The Dehumanization Of War In Bruce Dawe's Homecoming

Wilfred Owens poem “Dulce et Decorum est” and Bruce Dawe’s poem “Homecoming” are poems from different wars, however both highlight the indignity of war. Owen’s poem is broken up into three sections, where he expresses the torture soldiers suffer

Homecoming (1968), a narrative piece of elegy by Bruce Dawe delineates the Australian soldiers who died in Vietnam war. The whole poem’s tone appears to be ironic and the tempo is inexorable as if the appalling episodes of soldiers are occurring unremittingly. The title itself is ironic because when I think of homecoming it’s something celebratory and lots of partying. But within this poem, Dawe doesn’t

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

‘Weapons Training’ by Dawe features a dramatic monologue of a drill sergeant; training recruits which are to be sent to war. Based on his own reading and reflection, Dawe was opposed to the Vietnamese War, believing it to be lacking sense historically and ultimately futile. In the poem Weapons Training, Dawe shows us the consequences of war and the things you need to do in order to prepare for it. "mob of

The author of ‘Homecoming’, Bruce Dawe, illustrates and describes the catastrophes of the Vietnam War in a calm but negative tone. Dawe uses this poem to represent the soldiers and the experiences they went through during WW1. The poetic techniques that he used in this poem “homecoming” were Imagery, Onomatopoeia and Repetition throughout the whole poem. Bruce Dawe helps the readers to understand the theme of how war is bad and a tragic waste of human life. This poem takes the readers to a place in time where our ancestral blood lines fought and lost their lives during WW1, in the hopes that future generations would have a better future in life.

Homecoming by Bruce Dawe describes the homecoming of dead Australian Soldiers from the Vietnamese War, (lines 2-3). The poem has its poet expressing his opinions on man’s response to wars and how vital human life is, the soldier need to be brought home and the brutality and futility of wars between the human’s race. In contrast, Suburban, by David Malouf, expresses to the reader the facade of modern suburbia, lukewarm residency clouded by public idealism and picket fences. “Suburban” suggests similar themes of masked anxieties by apparent political or social orders, which is clearly expressed through the way Malouf describes modern suburbia; as dull and emotionless. Homecoming directly contrasts this and describes a chaotic and destructive, this is demonstrated through the entirety of the poem, poetic

The title “Homecoming” symbolises irony because the soldiers never return home. This poem is in free verse which shows the deeper meaning of what happens in the war always stays with you. “They’re zipping them up in green plastic bags” is

The Viet Nam War has been the most reviled conflict in United States history for many reasons, but it has produced some great literature. For some reason the emotion and depredation of war kindle in some people the ability to express themselves in a way that they may not have been able to do otherwise. Movies of the time period are great, but they are not able to elicit, seeing the extremely limited time crunch, the same images and charge that a well-written book can. In writing of this war, Tim O'Brien put himself and his memories in the forefront of the experiences his characters go through, and his writing is better for it. He produced a great work of art not only because he experienced the war first hand, but because he is able to convey the lives around him in such vivid detail. He writes a group of fictional works that have a great deal of truth mixed in with them. This style of writing and certain aspects of the book are the topics of this reflective paper.

The poem Sorrow by Martin Dejnicki shares many similar themes with The Things They Carried by Tim O'brien. Both works of writing display war as a painful and and traumatizing experience. However, this poem reflects the message in The Things They Carried chapter, “Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong” most accurately. Both the chapter and the poem share the theme that war can take away a person’s humanity. In the lines, “We've dug a hole, called a trench, Humanity is gone, replaced with stench” (Dejnicki) the author is trying to convey that a soldier in war can have their humanity striped away and uses the symbolism of “stench” to describe the foul persona that may replace it.

Throughout Bruce Dawe’s poem “homecoming” he explores many confronting images and powerful ideals portrayed through the dehumanisation process which is a constant theme throughout the poem. This is evident from the first line through a repetition “All day, day after day, they’re bringing them home, they’re bringing them in, piled on the hulls of Grants, in trucks, in convoys, they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags” The repetition of the word ‘day’ captures the endless influx of dead soldiers in an extremely graphic manner which presents the audience with the untimely nature of death, Bruce Dawe also uses the personal impersonal pronoun ‘they’ to remove himself from the situation which is set up to present the audience with confronting

In “September, 1918”, Amy Lowell shows her readers an interesting and illuminating poem. That war can be an ugly time and the people that experience it often seems to live in a “broken world” (19). To fight an evil, sometimes war is needed, nonetheless it is still costly to the people living through the war. Some in a literal sense, like soldiers fighting in a war, while some in a physical sense by the world that they now see and live in. I find the poem truly interesting though, in how the author shows that even in war we can still hold onto hope for more promising days. Lowell portrays a melancholy mood throughout her poem that makes her readers thinking about war but also the hope of it being over.

War affects many people, too many people that they can't name them all. In the poem Homecoming by Bruce Dawe, it portrays the many people that were affected by war through collective pronouns. The poem frequently uses collective pronouns ‘they’re and their’ to show that there are too many people to name. The phrase ‘wide web of suburbs’ shows that there are many innocent lives that are affected by war. Bruce Dawes makes them human by identifying their haircuts “curly heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms”.

Homecoming By donald bruce dawe The 1968 poem Homecoming By donald bruce dawe portrays a negative response to australians involvement in the vietnam war he shows his attitudes though vivid visual and aural poetic techniques. through the abundance of that features in this taunting poem reviles to the reader how morally outrageous war is the vietnam war in particular. The title alone has the effect of irony on the reader because Homecoming is tend to be a happy experience Like a celebration or heroic reception for a great achievement, the poetic technique imagery, Personification and simile is used in the line ‘’

Poets frequently utilize vivid images to further depict the overall meaning of their works. The imagery in “& the War Was in Its Infancy Then,” by Maurice Emerson Decaul, conveys mental images in the reader’s mind that shows the physical damage of war with the addition of the emotional effect it has on a person. The reader can conclude the speaker is a soldier because the poem is written from a soldier’s point of view, someone who had to have been a first hand witness. The poem is about a man who is emotionally damaged due to war and has had to learn to cope with his surroundings. By use of imagery the reader gets a deeper sense of how the man felt during the war. Through the use of imagery, tone, and deeper meaning, Decaul shows us the

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