Analysis Of Up The Wall By Bruce Dawe

In today’s society, people focus on materialistic items to please their ego, but in the end, we all know that we will all end up the same way. The world leads to conformity, and it takes away the individuality of people. The poem “Enter Without Such as Knocking” roughly represented a person's life cycle of life beginning from birth up until death. In “Enter Without Such as Knocking” Dawe uses onomatopoeia in “Blink, Blink” to describe in what conditions the pregnant woman arrived at the hospital. Dawe uses this technique at the initial start of his poem to emphasize quickly events can happen such as in the blink of an eyelid, and likens the blinking of baby’s eye to experience life for the first time. The usage of onomatopoeia criticizes society by revealing how the baby is already exposed to regulations and conformity excepted in society. Further in the poem, Dawe uses euphemisms in “grieving over halitosis” to emphasize that greedy nature of the persona and how no one grieves for him after he has died. Dawe is explaining through this poem that people earn respect through their actions during their lives, which affects the community’s perception after death. In the final stanza, Dawe explores euphemisms to highlight how a

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.

White Australians state “shame when [their] kids they die from colds or from sheer neglect. Shame when [they] live on the river banks. While collectin' [they’re] welfare cheques. Shame when [they’re] blind from trachoma. Shame when [they’re] crippled from blights.” The rhyming scheme in the stanza makes poem flow seamlessly constructing a conversational tone as if the narrator is speaking directly to the audience. This feature purposefully lulls the reader into agreeing with the white Australia’s arguments as it constructs an image that the Indigenous people are refusing to integrate themselves with modern society and suffering the consequences of those decisions. The mention of welfare cheques also contribute to the perspective that white Australians are attempting to mend the lives of Indigenous individuals, however this could not be further from the truth and message of this

Bruce Dawe uses expressive language features to show the harshness of his poem. Dawe uses a variety of descriptive words to express his opinion,

In a series of verse paragraphs, Dawe focuses on the 1950’s society with an emphasis on the consumerism, materialism and lack of individualism. He seeks to convince an important issue in the Australian Society-Our consumer driven culture; a culture that defines us through what we buy and consume. The focus of Dawe’s criticism of the consumerism is the family that bought home the baby from the hospital. Dawe portrays it in a satirical way; the family life and the individual lives of the family members who have been dehumanized by such a mercantile society. He instills strong commands when describing his family commodities: “One economy-size Mum, One Anthony Squires-Coolstream-Summerweight Dad along with two other kids straight off the junior department rack.” The warmth of the mum, dad and kids, contrast with the advertising language which describes them. It is as if his mum is the size of a washing machine, the father is summed up by the suit he wears, and the baby siblings have been bought like goodies in an apartment place. Dawe is not saying that this is actually true; he is using metaphors and exaggeration.

Gilbert’s poem portrays many Aboriginals plight’s within Australia and conveys notions of despair, anguish and anger for his fellow Aboriginal comrades. Again, Gilbert uses strong visual imagery in “the anguished death you spread” which helps convey the persona’s feeling of horror and anger at the Europeans. This is further emphasised through the poet’s vehement and repetitive use of second person pronouns in “you” which conveys a sense of blame and accumulates into an accusatory tone and generates a strong sense of detachment between the author and the European settlers. Furthermore enjambment enhances the accusatory tone in “you pollute all the rivers and litter every road” because the lack of punctuation and pauses makes the lines sharp and quick, creating a sense of anger in the author. In addition the author’s use of metaphors in “humanity locked in chains” creates a sense of struggle and inability to escape the oppression the Aboriginals are in, whereby the word “chain” is symbolic for trapped and lack of freedom. Kevin Gilbert’s emotional poem brings light to the pain and suffering Aboriginals are going through, which is a stark contrast to the image of Australia, being a free and accepting

IIn the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper”, the narrator’s husband has rented an old mansion in the country for the summer. John is relying on this vacation as the time for his wife’s nervous condition to resolve itself with rest and medicines. As the story unfolds for the readers, it becomes apparent her husband, John, is monitoring her 24 hours a day. She feels somewhat condemned that she is unable to change her circumstances and she ends up as a victim, thus confirming the dominance of men over women during that period. Between the narrator’s controlling husband and the deterioration of her mind, she inevitably snaps and becomes completely delusional.

The use of conversation and the thoughts of the narrator reflect the poet's own thoughts. In line thirty to line thirty-five, the narrator questions the purpose of a wall. He has an open disposition and does not understand the need to “wall in” or “wall out” (line 33) anything or anyone.

Dawe, born in Fitzroy, Victoria in 1930, became known as the ‘poet of suburbia’ living an unconventionally conventional life. Having been born during the great depression Dawe worked many occupations. This allowed him to develop a great deal of empathy with and give voice to ‘ordinary Australians’ through his poetry. Maguire however, born 1935 in Oklahoma lived an ‘average American life’ and from that perspective was able to compose his song ‘eve of destruction’. Maguire’s song, like Dawe’s poem

With parents like these, succumbing to anger and revenge proves understandable, but instead the author bypasses all of this. Although her childhood is surrounded by less than inspiring figures her optimism allows her to make something of her life. Wall's even ends up maintaining excellent grades and

Bruce Dawe, an Australian known poet, born 1930 is still one of the biggest selling and most highly regarded poets of Australia. His ability to write such influential poems has made an impact on a number of people, as each poem can be related to the ordinary living lives of Australians throughout the years. Bruce Dawe's poems are interesting because they comment on the lives of ordinary people. This statement is agreed on. In relation to the statement, three key poems can be linked being Enter Without So Much as Knocking (1959), Homo Suburbiensis (1964) and Drifters (1968).

There are various components of Walls’ traumatic autobiography that are significant. To begin with, throughout her narrative Walls uses the trauma she has gone through to show that she has learned to take nothing for granted and is appreciative of what she does have. This is a significant portion of Walls’ autobiography because it shows that a traumatic upbringing can either cause a person to fall into the same patterns that brought on the trauma, such as falling back into poverty, or the person can rise above the challenges in their lives and become determined to change their future. Another significant portion of her narrative includes different incidents when Walls and her siblings go to extreme measures to simply survive. A specific incident of this occurs when Walls describes how at lunch, she would hide in the bathroom stall with her feet up and girls

In the story, “The Yellow Wallpaper” written by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, the narrator talks about several things: She feels she is sick and her brother and husband do not believe her, her husband moved her to a deserted house and keeps her isolated, he controls her every move, and she feels that she has no companionship. All of these things contribute to the theme of alienation and loneliness in this story.

Wallflowers by Donna Vorreyer is a poem that uses a compassionate diction to create a strong feeling about the way we use words, specifically to remind us not to forget those words that get lost in our dictionaries. She says of a rarely used word she “wooed it with her pen, let it know it was loved.” She personifies these rarely used words, words that may not be known like gegenshein and zoanthropy, by giving the words emotion, saying the words are “bitterly waiting” to be used. Vorreyer uses imagery to give a picture of the desperate state the words are in to be used by creating a scene of Ellis Island. She says the words are the immigrants and the writer is Ellis Island, or a gateway to a life that is better. In the words case, this is a

The story of The Wall is of protagonist, Pink, supposedly a character loosely based off of Pink Floyd’s late front man, Syd Barret and Roger Waters, himself. In the 53-song journey, Pink is born, abused by the universe and in the last song, Run Like Hell, Pink solidifies his fate with placing the final brick in the wall he has been building around himself his entire existence. While Pink is merely a product of the cruel environment he was brought up in, his isolationism becomes his poison. With the last brick in his wall, Pink has lost everything including his sanity and his once beloved wife. Waters here references that when one separates themselves from the rest of the world, whether it be fear, distrust, hatred, or intolerance, more harm is being done than good.