Student Essay on A Character Analysis of Toff Briceland

Do you think its right for a fourteen year old boy to tell an elder to piss off? Or how about having lack of respect for other people's property, by simply destroying it? Or even being so self absorbed you become blatant to the world around you? Toff Briceland, a character in the novel `Drylands', is a devious brat who sets out with a passion to make other people's lives miserable. Thea Astley, the author of the novel explores the attitudes of a teenage `pest' in the way that they fit in with to title of `Drylands'. Toff is the perfect example of the "lack of life and hope' that the town of Drylands symbolises.

Australia is presented as a dry place, a landscape which offers little scope for comfort or retreat. Drylands is a novel that presents a picture of Australia that is quite contrary to the glitz which the official P.R. promotions characteristically attempt to convey. Drylands is an evocative and emotional tale of the death of a small country town.

Drylands is Astley's Waste Land, with characters that are exhausted and alienated, pursued by personifications of failure and defeat. Most of the character's in the novel want to escape this harsh reality of the town, but not Toff. He is the part of the town which is a failure, a lack of goodness and respect.

Toff is the son of Howie Briceland, the local councillor who is `fat with graft' (page 139),and grandson of the grazier who raped his servant girl and now father of Benny Shoforth. Toff 's complete moral of evil is frightening and is an example of a mind turned bad by a lack of any moral framework. `In fact he loathed the older generation his parents moved in: buddies from properties farther out, coastal businessmen and their wives who came up for loud drunken weekends and planned development along the seaboard.

And he loathed even more the generation beyond that: smells, wrinkles, contused veins, the staggers, jowls, guts, curved frail bones, plastic munchers, word-gropers. Gross!'(Page 140.)His sly taunting of both Janet and old Randler shows the reader there is capability for violence that is eventually going to explode.

Toff loathed the older generation because they had more control than he did. He hated being treated as just a kid, and because of this he took revenge. He pestered Jim Randler everyday, hanging around like a bad smell. Jim was aggravated by Toff's always existent appearance "Randler did not know how to turn him away with out offence" (P132). Toff 's childhood has failed to give him a sense of moral direction. To is the latest in a line of men whose disrespect for human dignity has left him a complete lack of wisdom, insight or empathy for others.

Loneliness is almost a religion in this small town, yet everyone knows every bit of your business, nothing is kept secret. The town is being outmanoeuvred by drought and begins to empty, pouring itself out like water into sand - which emphasises the use of wet and dry. Small minds shrink even smaller in the vastness of the land. One man is forced out by council rates and prejudice; another sells his property, risking the lot to build his dream, in which Toff ruins. And all of them are shadowed by violence of some sort - these people whose only victory over the town is in leaving it to go to a better place.

Although Toff is only a small part of the novel, he is a very significant character. The novel is about this town with lack of life, drab, depressing and no hope for mankind, the characters want to escape this life, and find a new beginning. Toff is the typical product of the culture of Drylands, whereby the only hope for him is too ruin other people's dreams and hopes of leaving the town.

We as the reader's look down on Toff due to his immature and hurtful behaviour. Jim Randler works so hard for three years to fulfil his dream of escape from the town. He builds a boat to his perfection and feels all the hard work will eventually pay off. Toff knew this and persisted to ask Jim questions, `It wont be long now, hey, Mr Randler? You'll soon be off into the wide blue yonder' (p133). Jim was not aware that all these questions were aimed to be a form of sarcasm and that Toff had a plan. Toff had a plan to ruin all reality of hopes and dreams; he was going to destroy Mr Randler's boat.

Toff thought of reason's to ruin Jim's dreams and his excuse was "he refused to share even the sawdust and shavings of his dream" (p141). Toff needed anything, any small pretty excuse to hurt Jim, and this was it. When he was in action, he did not even feel the slightest bit guilty about what he was doing, all he said was "Cop that, old man"(p145). His rude and arrogant ways resulted in shattered hopes and dreams, and poor Jim Randler was left with nothing but despair.

Toff is needed in the novel to enable the reader to understand the affects of the town, and on which it has on the characters. If he did not exist in the novel it would be too repetitive in the way that all the other characters take a form of wanting to escape, unlike Toff who is an image of what they want to escape from. Toff creates contrast with the other characters; it is a bit like the night and day. In order for this novel to be intriguing it needs to include conflict, and Toff creates this.

This book is about love, humaneness, intelligent discourse and mutual respect .Despite its depressing tone; there are glimpses of hope and salvation. This glimpse, though, is perhaps not enough to rescue these characters from the brink of despair, for there is a suggestion that they have all travelled too far down the path to extinction.