Protest Poetry Essay Example

Protest poetry and songs have been written all throughout history and even into the present day. Even though there are many differences in the protest poetry including theme, style and language they all seem to retain one feature. They all aim to get a message across and in doing so, engage their audience and inform them about a particular issue. Some protest poetry and songs which have stood out include; Beach Burial written by Kenneth Slessor, Home-coming written by Bruce Dawe, Six young men written by Ted Hughes and I was only nineteen which is a song by Redgum. Each of these poems or songs are written about war and its' tragic effects however each poet or lyricist has engaged its audience in various, yet effective, ways to get their similar messages across.

In the poem Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor we are described a scene of a beach where thousands of victims of war have floated in. We can tell that Slessor is protesting about the cold meaning and reality of war as we find out that all of the sums of bodies which have arrived in on the beach belong to different sides and how it is now pointless seeing as they have all faced the same fate. Slessor has used dramatic irony, onomatopoeia and a distant view point to make his effect on the audience.

The dramatic irony used in Beach Burial refers to how it is ironic that the soldiers who have fought against each other and could have killed each other are now all floating on the same coastline receiving equal treatment and being buried with their enemy. Slessor has used this effect to emphasise how pointless war really is. He wanted the audience to understand that the point of fighting is lost in death and the fact that each of the floating bodies is responsible for another floating body's death just seems so stupid.

In the first stanza of Beach Burial, Slessor has used onomatopoeia to describe the movements the bodies are making. "At night they sway and wander…" is an example of this. This effect helps