On the Topic of Imagery in Part One...

As I briefly discussed with my group during class, an image that really stood out to me during Part One of The Secret River was when William's family is being introduced near the beginning of the novel (I do not have page numbers that would be useful because my novel is still shipping, and so I am reading off of a pdf presently). William's mother is stealing books, and in the process, she drops her baby. 

This stood out to me because the class divide is obviously a huge theme in the novel, but the novel also focuses heavily on negative aspects of the impoverished. A lack of compassion of that vein is showcased when William's brother Rob falls sick with a fever as a child, and his mother admonished him for it, wishing that he had simply died instead. 

With those two scenes in mind, I think that a significant theme in the novel is how very common sensibilities and basic empathy are wrung out of the impoverished as an aspect of the aforementioned class divide. 

A separate, more abstract image that I thought had meaning was the color red. 

First of all, when William's mother was stealing books in the aforementioned scene, William himself got away with the most expensive one, which was described as being red and gilded. Naturally, the book being gilded supports that the book was expensive, and the color descriptor in this isolated instance wouldn't provoke much thought.

Later on, however, William notes that he is in possession of two waistcoats, one of which is expensive, having received it from his master. That particular waistcoat was also red. I doubt that it's simply a coincidence, and will keep an eye out for other descriptors of color as the story progresses.

Anyhow, red in this instance would clearly symbolize wealth or high standing. This makes sense, at least in my head, because I often associate red with royal garments, even though purple is the color that is supposed to symbolize royalty.