Bruce Dawe Poem Analysis

Moments within our lives have been utilised for multiple purposes throughout our existence. These moments have given rise to inspiration for numerous historical figures, such as poets. W. H. Auden, Bruce Dawe, Sylvia Plath, Carol Ann Duffy and S. K. Kelen, have all used various brief moments of human experience to explore emotions and ideas. Refugee Blues, Homecoming, The Gods Ash Their Cigarettes, Funeral Blues, Daddy and Little Red-Cap, have through tone, stylistic features, language devices and personas, expressed the idea they centre around.

W. H. Auden in Refugee Blues and Bruce Dawe in Homecoming explore the idea that war has negative effects on all. Auden in Refugee Blues explores the emotions a homeless Jew faces and illustrates his
K. Kelen in The Gods Ash Their Cigarettes and W. H. Auden in Funeral Blues both portray the idea that reality is harsh and it can take a great loss to realise this. Kelen explores the experience of losing a loved one through the emotions held at a funeral. While Auden’s Funeral Blues similarly explores the harshness of reality through the loss of a loved one by describing the grief of losing one so dear. Kelen formulates hyperbole to exaggerate the effect death takes on all, such as when writing “Death stepped out of the television”, allowing for the reader to depict the idea of how it can sometimes take death to remind people of the cruelty reality holds. Similarly, Auden when writing “Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead” uses hyperbole to portray the desire to let the world know of the loss of someone so important, which additionally emphasises on the impact death has on the persona. Kelen demonstrates the idea that reality is harsh by using imagery to illustrate the fear of reality towards the reader when writing, “we, bull ants, terrified of sadistic feet”. Dissimilar to Kelen, Auden utilizes clichés to express the depressive response that reality brings forth towards the fantasy life we build up in the writing, “I though that love would last forever: I was wrong”, this allows the poem to recite a shared thought and convey the idea of how reality destroys this cliché through death towards the reader, allowing for further emphasis on how that reality is harsh to all
Plath explores her own experience of both corrupt father and romantic love, lead her to her dark outlook on life. Similarly, Duffy’s Little Red-Cap explores the effect a first love had on her and how she grew as a woman. Plath conveys the effect her father’s life and death had on her using symbolism such as when writing “There’s a stake in your fat black heart”, allowing for the reader to grasp the idea of how through her negative experiences, she gained a negative outlook on her world, one full of evil. Similarly, Duffy when writing “my stockings ripped to shreds,” uses symbolism to portray the loss of innocence that occurred when she was in awe with her first love, which additionally conveys the way her innocent outlook was taken, ripped away. Plath furthermore demonstrates the idea that first love experiences have lasting effects by using repetition to exemplify the emotions she holds towards her experience towards the reader like in her writing, “And get back, back, back to you.” Contradictory to Plath, Duffy applies onomatopoeia to emphasise and mimic the vicious nature being described as her first love in the writing, “in his wolfy drawl”, this is to further describes her first love as a villainous character who had a near traumatic effect on her and thus resulting in her change of