INTRODUCTION

The story ‘Neighbours’ has been taken from Migrants of Australia edited by Harwood Lawler. It
is a story about a newly married couple living in a multicultural and multilingual suburb
neighbourhood. It shows that cultural and linguistic barriers cannot stop people from
bestowing love and compassion.

CHARACTERS
A young couple
Macedonian family
A Polish widower
Italian family

THEME OF THE STORY

The central theme of the story is that people from different cultures can live together in a
society peacefully. It tries to prove that love and compassion are major components of a society
to bind multicultural and multilingual people together.
Tim Winton wants to prove that community help is very important in a society. He highlights
the importance of co-operation. Variation of language, culture and nationality can’t stop
community to spread the message of love, unity and selfless help.

SUMMARY
Tim Winton’s short story “Neighbours” is about a young couple who have moved into a new
home. They were initially uneasy because their neighbourhood was densely populated with
immigrants. 

On the right, a Macedonian family was yelling and a Polish widower was pounding nails into the
wood. It seemed weird to the young couple. The Macedonians, on the other hand, thought it
odd that the young man stayed at home to write his thesis while his wife worked. It began to
alter in the autumn when the young couple began planting vegetables and the neighbours
offered their assistance. The young man constructed a henhouse, but it failed.
Uninvited, the widower from Poland rebuilt it. In the winter, the young couple returned the
smiles of their neighbours. The Macedonian family taught them how to slaughter in the spring,
and the pair discovered that the woman was pregnant. 

The young couple didn’t inform their neighbours about it, but it was noticed by the neighbours.
They were delighted as the neighbours gave them gifts. When the baby was delivered, the
entire neighbourhood came out to greet the young couple and wish them well. 

At this point, the man recognized that he had been thinking wrong about his neighbours all
along and began to cry. He believed that writing his thesis had not adequately prepared him for
real life.

ANALYSIS OF THE STORY

This story is about false judgement of the couple about their neighbours because the couple
had been harboring prejudices about their neighbours.
The story presents the transition of the young couple into a new society and a new stage of life.