AustLit

Wilson argues that the dominant themes of Such is Life are the conflict between free will and determinism, and the nature of knowledge. Wilson demonstrates that both inductive and deductive reasoning are practised by characters in the novel and argues that they reflect, respectively, European and Australian methods of reasoning. The novel dramatizes Tom Collins' mistakes after using both types of reasoning, reflecting the uncertainty of knowledge, and demonstrating that categoric and tautegoric knowledge frequently cohabitate in human experience.