Analysis Of Enter Without Such As Knocking By Bruce Dawe

Bruce Dawe’s poems “Katrina”,” A Victorian Hangman Tells His Love”, “Homo Suburbiensis “ and “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” depict life and death through the use of similar poetic techniques such as metaphors, imagery, onomatopoeia, tone and similes, although, with different circumstances. The events in these four poems evoke emotions within the reader, the most common being sadness and frustration. These emotions are explored, in all four poems, through the tone of melancholy.

However, Dawe believed the desire was unwarranted and that humans were falling into meaningless, clinical procedures in life, blind to the simple pleasures. Dawe, therefore, exaggerates this regulated world to draw emphasis to this issue. In the third stanza as an adolescent, the continuous signs society consumes are described using short sentences in capital letters; 'WALK. DON'T WALK. TURN LEFT…KEEP CLEAR/OUT/OFF GRASS. NO BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER. BEWARE OF THIS. BEWARE OF THAT.' These commands begin as realistic and reasonable to a human, however, Dawe begins to satirically overstress these ideas. Dawe intends to describe the excess rules that society abides by. 'NO BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER' on one of the signs was obviously not an actual sign, however, this hyperbole emphasizes how far away society is from the rationale that Dawe believes in. The use of satire inspires the reader to become more aware and question consumerist

In the poem ‘Enter Without So Much as Knocking’, Bruce Dawe uses the language of television to display the effect technology and advertisements had on daily Australian life in the 1950’s. In the first stanza, Dawe wrote “…first thing he heard was Bobby Dazzler on Channel 7: Hello, hello, hello all you lucky people…” The stanza is focused on a ten-day-old baby who has been taken home and the first thing he hears is the catch phrase of a TV personality. This tells us that in Dawe’s world, children are exposed to the news and the power of ads as young as possible, to force them into a life of technology and big companies. In stanza three, the language becomes more demanding and jarring. Dawe uses capitalization, repetition and short sentences to create a list of rules society is being forced to follow. He uses road rules such as “walk. Don’t walk. Turn left. No parking,” and the lack of emotion in the words highlights how he believes this is not the way to live. The fifth stanza is written as the adult. It’s a long sentence filled with the jargon of advertising and superficial connections to family and friends, and through this language use Dawe shows us exactly what he’s afraid of.

Bruce Dawe, a well-known Australian poet, writes about a variety of topics, including death, suicide, cruelty and apathy of society, destruction of the environment, prejudice and the senselessness of war. Dawe uses vivid visual and aural poetic techniques to express his emotions towards the theme of the poem. This helps the reader grasp a better understanding of what Dawe is writing about. The poems being discussed are his poem ‘Life Cycle’ which describes the life of being like an AFL player; the poem ‘Soliloquy for One Dead’ known as a very emotive poem, which deals with the thought of loss and the feeling of grief and lastly, ‘Planning a Time Capsule’ discussing the views Dawe has on what humans are doing to the environment.

Throughout this poem there are multiple ways Hall connects the poem to its core meaning. Located within the title, the word ‘dead’ is used to describe the machine. Being dead is the ultimate end of a life and that uncertainty of death sparks fear among many people. The inclusion of this certain word is used to set the tone of the poem as dark and gloomy and obtain the readers interest. Another method used by Hall to convey the theme of death was through imagery. The entire second stanza is a description of the pilot’s skeleton strapped within the crashed plane. Having such a graphic image portrayed, Hall is able to essentially shock his reader with the gruesomeness that death produces. One of the last things the reader may decipher from this poem is that life, just like war, is a trap. Within the third stanza, the pilot is said to be taking a train to work and is “held/ by the firm webbing” of the train. The webbing infers that the pilot, although not trapped in his plane, is trapped in the roles put forth by society.

The word “homecoming” is universally associated with a celebration of the returned and is linked to feelings of happiness and anticipation. Dawe however, employs this word ironically as the “homecoming” described in the poem correlates to the death and mourning of the soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War and depicts the arrival of their nameless bodies. Through establishing this irony Dawe is about to effectively capture the brutal reality of war and highlight the emotional trauma associated with its dehumanising

The quality and importance of life are looked at by most as a valuable and great gift, but this perception of someone’s life is stated differently by the two poets, David Malouf and Bruce Dawe. The poems Suburban and Homecoming express life through the eyes of two separate groups, one being a ‘stereotypical’ individual and the other, a group of men fighting for their own lives. Poetry offers many hidden meanings within their stories, Suburban and Homecoming are no different offering two distinct takes on the meaning of life. Whether that be shown through war, or a Sunday morning after a long night out, both poems convey the emotions of life, both positively and negatively.

In the first poem mentioned: Enter Without So Much as Knocking, Dawe shows the living of a child in the Baby Boomers period, and the era after World War 2 (1950's

The poem is set in a hospital as the persona visits a dying relative. It is mostly focused on his walk through the hospital to her ward, and to her bedside. Throughout the poem, the poet explores the themes of death and pain using the emotions and thoughts of the persona.

‘The Grave’ by Katherine Anne Porter is a story that illustrates the initiation of a child from innocence to experience. The underlying theme behind the central idea of innocence to experience is the cycle of life and death and rebirth. This theme is illustrated in the young protagonist, Miranda, and her epiphany on the concept of the cycle of life and rebirth. The dominant tone in ‘The Grave’ is melancholic, and that tone is created through the language elements of symbolism, diction, and imagery. The story’s tone is also supported by the fiction element character.

"Out, Out," by Robert Frost is a gruesomely graphic and emotional poem about the tragic end of a young boy's life. It is a powerful expression about the fragility of life and the fact that death can come at any time. Death is always devastating, but it is even more so when the victim is just a young boy. The fact that the boy's death came right before he could " Call it a day" (750) leads one to think the tragedy might have been avoided and there by forces the reader to think, "What if." This poem brings the question of mortality to the reader's attention and shows that death has no age limit.

The visual representation of the poem Homecoming, by Bruce Dawe, explores a few of the key themes represented in the poem. These themes include: the depiction of a journey, death, futility of war, sadness and dehumanisation. Which are communicated in the poster through the use of its content, ideas, themes and techniques used. The use of colour sets the tone of the visual representation.

Purpose (Theme): In Dawe’s poem, it clearly shows that he is against abortion. He believes it isn’t something that should become legal because all lives matter. The intention of this poem is to convince the public that abortion is nothing short of a crime as they are terminating a foetus’s

An anti-war poem inspired by the events of the Vietnam War, Homecoming inspires us to think about the victims of the war: not only the soldiers who suffered but also the mortuary workers tagging the bodies and the families of those who died in the fighting. The author, Australian poet Bruce Dawe, wrote the poem in response to a news article describing how, at Californian Oaklands Air /Base, at one end of the airport families were farewelling their sons as they left for Vietnam and at the other end the bodies of dead soldiers were being brought home. Additionally, he wrote in response to a photograph, publishes in Newsweek, of American tanks (termed ‘Grants’ in the poem) piled with the bodies of the dead soldiers as they returned to the

Two of Emily Dickinson’s poems, “I heard a Fly buzz-when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” are both written about life’s stopping point, death. Although the poems are written by the same poet, both poems view death in a different manner. Between the two poems, one views death as having an everlasting life while the other anticipates everlasting life, only to realize it does not exist. While both poems are about death, both poems also illustrate that the outcome of death is a mysterious experience that can only be speculated upon with the anticipation of everlasting life.