Skrzynecki's Crossing the Red Sea
This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.
In the first section Skrzynecki suggests that the physical journey is both literally and metaphorically away from Europe and the tragedy of war and represents the undertakers’ changing perspective. The introductory stanza of the first section immediately describes the undertaking of the physical journey which the poet implies is an escape but the voyage is described in an ambivalent tone. The adjective many denotes the fact that there was a whole mass of the immigrants and heat implies that the discomforting and cramped situation of the migrants wasn’t pleasant. Never see again emphasises the fact that these people are migrating and will never return to their homeland. The migrants’ physical description Shirtless, in shorts and barefooted stresses the lack of their belongings as they’ve left everything behind and their milk-white skin implies that their skin colour isn’t right for their adopted country, Australia and depicts that they won’t be comfortable there. The second stanza’s description of the migrants with the imagery of shackles, sunken eyes, ’secrets and exiles portrays them in disgrace as if they are running away from their homeland. Their sunken eyes also conveys their hardship in suffering and the war’s adversity and the shackles further emphasises their oppression and their confinement. To look for shorelines implies their desire to purge their suffering and inner turmoil as they find some consolation and hope in starting a new life. The last word of the stanza exiles implicates their expulsion from their land in fact they actually chose to leave.
The subsequent section is concise as it provides the depressive historical context of the poem. The usage of factual period of time 1949 and the war / Now four years dead- conveys the suffering of the exiles and their endurance of the lengthy wait to migrate as they weren’t economically or physically capable to leave earlier.
This poem is telling a story, perhaps of someone grieving over the loss of someone lose to them, with no happiness nor hope left to have. “Here you sit beside me, Our shadows have outgrown us. The lamp goes out, The joy already came, already went. Our heart will grieve, We’ll sit here melancholy, Like children greatly punished. Here you sit beside me, Our shadows have outgrown us” Earlier within the poem it states “The joy already came, already went” which is meaning there is no joy left as it was once there, just sadness and sorrow left behind. This poem shows that he, and other people he was with, went through a great amount of sadness and loss because the Holocaust took loved ones and family members away and he may have felt as if he didn't have hope left any chance of happiness.
...are a repeat of the title, and also and added line to clarify the actual meaning of the poem. Owen mocks the idea of war being an honorable and nationalistic way to support ones country as he describes a situation in which death is detailed in gruesome detail. This poem is harsh, yet effective in displaying the acts of war and the affect the it has on all of the people involved, especially the foot soldiers who served in the front line, the trenches.
From the beginning of the story, a dreary gray New York is painted in one's mind with a depressing saddened tone of the bustling metropolis. It is a city flooded with immigrant workers hoping to better their lives and their c...
‘The Happiest Refugee’ is a memoir composed by Anh Do which was published on September 1st 2010. The novel is written in first person, which draws the responder in and it as though he is talking to them. Individuals deal with numerous challenges in their life, which shapes who they become whether they become stronger or weaker, Do has faced many difficult challenges in his life which have made him stronger and have made him the person who he is today. Two of the major challenges he has faced are survival and identity which will be explored in this essay. In his memoir, Anh Do provides the responder with anecdotes and flashbacks of the challenges he faced throughout his life. His family wanted to come to Australia in seach of a better life because of the war and poverty going on in Vietnam. However on their journey they became very close to losing their lives when they were threatened by pirates.
The horrible conditions and quality of life in the trenches of World War One are emphasized with Owen’s use of figurative language, such as similes, metaphors and personification. An excellent example of a simile would be what he wrote in the first line of the poem, “Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, knock kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through the sludge” (stanza 1, line 1 and 2). This description portrays the soldiers to be ‘crippled or ‘broken’, and shows them to be left both psychologically and physically scarred. It really helps us to visualize a group of young men who are in fact exhausted and so “drunk with fatigue”(stanza 1, line 7) that they are unable to even stand upright, and have lost most control over their physical actions. By bringing in these similes, Owen adds mo...
The poems Ancestors, and Language Barrier show similarities in ambiguity. The context behind them are unknown, which creates a mysterious tone. “Two strangers, cried in the rain / knowing nothing of each other’s suffering” and “To what star / Do their footprints lead?” suggest the unknowable nature of journey, and the outlook which must come with it. Kelley and Skrzynecki both effectively depict the effects which interpretation of the new can have on one’s
As this poem characterizes the view of a native woman expressing feelings of passion relating to her culture, it also criticizes society, in particular Christianity, as the speaker is experiencing feelings of discontent with the outcome of residential schools. It does not directly criticize the faith, but through the use of a heavy native dialect and implications to the Christian faith it becomes simple to read the speakers emotions.
poem expresses to the reader, the pain of war and what it is like to
This is clearly demonstrated through the use of simile, “Like a homing pigeon, circling to get its bearings”, suggesting that the migrants’ desire to belong to place is an innate, animal need. In using this simile, responders are forced to feel empathy for the migrants’ struggle. The bird motif recurs throughout the poem, “like birds of passage”, to strengthen the association of belonging and instinctive animal need. Furthermore, the figurative symbolism of birds represents a twisted irony as birds that are free to fly without restriction contrast with the migrants who are ‘Sealed off the highway’. The use of the ironic symbol creates tension and evokes empathy from responders, who are invited to experience the emotional and physical challenges of the migrants’ experiences. The irony of this poem is further extended in the co-existence of belonging and not belonging between cultural factions of the migrant hostel, as “Nationalities sought each other out instinctively.” While the residents of the migrant are collectively viewed as outsiders, they cling to what is left of their cultural connections. Thus, Skrzynecki explores the notion that humans, all some level, desire to feel a sense of belonging, which emerges from the connections made with people, places, communities and the
The poem comprises three stanzas which are patterned in two halves; the rule of three is ingeniously used throughout the poem to create tension and show the progression of the soldiers’ lives. There is a variety of rhyming schemes used – possibly Duffy considered using caesural rhyme, internal rhyme and irregular rhyme to better address the elegiac reality. The rhythm is very powerful and shows Duffy’s technical adroitness. It is slightly disconcerting, and adds to the other worldly ambience of the poem. Duffy uses a powerful comparative in each stanza to exemplify the monstrosity and extent of war, which is much worse than we imagine; it develops throughout each stanza, starting with a syntactical ‘No; worse.’ to ‘worse by far’ and ending on ‘much worse’. Similarly, the verbs used to describe the soldier’s shadow as he falls shows the reader the journey of the shadow, as if it’s the trajectory of soldiers’ lives. At first, the shadow is as an act...
Owen presents us a sarcastic view towards the idea of being honorable to sacrifice for their country and buttresses it with abundant of horrific images. It is a war sonnet that captures the feelings of survivors to those who lost their lives in war. The use of a sonnet creates a sense of intensity in his poem, briefness and portrays the nature of death on a battlefield. Moreover, Owen uses the rhyme scheme of “ababcdcdeffegg” to show the strong division between the lines. The choice of a sonnet allows Owen to convey his message effectively and remain emotional to keep the readers interested. His tone in the poem is gloomy and proposes the reader to consider the question at the beginning of the poem: “What passing-bells for these who die as cattle” (1). Their deaths are significant to those of cattle and it occurs in masses. This leads the reader to consider t...
“Poetry of Departures” by Philip Larkin explores the meaning of breaking free from a confined environment and the speakers admirations for the ones that are able to leave. While one man takes off from the home he has always known, the speaker stays put even though he knows that he too must one day go despite the fear he feels. Larkin uses diction as a means to show his contrasting feelings towards the bravery of man who left and his decision to stay put.
Similarly to ‘Snow Falling on Cedars’, Warson Shire’s, ‘Home’ reveals the struggles of undergoing an inner journey. With the use of repetition in his poem, Shire is able to emphasize on what would be important to anyone and the value of it. “Home,” is being repeated to prompt the idea of what was lost to these refugees and the price they had to pay. The poem mentions, “Home is the mouth of a shark,” the personification of their home reveals the danger their own safe haven holds, vivid imagery in the poem assists to create an understanding of refugees being forced out of their own comfort. “No one skin would be tough enough…. I don’t know what I’ve become but I know that anywhere is safer than here.” With this line, Warson apprises the dilemmas refugees go through as a result of being forced out of their mundane and adequate life. Through the use of assonance in ‘no one skin would be tough enough’ the poet manages to intrigue the reader and remind them of the catastrophes that shape refugees forcefully. The poem describes the various obstacles refugees have to overcome to reach a point of somewhat comfort with their now destroyed lives, moreover this journey was not beneficial for their inner self but strengthened their inner self which help cope with the hardships thrown at them
In the poem Refugee mother and child written by Chinua Achebe and Refugees written by Kapka Kassabova, an important idea of loss is conveyed by using interesting language techniques such as simile, alliteration and metaphor. They both link to the idea of the abstract loss and Achebe, itself, links to physical loss.
The purpose of displaying earthly reality as transient is to contrast it with the theme of a heavenly kingdom. As the poem ends, the Wanderer notes that there is, "comfort from the Father in heaven, where all stability resides" (70). The heart of Anglo-Saxon life will pass for all as it did for the Wanderer. Comfort is not to be found in that transient world, but in the world beyond, through security in the heavenly kingdom.