane is Ralph’s son. Meggie tells Fiona that she knows about Frank’s parentage. Fiona then tells her own story about forbidden love, explaining that Frank is, in fact, the son of a married man that Fiona had fallen in love with in her girlhood. Fiona’s lover was “everything Paddy wasn’t—cultured, sophisticated, very charming. I loved him to the point of madness” (487). Just as Fiona has lost Frank, Fiona warns Meggie that she will lose Dane: “If neither of us can hold the father, how can we hope to hold the son?” (489).
Meggie’s children attend boarding school in Sydney. The family reads in the Sydney Morning Herald that Ralph, now 58, has been appointed to the position of Cardinal. The article quotes Fiona, who calls him handsome. She also notes that Drogheda does not belong to the Clearys, but to the Catholic Church. A few months later, Ralph arrives at Drogheda. Dane is immediately impressed with Ralph, and he kisses the Cardinal’s ring, to Justine’s disgust. Ralph believes that Dane is Luke’s son.
Ralph announces that he has arranged for Frank to be released on parole, but Fiona does not display any emotion at this piece of news. Instead, she merely offers Ralph a toneless word of thanks. Fee later picks Frank up at the station, and she sees that Frank has aged. Finally, she gives in to her emotions, and she holds him close to her, assuring him that everything is all right.
Part 5 Analysis
This section is devoted to Fee’s story, and these chapters display dramatic developments in Fiona’s relationship with Meggie. Fee and Meggie talk as equals now, as evidenced by their candid discussion about their sons’ fathers. When they discuss the men they love, and the men they actually married, Fee’s manner towards Meggie is generous. Now that Meggie is a woman, Fee is more sympathetic to Meggie, especially because she knows that Meggie has experienced similar losses and heartaches. Fee even goes as far as to request honesty from Meggie, asking Meggie to lie to anyone but her; when Meggie agrees, “the enormity of her relief show[s] in the way she sat, loosely now, and relaxed” (485), demonstrating an increased sense of ease at being able to talk openly with her mother about her secrets.
The narrator employs detailed physical descriptions of Jims, Patsy, and Frank to reflect their psychological and emotional changes as a result of harrowing experiences; in particular, observations of their eyes and their voices make these points about their internal workings. Upon their return from war, evidence of the suffering Jims and Patsy have endured is visible in their eyes, which are as “blue as Paddy’s but sadder, without his gentleness” (458). When Meggie asks Jims if he can tell her what’s wrong, his eyes reveal his reluctance, “wretched with some deep pain” (461), and he refuses. Jims and Patsy talk little of the war, except to each other and in terms that the others are unable to follow, demonstrating that their traumas are too overwhelming to explain to anyone who did not experience it alongside them. Frank’s silence, like that of Patsy and Jim, demonstrates the changes in Frank after his time in jail. On the car ride home from the train station, he barely speaks; when he enters the house at Drogheda, he sits “awkwardly on the edge of one of the cream silk ottomans, gazing at the room in awe” (518). At dinner, the others try to include him in the conversation, but Frank stays quiet, wishing “everyone would let him retreat into anonymity” (520).
As World War II approaches and consumes the world, McCullough inserts vivid historical details like real figures, locations, and events to give historical context to the Cleary family epic. Jims and Patsy sign up after the famed British evacuation at Dunkirk; they are sent “to the raw, half-trained Ninth Australian division” to defend Tobruk against “the newly arrived [German] General Erwin Rommel” (445). Their division holds off Graf von Sponeck and Lungerhausen, both of whom are actual historical figures. Jims and Patsy survive “the biggest and most decisive battle of the North African theater” (457). As well, the existence of war links the Cleary family, in Australia, to Ralph, in Italy; though they live thousands of miles apart, they are united in their struggle to cope with the effects of the war.
