What Is The Theme Of The Poem Weapons Training

‘Weapons Training’ is a monologue about the harsh and dehumanising conditions of the training session for the soldiers. During the poem, Dawe uses a variety of crude words, insults and Australian slang to show the dehumanisation and attitude the soldiers had to endure. Dawe uses both crude words and insult to humiliate both Australian and Vietnamese soldiers. He uses phrases such as “unsightly fat” and “are you queer “to insult Australian soldiers and “little yellows” and “rotten fish sauce breath” to insult the Vietnamese. The slang that Dawe uses is able to show a representation of Australian culture, the slang is “old crown jewels,” “tripe’s” and “copped the bloody lot.” Using these words, the poet is able to show that the culture is strong even during war. All the words that Dawe uses is a way of degrading the soldiers.

Whether it’s war or terrorism, children who want to grow securely is living amongst the affected nation. War is obliterating those talented individuals in their childhood who can radically transform the world itself. The two disputed countries may also have justifications to protect the welfares of their own people. There can be wealth and nuclear weapons to demolish this world as a whole. However, peacefully negotiated approach is coveted to compromise on each other. No country can rationalize weapons of mass obliteration and debacles. Often, it is a foolish decision of the pioneers of the country, making it a pretext for the combat. It’s the upright soldiers and their families who need to survive the demise and serious injuries from the weapons. For the last centuries, the spontaneous overflow of poetry has portrayed human emotions concerning wide range of universal issues. Both the poets Donald Bruce Dawe and Wilfred Owen exemplify this cataclysm of losing your families and the conditions the soldiers face, through their notable poems Homecoming and Dulce et Decorum Est.

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

The collection of poems “Theater”, “Water”, and “Safe House” by Solmaz Sharif shows the varied viewpoints of how war affects the speakers and how death is all too common in the midst of warfare. The author uses a spectrum of literary techniques to enhance the experience of the reader, so we can fully grasp the severity of each speaker’s plight. All of Sharif’s poems differ in form with the use of white space and indentations in “Theater”, colons in “Water”, and a style of abecedarian using the letter S in “Safe House”. While her diverse use of forms generate different emotions from the reader, they share the same notion of how violence is problematic. Each poem has a unique outlook to the sight of war: “Theater” being in the position of a victim and an assailant of war, “Water” explaining a war mission and fatalities in terse terms, and “Safe House” as an observer of an activist against war. Sharif’s strategy to exemplify the effects of how war affects the victim and the civilian is particularly critical because mass media tends to hide the collateral damage of war and only illustrates why we should attack the “enemy”. Another approach the author uses to critique the speakers central conflicts is by arranging words from the US Department of Defense 's Dictionary of Military and Associated Terms, to concur with the message of the several ways war influences the lives of those who are unwillingly encompassed by it. Sharif uses poetry as an outlet to show the underlying tone

The authors use descriptive language and comparison to get the effect of war being wasteful across to the audience, which both Owen and Dawe have done well. Dawe’s imagery gruesomely portrays the gathering of the dead and differentiating them into categories. He separates the civilization of the dead by their hair; “curly, crew-cuts and balding”. The purpose for this was to enhance the central theme, ‘war is waste’.

“ Weapons Training” is a piece of war poetry written by Bruce Dawe in 1970 as a reflection of his own personal RAAF training. This poem is a dramatic monologue spoken by a drill sergeant who is training recruits that are about to go to the Vietnam war. Bruce Dawe had experience with the military life, he had served in the Royal Australian Airforce from 1959 to 1968.

At the conclusion of the poem, Dawe emphasized that there is no point of bringing the green bodies to their families because nothing would change and the soldiers will not return to life, he shows his opinion by exploring the paradox in “they’re bringing them home, now, too late, too early” which highlights the family misery after bringing the dead bodies.

In the opening lines of the poem where the soldiers, “sway and wander in the water far under,” he manages to tell us that the tone of the poem is soft and calming. But it eventually changes to become blunt and it is evident in the line, “the sob and clubbing of gunfire.” This shows us the brutality of war and how horrifying it is. Even the title of the poem is a paradox itself. The beach is normally a place to have fun but in the poem it is described to be a place of death because the word “burial” is put next to it.

This, coupled with the tranquil auditory imagery where the “hissing white” ocean and the “soft whistling” of the birds abounds. As well as the positive tactile imagery of the “sun scorching Jim’s back”, allows Malouf to create a hopeful setting and a sense of harmony. However, the “clumsy” presence of the bi-plane “lumbering” throughout the estuary “in all directions” disrupts nature in harmony, foreshadowing that the natural environment will be destroyed through man’s intrusion of the “murderous machines” in the imminent war. Man’s impact is further foreshadowed when a group of Brisbane youth celebrating the impending violence. This suggests that war is encouraged by which it is ironic. It is also through the “tilting” and the “sliding” of Brisbane, with “breaking glass” and unfinished “scraps of tunes” throughout the city, that foreshadows the destructive impacts of war on nature are unavoidable. To further illustrate the destructions of war, Malouf juxtaposes the tranquil setting of the Queensland estuary against the barbaric conditions on the Western Front. Malouf achieves this through cumulation of grotesque imagery that

Throughout his poem, Dawe discuss the senselessness of war and absence of identity that these young soldiers face - he explores this through a use of effective techniques such as irony, repetition, symbolism, metaphors and rhythm. Through the use of simile and metaphor in the quote ‘telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree…the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry’, Dawe portrays the coldness of death and spreading of grief throughout the community. Repetition of the suffix ‘-in’ in ‘bringing’, ‘zipping’, ‘picking’, ‘tagging’, and ‘giving’, describing the actions of the body processors, establishes

These two poems are both still popular in the twenty-first century, which may be because of the fact they are not aimed at a single war, the can both be related to any war that has gone on or that is currently going on in the twenty-first century.

His poem ‘Homecoming’ is a saddening and melodramatic poem telling the tradgic stories from the wars, including the bringing home of soldiers past. He also discusses the absolute disrespect towards many soldiers by society. When we see the word 'homecoming' we usually expect a celebration or a heroic welcome home. Though, the title used by Bruce Dawe has a saddening twist. The homecoming described in his poem is referring to death, mourning and loss. This is rather different from the heartfelt delight extended to a family member or loved one on their homecoming. This title is ironic and effectively contrasting the traditional and universal definition of the word. This is quite similar to Sassoon’s title “How to Die” as a sarcastic and ironic relation to the

War causes human beings to experience many different emotions. Civilian bystanders and military members become uneasy, restless, and anxious. Also, like in every war, sacrifices are made and lives are lost. Carl Sandburg and Seamus Heaney do a great job interpreting the feelings and emotions felt during and between times of war in their two poems, “Grass” (Sandburg) and “From the Frontier of Writing” (Heaney). Though both poems are on similar topics, the authors use different literary techniques to get their point across to their audience. The poems may be very similar in the literal meaning because both poems use war as the topic, but they have different figurative ideas that are hidden behind the powerful text. Both Carl Sandburg

The poet Siegfried Sassoon saw that war was destructive and it should not happen because it was a waste of human life, Sassoon described the horror of war unsparingly, also, his poems were often based on actual incidents. Wilfred Owen focused his poetry on the particulars of war and the men involved: dirt, muddle, boredom etc, Owen often wrote about the horror of war and the dignity of men. He deeply felt a sense of the appalling wastefulness of war, casualties and the human spirit. The similarities between these two poets are they both tried to record realistic horrors of the war; to have it stopped. They were both angry at the war’s brutality, they were also showed very compassionate studies of the circumstances of fighting men.

Each poet chooses the theme of nature’s generative abilities to portray man’s disillusion about what war truly has a lasting effect on. Each author’s poem reads as a metaphorical opinion about war and the existence of humans within the natural environment; as well as the physical history of war that is left behind. Sara Teasdale and Carl Sandberg also both seem to agree that the damages and carnage of war have no permanency on nature’s ability to carry on in spite of human atrocities. Both poems also highlight nature’s physical capabilities to dispose of the bodies left behind and ignore what was torn apart as a result of