• Within this monologue, Dawe uses a rhetorical question and hyperbole, to…answer question, showing the dehumanising process of creating a soldier.…
Remarque tells of the dehumanizing effects that are perceived in ‘All Quiet on the Western Front’. When the young soldiers arrive at the frontline its nothing to what was anticipated as they had “just begun to love the world and being in it, but we had to shoot at it.” Remarque’s characterisation of Paul is naive and inexperienced as he only just begins to grasp the understanding, through torment and fatality, that they didn’t “believe in those things anymore; we believe in war” their new objective was to survive. Trained to disregard their conscience and distancing themselves from their own emotions, taught to let go of their former lifestyle. “Keep things at arm’s length” was their innovative technique in being able to endure the horrors of war. The audience is alarmed by the lack of emotion deemed by the young soldiers through Paul’s metaphoric language that “we have become wild beasts” enlightening context to the overall traumatic experiences that were inflicted. Remarque continues to portray the emotional state in a distant tone that “we are dead” convincing the audience they are completely detached…
Death is no longer a stranger to lives of these men because of their traumatic war experiences, both on the battlefield and on the way home. It shows the fragile state of human life and how easily it can be taken from us. The memories of their comrades’ deaths have been engraved in their mind to point that it becomes strange for them to think about returning to their home and moving on.…
Bruce Dawe's new volume of poetry begins with a special dedication: a few lines of poetry about his sighting of four blind boys crossing the road, smiling, linked together with each one's hands on the next one's shoulders, "their thin canes waving eerily, like feelers, before them".…
"Let the months and years come, they can take nothing from me, they can take nothing anymore. I am so alone and so without hope that I can confront them without fear" War is a political hotbed. Regardless of the warring nations’ reasons or the outcome, in the wake of the battle, the soldier, or country’s hero, actually becomes the victim. Youth is sacrificed, lives are lost, and the survivors are forever altered.…
Weapons Training by Bruce Dawe shows us the realities of war. It is a drill sergeant speaking to his new recruits. The poem starts in the middle of a sentence, giving the impression that we might have fallen asleep like one of the young recruits being shouted at. It serves to catch our attention. Note the use of spaces and pauses: these show a dramatic monologue, because they are natural spaces to take breath. Dramatic monologues give insight into the speaker, their situation, and the people around the speaker and their reactions. "Pitter-patter" is normally a gentle sound, but in this situation it is made to sound harsh. "Are you a queer?" This question reflects the tone of the whole poem: to be called a "queer" is clearly insulting to these men. Also is the start of a whole string of insults littered through the monologue, delivered in a blunt, confronting tone. The poem is full of crude sexual references: "Cockpit drill" and "crown jewels", for example. "Mob of the little yellows" - the sergeant dehumanises the enemy by making a racist comment, making it easier for the soldiers to kill them (if they're not really people, it doesn't matter if they die). "Turning the key in the ignition", apart from being a reference to sex, serves to give the soldiers hope by reminding them of coming back home. They are conscript soldiers and not used to the strict discipline of the Army; the sergeant must show his authority to impress into them the necessity of listening to him: it's the only hope they've got of staying alive. He drops back into dramatic monologue, using "you" all the way because in the end it will be up to the individual soldiers to determine what happens to them. "Charlies" is a racist name given to the Viet Cong. At every opportunity he degrades the enemy: "rotten fish-sauce breath" Dawe shows the realities of war: "alive one moment, dead the next". "too late ... your tripes are round your neck ...…
of such a thing for grief. He merely sees things clearly” (26). It is as if the soldiers don’t really…
As the play opens, halfway through scene five Bridie tells an unfortunate event of the killing of the Australian nurses by the Japanese in the water. This is evident in “sounds of machine gun fire...” The clever use of descriptive language and the loud upbeat non-diegetic…
A soldier’s suffering holds no refrain from anyone, no matter what title or identity they have. In both the worlds of soldiers in those in the poem entitled “losses” by Randall Jarrell and at Devon school in “A Separate Peace” by John Knowles, there are several relationships that they share. Both center around the lives of soldiers and soon to be soldiers during the cruel time of the second World War which was happening in Europe. Jarrell experiments with multiple identity in the combination of several speakers united in one, all wasted even before they could be conceded into the real experience of war. In the book World War II symbolizes many themes related to each other in the novel, from the arrival of adulthood to the triumph of the Evil…
Life is an ongoing cycle, forever trapped within the consumerism, legalism, and ruthlessness of modern society. Only through our fleeting innocence, purity and the appreciation of our natural world are we able to go beyond society’s harsh expectations and regulations that only end in the destruction of a person’s spirit.…
Bruce Dawe explores the complexities of modern life in Homo Surburbiensis and Enter Without So Much as Knocking. Dawe conveys the ideas through references to everyday life and what the protagonists experience throughout their lives. The author’s perspective on life is contradictory in the pair of poems and this is shown through the use of imagery, description of the characters and the tone of his language. In both poems, the main characters are not seen as individuals but are used as metaphors to represent the rest of the people within that world or society.…
Fatalities are part of every person’s life. To a normal citizen, death is often followed by sadness and grief. As portrayed in “The Things They Carried” by Tim O’Brien, a soldier has to deal with the situation much differently. Death is portrayed in a negative light due to the fact that soldiers are greatly fearful of it and that they are forced to be unaffected by death. In order to cope with all the deaths he witnessed, O’Brien uses the retelling of war stories to heal from these traumatic events.…
In Bruce Dawe’s poems Breakthrough and Life Cycle, they are often trying to persuade, inform or warn the reader of different things throughout the human life. This is done by translating his social beliefs and stands into poetry, using many language techniques to express his points. Some of these will be discussed throughout this critical response.…
In dehumanizing the soldiers, the reader gets a sense of violence and masculinity involved in the animal kingdom. Unfortunately, Cummings and Croft are also the novel's principal…
The experiences of Australian nurses during WWII reveal the horrific nature of the war and in particular the truth behind the brutality and dehumanisation of individuals. Misto elicits a compassionate response from the audience by implying that the daily conditions of the woman were ones of random abuse, rape and starvation. The projected images and their duration in Act one Scene 7, of the “women prisoner of wars emaciated, haggard and impoverished” become visual confrontation for the audience, depicting the inhumane conditions of the camp, thus linking the audience to the adversity of the past and so educating them on this hidden history. Congruently Act 1 Scene 1 elucidates the dehumanisation encountered by the prisoners of war. The stage directions reveal that Bridie starts by bowing, which reflects the Kowtow bow to the Japanese. Bridie raises her hands above her head, claps them twice, sternly, creates tension and reinforces the power of the Japanese. In the background plays the song, ‘Fall in Brother’, whilst behind Bridie are projected several 1940 war posters of the women in the army. This contextualises the play and this provides the viewer with visual stimulus of the harshness of war and…