'What's life all about?' is the question that David Malouf puts to his readers in the novella Fly Away Peter. He has created repetitions and contrasts in events, characters and settings that help a reader to understand the underlying messages of the text and be guided to the conclusion that "A life wasn't for anything. It simply was." (p.132).

Fly Away Peter begins with the image of a bi-plane flying over the swamplands in Queensland. The difference between Jim's view of this "awkward, noisy" (p.3) bi-plane and the birds that inhabit the swamp is the first major contrast in the novella and is representative of the differences between man and animals, or natural and unnatural. Malouf describes the birds in such a way that it seems they are the lucky ones. They do not question the meaning of life or why they exist as humans do; "What am I doing here?" (p. 130), but simply go about their daily lives, accepting the changes that occur. Birds appear in the sanctuary of the swampland

The birds in Fly Away Peter represent many things, including freedom and change, and are one of the repeated images in the novella. The birds' appearances are usually at the times when Jim Saddler's character is present. The birds symbolise happiness for Jim in the same way that music does for Ashley. Jim is familiar with the birds and admires them; "This creature... has been further and higher even than that clumsy plane." (p. 3). Birds reflect many of the actions of the humans in the book. For example, birds habitually move and live in flocks, usually as a means of survival. They act as one and this conformity is natural to them. Humans also tend to move in packs or conform. When the news of the war reaches Australia, people congregate in the streets, yelling and cheering. There is a lot of pressure to join up and be a part of the group. When Jim is trying to decide whether or not to dig through to the other side of the world in his delirium at the end of the novella, he uses the argument "So it must be alright after all. Why else should so many be doing it?" (p.127). This is probably also one of the reasons that so many people joined up. At the time of the bird's migrations, the first of the soldiers are setting off to Europe for the war.

In the final chapter, many of the ideas that the reader has questioned during Fly Away Peter are given meaning. David Malouf suggests that life moves in cycles and that everything changes. "It was new. So many things were new... The past would not hold and could not be held." (p. 133). One thing leads

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Approximate Word count = 1056
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)