Contains the ninth chapter of The Dream and the Reality, an unpublished literary work by John McLaren on the study of the realist tradition in Australian fiction. The purpose of McLaren’s study is to explore the attitude of Australians to their country which has always been ambiguous and show how some Australian fiction writers reacted to this particular experience and environment, how they have treated the dream and how they have dealt with reality.  In this chapter McLaren reviews the literary work of Thomas Keneally, the most successful practitioner of the symbolic style of writing set out to explore the inner meaning of man’s life.