An examination of the role of cars and vehicles in Tim Winton's The Essay

An examination of the role of cars and vehicles in Tim Winton's The Turning - Essay Example The best illustration of all of these occurs with the characters Max, Raelene, and Sherry. The caravan park from â€Å"The Turning† is an example of how various vehicles are used to assume socioeconomic status. Different vehicles are assigned as residences to different groups of people. The surfers are relegated to the tents. They don’t even rate high enough on the social food chain to have any type of caravan due to their transient existence. The pop-up campers and Winnebagos, both easily removed, are reserved for the â€Å"old farts† (Winton) as well as the vacationers or travelers through the park. The permanent residents, fishermen from the nearby marina, generally reside in the aluminum caravans, mostly outdated and rundown. The gathering place for these residents, a circled group of old caravans where the single men as well as the disgruntled older fishermen go to drink and get high together, is referred to as the Cesspit, implying with its name the degradation of the acts performed there. All of the characters involved illustrate both their place in this world and in their own minds by the vehicles in which they reside. For instance, Sherry, the beautiful woman who befriends the downtrodden Raelene, and her husband live in their rented caravan for a month, only long enough for the two women to forge a bond before moving on to their brick home with nice furniture and indoor lavatories. Both the rented caravan as well as the house which she quickly moves to are immaculate, placing her and her husband in a social status well above the other residents of the park. The majority of the aluminum caravans are described as dirty, with cheap furniture, including car seats used as couches, the worst of these being the ones included in the Cesspit where the young and single fishermen live. The caravans in the Cesspit reek of the lower station of the residents as well as