SOURCE: "Eden Upside Down: Thomas Keneally's Bring Larks and Heroes as Anti-pastoral," in World Literature Written in English, Vol. 21, No. 2, Summer, 1982, pp. 297-303.

In the following essay, Monk traces the progress of Halloren's apotheosis in Bring Larks and Heroes as a function of the narrative's inversion of conventional and pastoral tropes, related to characters, settings, and moral tone.

Thomas Keneally can justifiably lay claim to an important place in Australian literature. If, however, there were a single moment in his works by which he might be best remembered, I suspect that moment would be the final paragraph of Bring Larks and Heroes, in which he describes the death agonies of Phelim Halloran:

It was as he had foretold. Every prayer, curse and snatch of song unleased itself up the vent of his body. Oh, the yawning shriek of his breathlessness, above him like a massive bird, flogging him...