Life Cycle Bruce Dawe

Children are innocent until we pollute their minds with the filth of society is what Dawe is saying. Owen describes the sky as “Littered with stars”, ironically, as the stars are pure and not soiled with the filth of mankind. Thus by saying the sky is littered with stars, he is taking the point of view of society – the fact that they would want to bring order and conformity to everything. These stars are scattered across the sky in an unorderly fashion, and “no one had got around to fixing [them] up yet”. He is highlighting that society takes beautiful, unadulterated natural things and pollutes them with their rules and regulations. Moving from childhood to the middle ages in but a few lines, highlighting that it’s not worth mentioning the rest of his childhood, as it was all had too much of a resemblance to what has already been said. There is a quick and noticeable change of tone as the man is described as a “money-hungry”, “back stabbing” and “miserable”, no longer the image of innocence as he was portrayed in the first 4 stanzas. Not guarded by adolescence any more, he enters the real world and is instantly polluted with the filth of society. He says goodbye to the stars – their natural splendour no longer interests him, he is now a part of the materialistic world. He will no longer show any emotion, and he is now ‘realistic’, in other words, fake. The following dialogue is a symbol of the man’s beliefs, what he has been taught and what he now accepts

Capitalized words again represent the words the man reads on signs. Dawe mocks these signs by including ‘NO BREATHING EXCEPT BY ORDER’ which is using irony, as it is impossible to be able to control when people can and cant breathe. At the end of the poem the non-capitalization of the world ‘silence’ shows that it is silence rather than a gins demanding silence. This shows that the only way to escape the miser of a noisy consumerist society is through

As in the beginning of the fourth stanza, the first word of the stanza brings the reader back to a different part of the boy's life and a different event. This new event shows the character as no longer a boy, representing innocence, but in the company of "godless money-hungry back-stabbing miserable so-and-sos". We can tell from this that Dawe is trying to show that the boy has now grown up and has been introduced to the "real world" and is now already a middle-aged man. The phrase "goodbye stars" relates back to the fourth stanza. He must also farewell the "soft cry in the corner"; a farewell to any emotions. It is at this point that Dawe includes the adult voice of the boy. The character speaks the need to care for yourself first and foremost, no need to think about the effect it may have on others, shown in the statement "hit wherever you see a head and kick whoever's down". This harsh change from innocent boy to selfish man is how Dawe is creating the character. The adult man is shaped by his dialogue in the poem. The character has grown up and no longer discusses his family, yet no mention of a wife or children is present until the next stanza, and then only to criticize. This fifth stanza is the first one to portray him as an adult, and Dawe has managed to make the character seem harsh and unkind.

The fact that enjambment is used throughout the poem such as in the lines, “like a colour slide or press an ear against its hive” portrays a lack of structure and therefore emphasizes the initial enjoyment one feels when reading a poem before the chore of analyzing it begins. This is also emphasized through the fact that the poem is a free verse poem.

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

As evident by the title of this poem, imagery is a strong technique used in this poem as the author describes with great detail his journey through a sawmill town. This technique is used most in the following phrases: “...down a tilting road, into a distant valley.” And “The sawmill towns, bare hamlets built of boards with perhaps a store”. This has the effect of creating an image in the reader’s mind and making the poem even more real.

with a cadence which holds true through out the whole poem (Team, Shmoop Editorial). Service’s application of literary devices like alliteration enhances the flow of the poem; “roam 'round, cursèd cold, foul or fair, half hid, and brawn and brains” (Service).

Linda Pastan made this poem include various forms of figurative language to hide the literal message that it's trying to portray. Figurative language is using figures of speech to make the text be more powerful, persuasive, and meaningful. Figures of speech such as, similes and metaphors, go beyond the literal meanings to give the readers a new way of looking at the text. It can come in multiple ways with different literacy and rhetorical devices such as: alliteration, imageries, onomatopoeias, and etc. With the usage of the literary devices Pastan has used, it introduced the relationship between the mother and the daughter. It shows the memories of how the mother helped her daughter grow from a little girl to a young adult getting ready to go her own way in life.

The title ‘Homecoming’ is a significant contrast to the traditional universal implication of the word with the reality of the dead soldiers being brought home, to their grieving families. The word “homecoming” usually implies a heroic or reception for a great achievement however Dawe has effectively placed it to represent the death, mourning and loss of a loved one. The poet uses powerful representation to emphasise the emotional damage caused to family or friends through the loss of a loved one. The striking personification used on lines 23-24: “telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree and the spider grief swings his bitter geometry”, exemplifies the arbitrary grief that affects those who receive notices. Gaining an emotional distance through the use of a third person voice, the poem enables the reader to view the tragedy in its entirety. Repeating “home, home, home” accentuates the emotional ties of the soldiers, a technique indicative of the monotony of the experiences involved in warfare. By exposing the destructive aspects of war Dawe removes war from its falsely glorified

By incorporating allusions, Trethewey subtly expresses just how much the speaker is affected by referencing other works that share related themes. With the first reading of the poem one can understand that the speaker is clearly upset, but soon starts to reveal that

     'She strikes and strikes the shrilly circling / boy till the stick breaks in her hand.'; (9-10). These two lines describe the kind of sadistic beating that the boy is receiving. This is not an average everyday spanking. The antagonist actually hits the child until the stick cannot withstand anymore. The usage of alliteration allows the reader to incorporate that the boy is screaming and running in circles all while receiving the beating. Hayden then says, 'His tears are rainy weather to woundlike memories:'; (11-12). This line is very significant to the poem. The narrator is making a connection to himself at this time. The boy's tears are bringing back memories from his past. Hayden uses the colon marks to show that the preceding text is going to be the narrator's 'woundlike'; memories.

This semester I had learned a lot about the grotesque in the lectures, and in all the books and films that we have watched and discussed. I have decided to present a drawing of my interpretation on the cycle of life, which shows various themes of the grotesque. The first image shows various things that we relate to life, living things. For example, Plants, vegetation, nature, and animals and humans. In my second picture, I am showing the death of a human, and his soul leaving his body, because I wanted to show the liminal stage or in other words, transition from being alive being on the earth, to being dead in the afterlife. The theme of Death and decay is what comes into my mind, when I refer to a humans or animals body decomposing and deteriorating after they have died.

The poem does not really focus on any elements of football, but rather the different thoughts that go through ones mind at a game. One can read this poem without having any knowledge of football, but still understand the meaning of the poem. In the poem, you first talk about baby thoughts and compare them to many things such as the shape of seaweed and pirate knives. I think

The children are the ‘we’ of the first half of the poem. They “loved it” (5) when the mother kicked out their father and were “glad” (1) at the result of divorce. When their father lost his job they “grinned” (4) and were “tickled” (line 7) with pleasure as they watched their father’s world crash down around him. The sympathy conveyed through the narrative sits with the mother and children during the first half of the poem. As the daughter begins to speak in present terms, and the “you” (1,3) suddenly is now “father” (17), the poem undertakes a dramatic shift. Sympathy begins to surface, from the reader, for the “bums in doorways” (18) who begin to take on a victimized persona with their hands depicted as useless “flippers” (21) attached to their “slug” (19) bodies. It is not to say that the speaker has forgotten the cruel insensitive man that she recalls in the first part of the poem, but the father is now not the only villain and the mother and children are not the only sufferers.

The poem has many different hidden meanings but they are all based around a common theme of faith.