My Brother Jack, Chapter 7

[using the new version of the book..]

CHAPTER 7: In very brief...

• Davy goes to stay at Sam's house after he's been kicked out
• Jack finds him in a few days and enters the apartment.. has a look around
• Sam comes back with all his friends and alcohol
• Jack stays to suss things out but gets happy when they bring out the beer
• Davy gets awkward and goes and sits in a room
• Later eavesdropping on his brother and Sam's drunken conversation
• He sleeps in parks sometimes, doesn't have a great time
• Wants to go home
• Takes his brother to go look for jobs
• Suggests Jack go work in the country and Davy (himself) go back to live at home

[pg 94] 'So I told him what had happened. Not only at home, but everything that had led up to it. Exhaustion had collapsed the last of my defences; it was like the drawing of a bung from a charged barrel; the contents, so long sealed up, poured out in a flow that couldn't be checked. He listened intently. He never questioned or interrupted . I don't think his eyes ever left my face.'

For Davy this is the first time he feels like he is acknowledged without the anonymity. It shows how tired he has been from living at home and having to hide who he really is (like the writing he hid under his mattress). It also references his conversation to that of a gun.. has the connotations of violent, aggressive..

[pg 95] 'He was not really attractive at first sight....' 'The odd thing was that after you had bee nwith him a minute or two you quite forgot what he looked like and he became personable and charming'

[pg 97] 'He glanced across at the big typewriter, and my unfinished article on the Hobart Town whalers, and nodded disapprovingly'

[pg 99] 'Why don't you sit down for a minute and tell me what I should do and what Mum and Dad have been saying'

[pg 100] 'I'll go back home if you think I should'

[pg 105] 'It is a troubling and sometimes alarming thing to have to follow the course of a party through a closed door'

[pg 107] 'Tha' brother o' yours got the right idea'

[pg 107] 'what d'you care? - he's my brother, isn't he?'

[pg 116] 'Neither of us was aware of it at the time, but that was an important ratchet in Jack's destiny. It was that job in the Wimmera that closed the door upon his youth forever, that gave him the woman who was to become his wife, that eventually would move him into days of disaster'

MARA