Bruce Dawe's Homecoming

Bruce Dawe's Homecoming

Bruce Dawe writes of his experiences in the Vietnam War in the poem

"Homecoming". By using many different language techniques he conveys

his sadness and sympathy for the loss of the lives of the young

soldiers.

Repeated use of the pronoun "they're", hints at the impersonal

relationship between the bodies and their handlers. Repetition of the

suffix "-ing" in "bringing", "zipping", "picking", "tagging", and

"giving", describing the actions of the body processors, establishes

irony. These verbs imply life and vitality, in stark contrast to the

limp, lifeless, cold body that they handle each day. Repetition is

used effectively to highlight the shocking brutality that has

manifested in all wars throughout history. It is shocking that

"they're giving them names" since a name is one of the few identifying

features left on the plethora of otherwise anonymous, mutilated

bodies.

Dawe then writes of how the soldiers are 'tagged' and the seemingly

unsympathetic way that the soldiers are classified - 'curly-heads,

kinky-hairs, crew-cuts, balding non-coms'. This, however, is not to

show the classifying of the soldiers as cold and unsympathetic, but

rather to emphasize that the class, race etc. of the soldiers is not

important in war and this emphasizes the soldier's loss of identity-

they are not seen as a person, a brother, a son, a husband, but just

as another dead soldier to be 'tagged and bagged'.

Dawe uses the metaphor 'the steaming chow mein' to describe and satire

the Vietnam jungle. Looking down from the plane that carries the

corpses, a person would see only a mess of browns, greens, yellows -

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their lives has now past. However, it is also "too early" since all

these soldiers are too young, leaving behind an unfulfilled life.

Unfortunately these soldiers will also never receive the true

recognition they deserve for their efforts that would have been given

at the end of the war. By using the technique of paradox, Dawe makes a

final attempt at clarifying international misconception of war as

beneficial.

In all, Dawe has successfully established the uselessness of war. He

can be said to be "speaking for those who have no means of speaking"

in the way he presents the attitudes of the silent, dead soldiers

being flown home from Vietnam. With the aid of poetic techniques he

arouses sympathy, carefully manipulating the audience to reflect upon

his own views towards war - humanity does not learn its lesson.