A-Z SHORT STORIES

SOURCE: Winton, T (2004), The Turning, Pan Macmillan, Sydney, pp 101-112. COPYRIGHT: Copied under "Fair Dealing for educational purposes" 

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Tim Winton has won numerous literary awards in his native Australia and internationally, his work encompassing short stories, novels and children’s fiction. This story is taken from his novel The Turning, which features a number of separate but overlapping narratives.

In On Her Knees, the son’s perception of his mother’s cleaning work is contrasted with her pride and dignity, which is accentuated when she is falsely accused of theft. In balancing the son’s and mother’s argument about how to respond to the accusation, Winton demonstrates the powerlessness of a worker in such a position – ‘You can’t fight back.’ In this, the story has a wider social concern. Students should consider the implications of the story’s title.

Wider reading

Scission and Other Stories and The Turning by Tim Winton; Looking for Alibrandi by Melina Marchetta.

Compare with

The Taste of Watermelon by Borden Deal

The Third and Final Continent by Jhumpa Lahiri

Of White Hairs and Cricket by Rohinton Mistry