Christos Tsiolkas Analysis

Christos Tsiolkas is a homosexual Greek Australian writer, born in Richmond and studied at Melbourne University as an editor in the student union. Tsiolkas is known to be a shocking, controversial writer basing his work on social and political issues surrounding the Australia of today including family, class, friendship and ethnicity in the typical suburban setting. Tsioklas is not afraid to bring up the controversial topics ‘ he calls racism by its name, but not ashamed to dig around the experience of racism and its effects’. ( The Australian Face pg. 2). Barracuda raises all these questions and controversial issues as well as in his fourth novel The Slap. However, as The slap is segmented into eight different perspectives of ‘infidelity rage and childcare rage’(Barracuda and middle-class …show more content…
Barracuda is about failure and ambition, the dire need to succeed in the world of elite sport. However, Barracuda is about something much more important which arose in Ian Sysons lecture about the human condition of what could be called ‘otherness’, a recurring theme in Tsiolkas’ work. In Tsioklas’ concept of otherness, in Barracuda, Tsiolkas he depicts several binaries for his characters to fall between such as the working class vs upper class and Physicality vs intellectualism. The dire urge to escape your social class In Barracuda this is depicted through the character of Danny, the son of a truck driver and hairdresser, who ends up being offered a sports scholarship to an elite private school. Danny feels he is not supposed or deserve to be there, while everyone else is. We see the juxtaposition of the attire of the different social classes as Danny must wear new clothes which separate him from his family. His sister wears an ugly and generic public school uniform, while he has a tie and suit that he must take care of at all costs. The is even evident with his bathers as he