the implications of his feelings for her; but when, at seventeen, she asks him whether he would marry her were he not a priest and then kisses him passionately, he realizes the danger he is in.

By now, however, we already know that Ralph de Bricassart is far too ambitious to let his love for any woman, even Meggie, interfere with his desire to rise within the hierarchy of the Church. It is his ambition, far more than the risk of being tempted to break his priestly vows, that motivates his departure from Australia. Having inherited the administration of Drogheda and a fortune from Meggie’s Aunt Mary, the talented young priest leaves his parish to begin his ascendency. In the course of the novel he advances to the rank of bishop, then to archbishop, and finally to cardinal, returning periodically to Drogheda to visit the Clearys.

Father Ralph’s departure leaves the affectionate Meggie in a state of extreme emotional vulnerability. With no other immediate outlet for her stubborn loyalty and her yearning for children, she marries a stockman, Luke O’Neill, who is like Ralph in appearance but in no other way. When the O’Neills leave Drogheda, it is clear that Meggie has made a mistake and that she will pay for it. And pay she does, in the alien climate of North Queensland, where Luke takes her, and through the difficult conception and birth of her daughter Justine. These events, in addition to Luke’s long absences and his miserliness, contribute to Meggie’s growing certainty that although she can never have Ralph, neither can she remain Luke’s wife. When her suffering is at its most intense, she takes a holiday alone to rest and think. No sooner has she resolved to put her love for Ralph aside forever than he appears, and Meggie manages to “steal” him, though only temporarily, from God. McCullough treats Father Ralph’s capitulation delicately, almost mystically; it is apparently too emotionally complex for the forthrightness of her other descriptions of lovemaking, though these, too, are less erotic than they are ecstatically romantic. At any rate, just past the novel’s midpoint, Meggie returns to Drogheda pregnant with Ralph’s child.

Perhaps because McCullough has so successfully conveyed the sexual and emotional tension between Meggie and Ralph during the first half of the novel, things slow down considerably once their love has been consummated. Meggie’s return to Drogheda does, however, allow for development of the relationship between her and her mother, the mysteriously restrained Fiona. By now Fee has lost her husband Paddy, burned to death in a fire; her son Stu, smothered by a wild boar; her baby Hal, dead of croup; and her favorite son Frank, a love child who has been convicted of murder and imprisoned in England. Thus the two women’s lives have been equally full of disappointments and trials, and their methods of dealing with their troubles have been similarly accepting. The parallel between Meggie and Fee helps reinforce the sense of “fatedness” about the Clearys and their actions. Like the Outback’s violent weather, the forces which govern their lives are powerful and unpredictable, but, at the same time, predictably in charge.

As the novel’s emphasis shifts to Meggie’s children, the third generation of Clearys, both Meggie and Fiona are contrasted with Meggie’s daughter Justine, who proves as she grows up to be tough and stubborn like her mother and grandmother but, unlike them, determined to alter circumstances before they can hurt her, a determination based on her perception of her mother’s preference for her brother. Thus Justine, independent and willful, has her freckles removed because they stand in the way of her ambition to become an actress, deliberately wears orange and bright pink despite her fiery red hair, and just as deliberately contrives the loss of her virginity. Throughout her girlhood and adolescence, she is fiercely protective of her brother Dane, Ralph’s and Meggie’s extraordinarily handsome son. Despite her mother’s favoritism for the boy, Justine behaves more maternally toward him than Meggie does, and the relation between brother and sister grows deep and strong.

Dane is not only splendid to look at, but he is also completely good. Early on, his religious leanings become apparent; thus, we are not nearly as surprised as his mother is when he announces, to her great distress, that he has decided to become a priest. “The utmost Enemy of women, that’s what God is!” Meggie rages at Dane, before settling resolutely into calmness to save her son further distress. In a mixture of love and retribution, she sends Dane to Ralph, now at the Vatican, to be trained, still not telling him what he cannot seem to recognize: that Dane is his own son. Only a few days after the young priest’s ordination, in an all too obvious echo of the thorn birds motif, Dane dies of a heart attack while swimming, with “one long and red-hot shaft of screaming agony” in his chest and the name of God on his lips. For Meggie, her son’s death is the gods’ final revenge on her for loving Ralph: “What more could the gods do?” she asks. “Don’t tempt the gods, they love it.”

McCullough clearly admires her characters for their strength and beauty, even as she visits upon them such throbbing human passions, such terrible sufferings, and such violently gory deaths. She tells their stories with so much gusto that their very resignation seems to pulse with vitality. Much of this vitality arises from the affectionate force of her descriptions of Australian landscapes, animals, and weather. Just as Hardy’s Wessex assumes the significance and power of a human character, so McCullough’s Outback shapes and dominates the lives of the Clearys; the two are inextricably intertwined. At the end of the novel this intertwining is emphasized with a bit of Dickensian plotting: although the station has been run by the Clearys, it is, according to the terms of Aunt Mary’s will, owned by the Catholic Church and administered by Ralph de Bricassart and eventually by his legatee, who just happens to be the man Justine marries. Nevertheless, Meggie realizes that Justine, now a successful actress, will never live at Drogheda permanently, and that, as far as the Clearys are concerned, it is “Time for Drogheda to stop.” After all, the sunburned and weatherbeaten “Unks,” as Justine calls Meggie’s brothers, are elderly, and none has married; Dane is dead. Thus Drogheda’s end coincides with that of the Cleary family itself, whose identity is so bound to the land they work on that they sometimes seem to be one with its kangaroos and budgies and wilga trees.

If McCullough’s handling of landscape is one source of the novel’s vitality, another is her close attention to the details of daily life on Drogheda. Whether she is describing the inside work of cooking, scrubbing, laundering, and painting, or the outside work of sheep-shearing, fire-fighting, hand-feeding, and riding the paddocks, her attention to visual details keeps her characters’ extravagant emotional distresses firmly grounded in dust, black flies, and back-breaking physical labor.

This realistic treatment of station life and our genuine interest in the characters make us all the more impatient with the novel’s lapses into stilted dialogue and cliché-ridden explanations of motive. Sometimes the characters seem to be speaking out of a soapy television screen. When Meggie and Fiona have their first heart-to-heart talk as adults, the conversation goes like this:“Once you had Ralph de Bricassart it wasn’t necessary to stay any longer with Luke.” “Yes,” sighed Meggie, “Ralph found me. But it didn’t solve anything for us, did it? I knew he would never be willing to give up his God. It was for that reason I was determined to have the only part of him I ever could. His child. Dane.”

Similarly, at Dane’s funeral, which is of course conducted at Drogheda by Father Ralph, an unidentified narrative voice, perhaps that of the author, perhaps that of Ralph himself, speaks: “Sleep on Dane, because only the good die young. Why do we mourn? You’re lucky, to have escaped this weary life so soon. Perhaps that’s what Hell is, a long term in earth-bound bondage. Perhaps we suffer our hells in living. . . .” Since the events of the plot alone are usually enough to engage and occasionally even to move the reader, such banal explanations can only distract or, worse, irritate.

Yet the banality is somehow consistent with the book’s other attractions, which are not unlike those of Gone with the Wind: a beautiful, strong heroine; a handsome, ambitious hero; a huge Georgian mansion; strong regional flavor; forbidden love; violent death; symbolic meteorological disturbances—not to mention the appeal of the story’s luxurious length. The Thorn Birds is, in the fullest sense, a romantic novel, and its popularity grows sturdily out of that fact. But it is also something more: an energetic, sharply detailed account of three generations of hardworking Australian graziers, people who, as Colleen McCullough portrays them, sometimes seem to love and understand the Outback much better than they do themselves and one another.

What elevates The Thorn Birds beyond a typical soap opera is the author's remarkable talent for creating atmosphere and vivid descriptions. She meticulously portrays the animals, plants, and the urban and rural life of Australia across multiple generations and diverse regions. The narrative includes dramatic storms, fires, and various landscapes, along with detailed battle and war scenes, effectively transporting readers to a time and place that feels both unfamiliar and exotic. Through McCullough's writing, we experience the deserts of North Africa, the jungles of New Guinea, the intricate corridors of the Vatican, and the vast expanses of the Australian plain.

Furthermore, as critics like Walter Clemons have pointed out, the novel's dialogue is exceptionally dramatic and even declamatory. While it might be considered unrealistic, this relentless drama and the almost deus ex machina quality of events help maintain the novel's momentum across several hundred pages and fifty-four years of history.

The Thorn Birds delves deeply into how families navigate crises, including significant societal challenges like drought, war, social class struggles, and issues of spiritual and personal subjugation. It also tackles more personal crises such as emotional trauma, unexpected pregnancies, and death. While some critics have labeled The Thorn Birds a "potboiler," a fruitful discussion might start by evaluating the realism of these issues as depicted in the novel, particularly in relation to their historical context.

1. Evaluate the roles of Fee and Paddy Cleary. Do they exemplify good parenting? Could they have been better?

2. Consider Mary Carson's character. Is she entirely malevolent, or does her longing for Ralph add a humanizing dimension to her character?

3. Analyze Dane's drowning. Is it an anticipated event, foreshadowed in the narrative, or merely a convenient plot twist?

4. Explore why Meggie reveals to Ralph that Dane is his son. What impact does this revelation have on him?

5. Ralph De Bricassart, a Catholic priest who rises to the rank of cardinal, breaks his vows by fathering a child with Meggie. Does this transgression make him a bad person, or does it render him more human?

The Thorn Birds is often likened to an Australian version of Gone With the Wind (1936), leading to frequent comparisons between Ralph and Rhett Butler. However, Meggie doesn't closely resemble Scarlett O'Hara, except perhaps in their shared resilience. Her family only vaguely echoes the aristocratic Georgian families like the Wilkses or O'Haras. Meggie has Drogheda, just as Scarlett has Tara; both women possess a profound love for their land.

In a scenario reminiscent of the renowned play and film The Hasty Heart, and somewhat recalling One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1962), a new arrival in the group incites conflicts and suppressed sexual tensions in both genders, leading to breakdowns, violence, and three fatalities.

An Indecent Obsession (1981) blends aspects of Tint (1974) and The Thorn Birds but is more melodramatic and arguably more unsettling than either. The story follows a nurse named Honour, who tends to six men with various psychological and physical ailments in a tropical hospital ward at the end of World War II. During this time, she falls in love and briefly has an affair with a new patient. Similar to Tim, the novel discusses mental and brain disorders extensively and features a reserved woman who gradually "thaws." Like Ralph de Bricassart in The Thorn Birds, she is torn between love and duty, ultimately considering duty to be "the most indecent obsession of all."

The Thorn Birds may foreshadow the Roman novels with its partial focus on a single family ensnared in the vast currents of world history. However, except for Ralph, and unlike most Roman characters, the Cleary family members are not significant actors in history. Instead, they are largely influenced by external events, whereas the Romans are often the architects of their own destinies.

The 1983 ten-hour miniseries of The Thorn Birds was one of the highest-rated television events of its year and became one of the most beloved miniseries ever produced. Richard Chamberlain, who had gained popularity for his role as John Blackthorne in the miniseries adaptation of James Clavell's Shogun a few years earlier, received significant attention for his portrayal of Ralph. Rachel Ward played Meggie, Mare Winningham took on the role of her daughter Justine, Philip Anglim portrayed Meggie and Ralph's son Dane, and Ken Howard played Rainer, the young German soldier who meets and eventually marries Justine. Some characters, like Fee, were given less emphasis, and McCullough's rich settings were not fully brought to life. The relatively brief role of Mary Carson was expanded into an emotionally charged performance by veteran star Barbara Stanwyck, earning her an Emmy award.

The miniseries covered the period from 1920 to 1962 but left out the years around World War II when Meggie was raising her children and Father Ralph was in Rome. In 1996, CBS released a four-hour film titled The Thorn Birds: The Missing Years, featuring Chamberlain, Amanda Donohoe, and Maximilian Schell. This film revisited the wartime period, focusing on Meggie's estranged husband (Schell) returning to Drogheda to rekindle the passion and conflict of their troubled marriage. Father Ralph finds himself torn between his love for Meggie, his devotion to God, and his attraction to the allure and power of the church.