Figurative Language In Out Back

Hey guys, welcome to poetry fest, on this show I like to not only entertain but also inform. I want my audience to walk away learning something. Throughout this show I will be discussing how poetry can be used as a form of social commentary to generate social change. Today’s poem is featured from 1893 written by Henry Lawson when he was 26 years old, Out Back employs a series of figurative language devices to walk us through the adversities of a shearers life, the poem also shows a fairly negative view of Australia’s natural landscape. This is to be linked to the idea that this poem is a form of social commentary.

Social commentary is often referred to as a comment on society, but often as seen as a criticism. The criticism can be in the

Lawson depicts Australia in “Out back” as a bleak environment where there are “stifling noon’s” and the soil experiences “withering weeks of drought”. The description created with these examples provides images of Australia as being almost unbearable to live in, sterile and desolate. Regardless of all this the shearer still is prepared to face tough conditions to look for work. The poet is focusing on the daily hardships that the low class have to withstand just for work and basic needs; this is evident in line 10 “all day long in the dust and heat when summer is on the track” and line 11 “with stinted stomachs and blistered feet, they carry their swags out bag” this is a clear understanding of the lengths people would go for jobs regardless of Australia’s punishing weather and

He mentions “the air seemed dead” which creates an image of a foul and unappealing environment. Lawson so cleverly describe the hardships of being an itinerant worker out back in the line which states,” He tramped for years, till swag he bore seemed part of himself to him”. This shows that the man searched for work for years in vain so his swag was now part of him. Lawson uses metaphors to symbolise the shearer doubts of finding a job and a place he belonged or could settle down, ‘his lamps of hopes grew dim’. In other words, the shearer had a feeling that he would be left unnoticed and to die in this merciless, barren land. A simile is used in the seventh stanza in which he, by chance, finds a supposed lake and as he approaches it, “the wind blew his face like furnace breath”. This encapsulates the exact image of how hot and humid the drought and Lawson writes, rather gloomy, “where the bleaching bones of a white man lie by his mouldering swag out back”. Lawson ends the outback rather gloomy by repeating the second stanza again. The reason for this is that Lawson wanted to emphasis on the fact that this was the life of an itinerant worker or a poor person years ago and that although many attempted to search for work they most likely would meet their end the harsh, dessert-like environment. This couldn’t be avoided because the time has come for a shearer who “must carry their swag outback”. Although this