Homecoming Bruce Dawe

Power is the ability or capacity to do something or act in a particular way, it can also direct or influence the behavior of others or the course of events. Protest itself is a statement or action expressing disapproval or objection to a serious issue however both power and protest are important in a democratic society, Democracy works best when it is participator and people expressing their true views on a serious issue. This changes acts in society and shows how powerful protest can be influenced. The types of methods that are used in protest are rallying, striking, marching, singing, poetry, petitions and many more. Poetry of social comment expresses a viewpoint in society; its importance is high because it is another form of protest. The issue that will analyze is the dehumanization of soldiers and the futility of war; it is proven that when soldiers go to war they are not remembered as normal people but only a statistic on a page. The poem that will be analyzed is ‘Homecoming’ By Bruce Dawe. Bruce Dawe is an anti-war poet who has written several poems that relates to war and shows his true viewpoint

to the issue. In the poem ‘homecoming’, Bruce Dawe shows how soldiers are dehumanized and are not remembered for who they are in the Vietnam War. Dawe also goes through the pointlessness of the Vietnam war. One of the images that will be analyzed is a political cartoon and the other image is a poster, both of these visual images are a form of protest used against the Vietnam War.

‘Homecoming’ is about the soldiers who gave their lives away and are being sent home to Australia in body bags.

The form of the poem is a free verse, Free verse is an open form of poetry, it does not use consistent meter patterns, rhyme, or any other musical pattern, and it therefore tends to follow the rhythm of natural speech. In the beginning of the first stanza, the opening line has a repetition, (repetition is a technique used by poets that repeats the same words or phrases a few times to make an idea clearer). Bruce Dawe used words such as ‘they’re’ and ‘them’, instead of using names; this shows how the soldiers are not identified by their names and are being treated as a number instead. This makes the audience to feel that the soldiers are not being treated like a human being, thus linking back to the message of the poem, ‘ The dehumanization of

soldiers’.

Bruce Dawe uses a huge variety of imagery to introduce the purpose of the poem, (Imagery is a visually descriptive or figurative language, that is regularly used in poems). In the first stanza imagery was used to describe the purposeless of the dead soldiers, “they’re zipping them up in green plastic bags”, this creates an image for the reader to show the soldiers are unimportant, thus linking back to the second part of the message, ‘futility of war’. Another imagery that was added to the poem during the first stanza was describing the lost of identification of the dead soldiers, “Curly-heads, kinky hairs, crew cuts, balding non-coms”, the soldiers were not given names and were only identified by their appearance, this was the dehumanization of the dead soldiers in the Vietnam War that was being returned back to home.

In the last Stanza, Bruce Dawe used irony to describe the emotions of the dead soldiers. (Irony is using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect in a poem). In the line, “where dogs in the frozen sunset raise muzzles in mute salute”, shows that even the dogs are saluting to the fallen soldiers of the Vietnam War”. This relates to the message of the poem about the futility of war. The poem was successful in achieving its message, ‘the dehumanization of soldiers and the futility of war”, due to the high usage of imagery, alteration and repetition to make the purpose of the poem be effective.

The two images that are shown were during the Vietnam War. Image one visualizes American troops being used as bowling pins instead of being treated as human beings with lives, the US government are being portrayed to not have sympathy over the American soldiers. This relates back to the message of the poem. Image 2 uses irony to evaluate the treatment of the American soldiers, instead of saying ‘we want you’ the poster said, ‘we want out’. Irony was used against the US government for the dehumanization of the soldiers, thus linking back to the ‘Homecoming’ poem. The images shared similarities towards the ‘Homecoming’ poem, both sharing the same purpose. These images were used for protest and power against the terrible Vietnam War.

Ultimately the poem and visual images represented successfully to both power and protest. Bruce Dawe had a strong vital message against war that made the poem very effective and the images had a strong purpose as well. Both Poems and images used irony to delivery the purpose and successfully accomplished it. The images were created to mock the futility of war in a humorous matter however the poem used very effective emotion to bring out the message that the poet was trying to create. The ‘Homecoming’ poem and images successfully brought awareness to the issue both relating to power and protest.