My brother Jack does not come into the story straight away.
In a way this is the author’s confession that the story he is about to tell is not just about his brother. The story is more broad-based than that, but this quote also hints at the suggestiveness of the title: it is “my” story as much as it is the story of the “brother.”
“Listen nipper, you got to have a go at it. Even if you know you can’t bloody win you still got to have a go. You’ll always be pissin’ into the wind but that don’t mean it isn’t worth givin’ it a burl.”
This quite highlights several things about the book. Jack has a nickname for his brother: nipper. The slang is indicative of economic status and the term “burl” is specifically associated with Australia. And, finally, the advice that Jack is dispensing to nipper offers psychological insight into his character.
Jack, I realise now, was a character born for ardent adventure. (The stage was never big enough.)
This acknowledgement—which seems like a summing up that would occur near the end—actually springs forth from the narrator about halfway through the text. The occurrence is significance and put into context (and foreshadowed) by the rest of the paragraph in which he imagines how big the stage have might become for Jack had circumstances not warranted otherwise. The paragraph closes with the observation that “circumstances were against him” with the tragic dimension appended: “but circumstances are all against us.”
I envied the profound certainty there was about him, when I was so uncertain.
Ultimately, the entire point and purpose of the book can be boiled down to these words. His brother Jack was, for the author, everything he was not, but more importantly, he is the iconic image of the ideal Australian male. In point of fact, the narrator is more successful, better educated and overall more along the lines of what one would likely prefer for their son, but it is the wild, untamed and troublesome Jack who is the image of the archetype to be admired here.
