Abstract:
Wilderness is an indispensable element in contemporary Australian writer Tim Winton's oeuvre. Through an analysis of the wilderness narrative in
Dirt Music, the essay is to claim that it is in wilderness that equal communication between races are conducted, ushering in a long process of racial reconciliation; secondly, wilderness offers the locus for intimate interactions between human race and wild species, hopefully leading to cross-species reconciliation; thirdly, wilderness is man's spiritual home, leading him out of personal trauma to reconciliation with self. Besides, placing the protagonists in wilderness not only facilitates constructing an "umbilical" link between white Australians and the land of Australia, thus dispelling the sense of rootlessness and creating the sense of belonging, but shapes the new national identity.