Away (HSC SSCE English Standard): Revision Notes

Characters and Relationships

Introduction to Away's character landscape

Michael Gow's Away weaves together three Australian families whose relationships experience profound fracturing before healing through shared vulnerability and authentic connection. Set in the 1960s, the play explores universal human experiences of denial, grief, reconciliation, and mortality through characters who embody distinct social archetypes of their era. The migrant family represents post-war optimism and resilience, the suburban family embodies nouveau riche aspiration masking insecurity, and the establishment couple grapples with profound loss. Through the evolving dynamics between these families, Gow reveals how shared mortality and honest human connection can dissolve social barriers and transform lives.

Tom - the vibrant catalyst

Tom serves as the play's emotional and thematic centre, a charismatic teenager living with terminal leukaemia whose unflinching authenticity becomes a catalyst for change in everyone around him. Unlike his parents who maintain a facade of cheerfulness, Tom confronts his mortality directly, stating plainly 'I'm dying' without self-pity or dramatisation.

Core characteristics

Tom's vibrancy shines through his theatrical performances, particularly as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream, where his energy and authenticity captivate both audiences within the play and the audience watching it. Rather than allowing his illness to define or diminish him, Tom actively pursues life's experiences with remarkable vitality. He rejects being treated with pity, as demonstrated when he turns down Meg's sexual advances because he recognises they stem from sympathy rather than genuine desire. This refusal highlights the tension between youth, desire, and impending death that defines his character.

Tom's creativity extends beyond performing into directing, most significantly when he helps Coral stage her therapeutic play based on The Stranger on the Shore. This act of artistic collaboration becomes a form of salvation for both characters, demonstrating Tom's instinctive understanding of theatre's healing power. His approach to his terminal diagnosis is not one of despair but rather an intensified engagement with life, making every moment and connection count.

Relationships and impact

Tom's relationship with his parents Harry and Vic centres on the tension between their loving protective denial and his need for honesty. They constantly urge him to 'act happy' and maintain a cheerful facade about their 'lovely holiday', masking the reality of his illness. This pretence shatters during their beach confrontation after the storm, when Tom's candour finally forces his parents to face the truth they've been avoiding. This painful but necessary moment reveals that all three have been preparing for his death in their own ways, and Tom's honesty allows them to grieve together rather than in isolation.

With Meg, Tom experiences the complicated dynamics of adolescent romance intersecting with terminal illness. Their mutual attraction is genuine, but Meg's withdrawal after learning of his diagnosis and her later proposition driven by pity rather than desire creates a poignant tension. Tom's rejection of sex motivated by sympathy demonstrates his refusal to be reduced to his illness, even as it highlights the cruel unfairness of a life cut short before experiencing such intimacy authentically.

Tom's relationship with Coral represents a platonic healing bond built on shared understanding of mortality and the redemptive power of art. By directing her in The Stranger on the Shore, Tom provides Coral with a creative outlet to process her grief whilst simultaneously affirming his own purpose in his remaining time. Their connection mirrors the play's central theme of theatrical salvation, showing how performance can facilitate emotional truth and healing.

Gwen - the classist matriarch in transformation

Gwen embodies the anxious nouveau riche whose bitter snobbery masks deep-seated insecurity about her social position. Her character arc from bitter classism to humble recognition represents one of the play's most significant transformations.

Core characteristics

Gwen's poverty-stricken background haunts her, fuelling an obsessive need to distinguish herself from those she perceives as lower class. She dismisses Harry and Vic as 'communists', revealing how her own fear of falling back into poverty manifests as contempt for others. This insecurity expresses itself through her famous complaint lists, where she catalogues every grievance and imperfection in her surroundings. These lists serve as a form of control, allowing her to assert superiority by identifying faults in everything and everyone around her.

As a nouveau riche figure, Gwen has achieved material success but lacks the confidence and grace that might accompany secure social standing. Her bitterness stems not just from her difficult past but from an ongoing terror that her current status remains precarious. This makes her aggressively defensive, constantly positioning herself above others to prevent any suggestion that she might not truly belong to the class she aspires to join.

Relationships and transformation

Gwen's marriage to Jim illustrates a dynamic of henpecked passivity eventually giving way to explosive confrontation. Jim endures Gwen's domineering behaviour with resignation until their Act 2 fight, where years of suppressed frustration erupt. This confrontation reaches its climax when Jim burns Gwen's complaint list after Tom's illness is revealed, an act that symbolically reclaims his agency and challenges her obsessive need for control. This moment marks the beginning of Gwen's transformation, as Jim's rebellion forces her to confront the toxicity of her behaviour.

The relationship between Gwen and her daughter Meg is characterised by controlling maternal dominance that Meg increasingly resists. Gwen's attempts to dictate Meg's behaviour, friendships, and romantic interests create constant tension. However, the play's resolution sees Gwen offer a genuine apology to Meg, validating her daughter's rebellion and modelling imperfect but sincere reconciliation. This acknowledgment that she has been wrong represents profound growth for a character defined by her inability to admit fault.

Gwen's transformation is most dramatically illustrated in her relationship with Harry and Vic. Initially treating them with open contempt due to their working-class migrant background, Gwen experiences a profound shift after Tom's illness is revealed and Vic shares her hard-won wisdom about life's brevity. Vic's simple but powerful statement that 'Life's too short' for Gwen's petty snobbery and complaints penetrates Gwen's defensive barriers. This migrant wisdom, earned through genuine hardship and loss, humbles Gwen in ways her own material success never could, forcing her to recognise the emptiness of her class-based judgements.

Coral - grief's landscape

Coral's character explores the devastating impact of loss and the lengthy, non-linear path towards healing. Following the death of her son in the Vietnam War, Coral exists in a dissociative state that both Roy and others struggle to understand or address.

Core characteristics

Described as 'away with the birds', Coral wanders through holiday resorts in a dreamlike, catatonic state, disconnected from ordinary social norms and expectations. Her behaviour includes kissing random honeymooners, actions that reveal both her profound isolation and her desperate, unconscious search for connection and meaning. These seemingly irrational acts represent her psyche's attempt to process unbearable loss by seeking moments of joy and intimacy wherever they might be found.

Coral's grief manifests as a fundamental disconnection from the present, as though part of her died with her son and she now exists only partially in the world. Her wandering and strange behaviour defy Roy's attempts to control her, suggesting that grief cannot be managed or suppressed through willpower or social propriety alone.

Relationships and healing

Roy's response to Coral's grief illustrates the destructive potential of control masquerading as care. As her husband, he attempts to manage her behaviour through threats of electroshock therapy, representing the era's brutal approach to mental health and his own inability to accept that healing cannot be forced or rushed. Their fractured marriage begins to mend only when Roy learns acceptance during the talent show sequence, where he allows Coral to express herself through performance. The shells they collect together become symbols of forgiveness and renewed connection, tangible objects representing their tentative reconciliation.

Tom becomes the unexpected catalyst for Coral's revival, offering her the creative outlet and purpose she desperately needs. By directing her in his play, Tom rekindles her maternal instinct and provides a safe space for her to process grief through art. This relationship affirms the play's central theme regarding art's healing power, demonstrating that creative expression can facilitate emotional breakthroughs that traditional approaches cannot achieve. Tom's guidance allows Coral to reconnect with her capacity to nurture and create, slowly drawing her back from her dissociative state.

Coral's fleeting connection with Rick, a honeymooner she kisses, reveals her profound isolation and foreshadows Tom's more substantial intervention. This brief encounter shows her reaching out desperately for any form of human warmth, whilst Rick's confused response highlights how incomprehensible her behaviour appears to others. The incident sets up the contrast between superficial, confused encounters and the deeper, genuinely therapeutic relationship she will develop with Tom.

Harry and Vic - migrant resilience

Harry and Vic embody post-war migrant optimism and resilience, British World War II veterans who have built a new life in Australia whilst carrying the weight of their son's terminal illness with quiet dignity.

Core characteristics

The couple maintains a facade of cheerfulness, constantly insisting everything is 'lovely' during their holiday despite the shadow of Tom's impending death hanging over them. This protective pretence serves multiple purposes: shielding Tom from their despair, maintaining social normalcy, and perhaps allowing themselves moments of respite from grief. Their optimism reflects the migrant experience of building new lives through determination and positive outlook, even when circumstances are desperately difficult.

As British WWII veterans, Harry and Vic carry trauma and loss from their past, experiences that have taught them both resilience and the value of stoicism. Their working-class background and migrant status place them at the bottom of the social hierarchy in Gwen's eyes, yet their experiences have given them a depth of wisdom and perspective that wealth cannot purchase. They embody migrant resilience, the capacity to endure hardship with grace whilst maintaining hope and dignity.

Relationships and wisdom

Harry and Vic's relationship with Tom centres on protective pretence that eventually must give way to painful honesty. Their insistence that he 'act happy' and their cheerful denial of his illness's severity represent their desperate attempt to preserve normalcy and give him a childhood unmarred by death's shadow. However, this pretence collapses during their beachside confrontation, where Tom's need for authenticity forces them to acknowledge the reality they've been avoiding. This difficult moment paradoxically strengthens their bond, as they begin counselling others (particularly Gwen) with the hard-won wisdom earned through their ordeal.

As class mediators between the families, Harry and Vic play a crucial role in bridging the socioeconomic chasm. Vic's speech to Gwen about life being too short for petty complaints and class consciousness carries particular weight because it comes from someone who has faced genuine hardship and loss. Their working-class migrant perspective provides moral clarity that cuts through the suburban anxieties and establishment pretensions of the other families, revealing what truly matters when confronting mortality.

Harry and Vic's relationship with each other demonstrates unwavering partnership and quiet endurance. They face their son's terminal illness as a united front, supporting each other through an unimaginable ordeal without their relationship fracturing under the strain. Their bond models resilient partnership built on shared experience, mutual respect, and deep love. Unlike the other couples whose relationships experience crisis and require explicit reconciliation, Harry and Vic's marriage remains steady, their strength lying in their constancy rather than dramatic transformation.

Meg - authentic adolescence

Meg represents adolescent rebellion and the struggle to develop authentic identity against maternal domination and social expectation. Her character explores the complications that arise when youthful romantic feelings intersect with terminal illness and pity.

Core characteristics

Meg openly defies Gwen's classist attitudes, refusing to accept her mother's prejudices against Harry, Vic, and Tom. This rebellion demonstrates her capacity for independent moral judgement and her resistance to inheriting her mother's bitter worldview. Her defiance isn't merely adolescent contrarianism but reflects genuine values and empathy that Gwen has failed to instil or model.

Meg's crush on Tom creates complicated emotional terrain as she navigates attraction, pity, fear, and confusion following his diagnosis. Her initial withdrawal after learning he's dying reveals the difficulty of maintaining normal romantic feelings towards someone facing death. Her later sexual proposition, motivated more by pity than desire, represents a misguided attempt to give him something meaningful before he dies, yet Tom's rejection forces her to recognise that pity isn't genuine connection.

Relationships and development

Meg's relationship with Gwen evolves from open rebellion to mutual apology, representing significant maturation for both characters. Initially, Meg resists her mother's controlling behaviour and judgmental attitudes through direct defiance. However, the play's resolution sees both mother and daughter acknowledge their failures and hurt, with Gwen's apology validating Meg's rebellion whilst Meg demonstrates forgiveness. This reconciliation models imperfect but sincere healing in parent-child relationships, showing that growth requires admission of wrongdoing from both parties.

The romantic tension between Meg and Tom remains unresolved, complicated by the intersection of pity and death. Meg's attraction to Tom is genuine, but his terminal diagnosis introduces elements she's emotionally unprepared to navigate. When she propositions him sexually, Tom's rejection reveals that he recognises her motivations as pity rather than authentic desire. This painful moment highlights the tragedy of Tom's situation—even genuine connections become distorted by the shadow of his impending death, preventing experiences that might have developed naturally under different circumstances.

Meg forms a quiet alliance with her father Jim against Gwen's maternal dominance. This subtle partnership doesn't involve open conspiracy but rather shared understanding and occasional mutual support in the face of Gwen's controlling behaviour. Jim's eventual rebellion in burning the complaint list partially serves to defend Meg's right to autonomous choices, whilst Meg's defiance creates space for Jim to eventually assert himself.

Roy - establishment authority in crisis

Roy embodies establishment patriarchy, a headmaster whose authority and worldview face profound challenges when personal tragedy undermines the narratives that have sustained him.

Core characteristics

Roy justifies his son's death in Vietnam through appeals to duty and the 'Australian way of life', attempting to frame unbearable personal loss within a patriotic narrative that gives it meaning. This coping mechanism reveals both his need for order and his inability to process grief except through established ideological frameworks. As a headmaster, he's accustomed to authority and control, traits that extend into his personal life in destructive ways.

His response to Coral's grief demonstrates the limitations and dangers of his controlling approach. Rather than accepting that she needs time and space to heal in her own way, Roy threatens electroshock therapy, attempting to force her back to 'normal' functioning. This response reveals his fundamental inability to tolerate disorder or deviance from expected behaviour, even when that deviance stems from profound suffering.

Relationships and acceptance

Roy's relationship with Coral represents possessive control gradually yielding to acceptance. His initial response to her grief-driven behaviour is to attempt to manage and suppress it through threats and demands. However, the talent show performance becomes a turning point where Roy learns to accept rather than control, allowing Coral to express herself authentically through creative performance. This shift from repression to acceptance marks significant growth for Roy, as he begins to understand that healing cannot be forced according to his timeline or preferences.

Roy's relationship with the school community is characterised by detached authority that contrasts sharply with the warmth and connection modelled by the other families. His professional identity as headmaster reinforces his belief in hierarchy, rules, and proper behaviour, making him ill-equipped to handle the messy, unpredictable nature of grief and healing. This detachment isolates him and limits his capacity for the authentic human connection that might facilitate both his and Coral's healing.

Key relationship dynamics across families

Class convergence through shared humanity

The play charts a profound transformation in class relations, beginning with Gwen's disdain for Harry and Vic's working-class migrant status and culminating in beach equality facilitated by Tom's catalytic truth-telling. The revelation of Tom's terminal illness strips away social pretensions, forcing all characters to confront what truly matters when facing mortality. Gwen's transformation from bitter classism to humility demonstrates how shared vulnerability can dissolve barriers that seem insurmountable under ordinary circumstances. The beach setting—a liminal, equalising space—becomes the location where social hierarchies collapse and authentic human connection becomes possible.

Grief parallels creating connection

Coral's grief over her son's death in Vietnam creates an unexpected parallel with Tom's terminal illness, establishing a profound connection between two characters from different families and social positions. Both face the reality of young lives cut short, though Coral's loss is complete whilst Tom still lives. Their relationship demonstrates how shared experiences of mortality create bonds that transcend normal social boundaries. Tom's play provides Coral with an artistic space to process her loss, whilst helping Coral allows Tom to find purpose and meaning in his remaining time. This mutual healing through art affirms the play's central theme regarding creativity's redemptive power.

Generational tension between control and authenticity

The play explores recurring generational tension between parental denial or control and youthful authenticity. Harry and Vic's insistence that Tom 'act happy', Gwen's controlling dominance over Meg, and Roy's repressive management of Coral all represent older generation's attempts to impose order and suppress uncomfortable truths. In each case, the younger or subjugated character (Tom, Meg, Coral) eventually breaks through these controlling barriers, forcing acknowledgment of reality.

Tom's candour compels his parents to face his impending death, Meg's rebellion forces Gwen to examine her behaviour, and Coral's dissociative state ultimately makes Roy recognise the futility of control. This pattern suggests that authenticity, however painful, ultimately proves more healing than protective denial.

Performativity enabling truth

Theatre and performance recur throughout the play as vehicles for emotional truth that characters cannot express in ordinary life. Tom's role as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream allows him to display vitality and joy despite his illness. The talent quest performance provides Coral with a safe space to begin expressing herself again, whilst Roy learns to be an audience rather than a controller. Tom's direction of Coral in The Stranger on the Shore creates therapeutic space for both to process their relationships with death through art.

These theatrical moments suggest that performance paradoxically enables authentic self-expression by providing structured, safe contexts for emotional exploration that might be too threatening in unmediated reality.

Human experiences illuminated through relationships

The relationships in Away reveal how shared mortality dissolves the barriers we construct—class divisions, defensive denial, isolating grief. The play's holiday setting provides liminal space where normal social structures temporarily suspend, allowing characters to connect across divides that would seem impassable in everyday life.

Gwen's transformation models how aspirational cruelty can yield to empathy when confronted with genuine suffering. Her journey from bitter snobbery to humble recognition demonstrates that even deeply entrenched prejudices and defences can crumble when facing mortality's equalising reality. The nouveau riche anxiety that drives her contempt proves hollow when compared with the dignity and wisdom that Harry and Vic have earned through actual hardship.

The relationship between Coral and Tom affirms art's connective power, demonstrating how creative expression can facilitate healing that traditional approaches cannot achieve. Their theatrical collaboration provides both with purpose: Coral rediscovers her capacity to nurture and create, whilst Tom finds meaning in his remaining time by helping another person heal. This mutually redemptive relationship illustrates how shared vulnerability and artistic expression can forge profound bonds between unlikely individuals.

Harry and Vic embody migrant stoicism and resilience, demonstrating how endurance and partnership can sustain individuals through unimaginable suffering. Their quiet strength contrasts with the more dramatic transformations other characters undergo, suggesting that sometimes the most profound human experiences involve steadfast love rather than explosive revelation. Their working-class migrant perspective provides moral clarity that cuts through the anxieties and pretensions of the other families.

For HSC students, these character dynamics connect 1960s tensions around class, migration, war, and mortality to contemporary divides around housing affordability, migration debates, and mental health awareness. The play proves that vulnerability forges universal bonds that transcend specific historical contexts. Gwen's class anxiety mirrors contemporary anxieties about economic precarity, Harry and Vic's migrant experience resonates with ongoing debates about Australian identity and belonging, whilst Coral's grief and Roy's inadequate response reflect continuing struggles to understand and address mental health compassionately. Tom's terminal illness forces all characters to confront what truly matters, a confrontation that remains perpetually relevant regardless of era.