South Moon Under

Although Rawlings's chief motive in writing South Moon Under seems to have been to show what the scrub crackers were like, and especially to celebrate the qualities for which she deeply admired them, and a secondary motive may well have been to depict the landscape itself, she was after all writing a novel, not a travelogue. The title South Moon Under suggests what is the most carefully and explicitly articulated theme of the book. As one of the characters explains, south-moon-under is one of the four daily cardinal positions of the moon. Deer tend to feed or sleep, readers are told, in harmony with the lunar movements. If animals are controlled by forces they cannot understand or influence or even be aware of, so too it may be with men.