Sam Pickles
He is a compulsive gambler. He only works so as to fuel his addiction. He believes very firmly in lady luck, the shifty shadow, the hairy hand of God. He genuinely cares about his family, but this love is diminished by his impulsive nature: he constantly gambles away what little the family has. He entrusts his life entirely to the shifty shadow, forgoing hard work or determination in order to get by. He doesn’t believe that you can make or change your own luck. “Luck don’t change, love. It moves.” When his brother Joel, a fountain of luck, dies and leaves him the house and 2000 pounds, he gambles the money away, but luckily, can’t sell the house, or he would have gambled that too. This unyielding following of the hairy hand of God robs Lester of ambition and any work ethic he might have had otherwise. Luck does serve him well on the rare occasion, handing him a job at the Mint, but Lester just uses the earnings to gamble some more.
His relationships with the women in his life are those of sincere care: he loves Dolly for who she is, knowing who she is and how she mistreatments him, and he loves Rose, and even though she doesn’t know why, she loves him back. In his dark moment, where Lester contemplates suicide, Rose is there to comfort him and bring him back. He believes, as do many, that he is useless, and he recognizes his weaknesses. This allows him to accept the weaknesses of others.
Lester Lamb
“He’s a farmboy, you can see it on him – honest as filth”. Lester is very much the second in command of the family, always talking orders from Oriel. He is easily swayed to other’s idea, such as the two times when Sam takes him gambling, despite it being against his ethics, or rather, those that Oriel forces on him. He is often seen as the soft parent, the one who you go to for fun and laughter and when you’re in trouble, because you know he doesn’t have the heart to punish you. He is a true blue bloke, honest and trustworthy, hard work ethics and lots of laughter. He was in the Anzacs at Gallipoli, cavalry. The second time he went to the army, he was in the band. He has a vaudeville act down at the Anzac club for a large part of the novel. He tries, like Oriel, to forgo God and belief in him, although it’s just as hard for him. He is an understanding character. His character is central to the theme of family and relationships: “Take away the family and that’s it, there’s no point…It’s why I don’t shoot meself quietly in the head with the old Webley.” Lester loves his family deeply and it’s his reason for continuing to live.
Dolly Pickles
Dolly’s personality is the result of an incestuous relationship: her mother was her grandmother and her father was her grandfather. Her second oldest sister (from the seven girls that her father fathered) married their father. Because of this, Dolly hates women, especially sisters. It is said that Dolly loved her father, and this feeling of love led to her ‘jealousy’ of her sister: she would have thought that she was in competition for their father’s affection.
Dolly hates Oriel, because in her, Dolly sees herself as a failure. She fails to recognize Rose’s efforts at sustaining the family and refuses to admit that it is because of Rose that the family survives. She forgoes typical motherly duties, such as cooking, in favour of drinking. Ted is her favourite child. She has an affinity with thetracks as they provide an escape route, should she be daring enough to take it. This highlights how she feels trapped and confused in her own life and longs for release. She loves men, for the thrill and their feel. She has little or no remorse for her sexual actions, in fact, she seems proud of them. In the beginning of the novel, she misses her home where she was known and where she had a reputation. Sex, and her ability at it, makes her feel valuable. The relationship between Dolly and Rose is healed when Dolly, in a melancholy drunken stupor, brought on by Ted’s death, lets slip her sad family story. Rose finally understands why her mother is like she is and is able to let go of their horrible past because of it.
Quick Lamb
Quick feels intensely guilty for not being able to save Fish. He feels that the tragedy was his fault and that “he knows it should have been him, not Fish”. Because of this, he thinks that he should not be happy and surrounds himself with images of sadness. He calls himself the “Lost Lamb”, unable to find a place where he is free of guilt long enough to truly be himself.
When he leaves Cloudstreet, he attempts to find himself through being alone. He works shooting kangaroos for pelts. He experiences a vision of Fish in an oranges box rowing over the wheat. He encounters the Blackfella, a hitchhiker who leads him back to Cloudstreet, however, he isn’t ready to return yet. He is eventually brought back glowing, after another encounter with the Blackfella on the water. He falls in love with Rose after they talk, simply and relaxedly, on the River. He is much like his father, easily ruled by the women in his life; Oriel and then Rose. He has very little drive or ambition.
He becomes a cop, like his father, except he wants to combat the evil which he plastered over his walls. He becomes frustrated and depressed when they can’t catch the Nedlands monster, although when he sees the drowned child, reminiscent of him puling fish out of the water, he realises that they’re all the same. They’re people, “it’s just us and us and us.” He is a simple character, and unique defined by his simplicity.
Rose Pickles
She is one of three children, but the only daughter of Dolly and Sam Pickles. She is seen as the most ‘mature’ of the bunch, being the one who bears most of the typical adult responsibility, even at a young age, by having to cook, look after the family and ultimately get a job to sustain the family, her father’s gambling addiction and the alcohol needs of her mother. Rose loves her father as he is the only person who acts even remotely like a parent should. Her conflicts lie greatly with her mother whose duties she has had to take up.
She seeks to protect those around her, evident in her care of her father during his suicidal moment and her infatuation with Fish, the epitome of need and innocence. Rose has needs too, mainly to be loved and to be independent. This need is shown through both her relationship to Toby Raven and to Quick, as well as her desire to get a new place, all their own, as well as her getting a job.
Fish Lamb
Fish Lamb (Samson) is the central figure of Cloudstreet. His name bears two distinct references to the Christian Bible: Fish is the symbol of the early Christian church while Samson is the name of a biblical figure whose strength lay in his hair and was betrayed by a woman, Delilah. Ultimately he killed himself in order to kill a large number of the Philistine enemy. The two characters can be likened if Oriel is juxtaposed with Delilah: Delilah led to the death of Samson, whereas Oriel brought Fish back from the dead and in doing so deprived him of his greatest desire, a wholeness of mind and spirit.
Fish started out as a loved, smart character. Easy to like, charismatic and quick witted. In an ironic turn of fate, Fish drowns and dies, but desperate not to lose her son, Oriel brings him back, although only half of him returns. This causes the split between Spiritual Fish, or dead Fish, and the Physical, alive, Fish. The entire novel, minus the epilogue and fist parts, is the retelling of P. Fish’s life up until the moment when he is reunited with the water and his Spiritual self: when he once again becomes whole. He plays the piano in the Library, always hitting middle C, the note which the old lady’s nose hit when she died. It is the sound of the miserable, the dead, the terrible, and even Rose and other characters can hear that ringing and it makes them feel horrible.
Family Tree
