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A VERSE FOR THE CHEATED ANALYSIS Samuel Wagan Watson is a contemporary Indigenous Australian poet whose poems often examine colonialism and its effects. His poem “a verse for the cheated” does just that, as it comments on how many people are ignorant when it comes to Indigenous Australians. In this poem Watson represents Australians as a people that can often be ignorant in regard to Aboriginals. By using strong language features and symbolism, Watson is able to communicate the everyday effects of colonialism on the Indigenous people in Australia. “a verse for the cheated” discusses the effects of colonialism in Australia. The poem suggests the the European invaders or “tourists” arrive and are ignorant in respect to the Indigenous Australians. …show more content…
This is shown through the line: all of this and the tourists taking photos of the roadside crosses This line shows that the tourists are insensitive, or even disrespectful towards victims of accidents on the Sunshine Coast highway, taking photos of where people may have been killed or injured.
The poem communicates that the tourists do not recognise the deaths of many Aboriginals, and this may be symbolic for colonialism. At the same time, the poem also depicts the highway as a killer, referring to it as a ‘petulant beast.’ “a verse for the cheated” is written in free verse as it has no rhyming scheme and lines of varied length. The poem has a reflective tone as it reflects on the way that Aboriginals have been treated in the past in Australia. A sad tone is depicted in the poem as it discusses the negative effects of colonialism, and allows the audience to consider their situation. Watson successfully utilizes figurative language many times throughout the poem. Watsons personifies the highway various times throughout the poem. The highway is represented as a monster through the words “petulant beast”, “monster” and “recalcitrant animal”. The reason that this is done, is due to the large amount of fatal car accidents that occur on highways, therefore Watson portrays the highway as a killer. Repetition is also often used in the
lines: …the sister of a friend on a casual drive home …an academic in the senior class, the world at her fingertips …another mate taken on a motorbike These lines recount just some of the tragic deaths on the highway, and repetition of the ellipsis is used at the start of each line. This creates effect in the poem as it creates a pause, almost as if a moment of silence for those who have died in car accidents. In ‘a verse for the cheated”, Watson explores colonialism in Australia and its effects on the Aboriginal community. Watson expresses his opinions of the tourists, saying that they have no regard for the Indigenous Australians and inking this to colonialism.
In the poem “The White Judges” by Marilyn Dumont, the speaker is aware of how her and her Indigenous family are constantly being judged by white society. The poem juxtaposes the family with the encircling colonialists who wait to demean and assimilate the group. The family internalizes a sense of shame and guilt while being surrounded by the primarily white population. Consequently, the family faces the pressures of being judged for their cultural practices. Dumont’s use of prose and lyrical voice distinctly highlights the theme of being judged by white society. Her integration of figurative language enhances the Indigenous tradition and cultural practices throughout the poem. As well as her use of anaphora and musicality which amplifies the
The lines, “As I said, it might help if we … we can imagine it’s opposite” use perspective to put the non-indigenous Australians into the shoes of indigenous Australians, to help them explore and understand the possibilities of not belonging.
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.
Although the author’s words are simple, they create a mood into the illustrations that truly emphasise the emotion of the indigenous point of view. Viewers can than feel more of what they can see, an example of this is when the authors used different sized text in “stole our children.” This text with the illustration can truly create an effect on the way it is read and viewed by, making viewers feel empathy as the size of each words shrinks defining the children’s positon as they get further away from their parent. This attains the Europeans guilt on the choices they had made as the story is seen in the indigenous point of view on how they suffered due to the past horrendous choices made by the Europeans at that
The idea that indigenous Australian communities are underprivileged and do not receive the same justice that the white community accrues is represented through Jay Swan and his interactions with the corrupt white police officers and the indigenous locals of the town. My empathetic response to the text as a whole was influenced directly by way the text constructs these ideas as well as my knowledge of the way indigenous Australians are represented in the mainstream media and the behaviour of the police force as an institution. These contextual factors and the way Sen has constructed ideas influenced me to empathise with the indigenous
“The more you know, the less you need.” The attitude from White Australians towards Indigenous Australians was extremely unfriendly, and due to the fact that Aboriginal Australians had knowledge about things the European settlers believed did not matter they treated as if they were uneducated nuisances. The aboriginal people believed that the land they had lived on for generations belonged to them; however the White Australians came and took the land. This also means that the Europeans took what the Indigenous people valued most, and that was their land. Authors and directors convey different attitudes, values and beliefs in different ways, however it still has the same impact.
An underlying theme in The Lieutenant is Racism, in The Lieutenant the British Settlers consider the Indigenous Australians (specifically the people they encounter are that of the Eora Ethnic group) to be savages and below them, while the British considered themselves superior and believed that their actions were justified, which led to much conflict between both groups. Racism was a major conflict that affected many societies all over the world and the effects are still being felt now, for example Racism was a large issue in countries such as America and there are still many that cling to this prejudice and many who despise people groups, such as white Americans because of the way they were treated by said people group in their lifetime, and aboriginal communities are still feeling the effects from actions taken against them by the British settlers after they began to colonise and spread across Australia. In this situation it is not necessarily individuals that have been effected by the conflicts caused by Racism, but rather groups and
Reynolds, H. (1990). With The White People: The crucial role of Aborigines in the exploration and development of Australia. Australia: Penguin Books
Australian indigenous culture is the world’s oldest surviving culture, dating back sixty-thousand years. Aboriginals and Torres Strait Islanders have been represented in a myriad of ways through various channels such as poetry, articles, and images, in both fiction and non-fiction. Over the years, they have been portrayed as inferior, oppressed, isolated, principled and admirable. Three such texts that portray them in these ways are poems Circles and Squares and Grade One Primary by Ali Cobby Eckermann, James Packer slams booing; joins three cheers for footballer and the accompanying visual text and Heywire article Family is the most important thing to an islander by Richard Barba. Even though the texts are different as ….. is/are …., while
Powerful language features help the audience to be conveyed into the aboriginal’s viewpoints as the Europeans take their land. Comprehensive images of the viewpoints are created through metaphors such as, “we’re running from the heart of darkness” and “searching for the
Within Australia, beginning from approximately the time of European settlement to late 1969, the Aboriginal population of Australia experienced the detrimental effects of the stolen generation. A majority of the abducted children were ’half-castes’, in which they had one white parent and the other of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent. Following the government policies, the European police and government continued the assimilation of Aboriginal children into ‘white’ society. Oblivious to the destruction and devastation they were causing, the British had believed that they were doing this for “their [Aborigines] own good”, that they were “protecting” them as their families and culture were deemed unfit to raise them. These beliefs caused ...
“A Wombat in the Room”, written by Ronald Hampton and Maree Toombs, was published in 2013 as a source of information relating to Indigenous Australian’s and health. The book aims to direct readers to recognise the history and consequences of colonisation in Australia. Within the text, the authors make reference to Racism, Colonialism and the impacts these factors had on the Indigenous population during the early years of British settlement.
Throughout both ‘Rainbow’s End’ and ‘The Rabbits’, the audience discovers the plights that the Aboriginal Australians faced, due to discrimination and assimilation, in intensely confronting, yet intensely meaningful ways. We see how the discrimination and forced assimilation of cultures was common in the lead up to modern times because of composers like Harrison, Marsden and Tan reminding us of these events, allowing us to discover and rediscover our past wrongs through their works, in order to pave the way for a brighter, harmonious future. Without these documentations and retellings of events such as these, history would repeat itself, conflicts would be more apparent and we as a species would not be able to thrive and prosper due to our prejudices and superiority complexes.
Before beginning an analysis of a single word that appears four times in this poem, it is important to establish a few assumptions about the nature of the piece itself. Many an article and essay have been written about The Wanderer, trying to define its theme, genre, even its narrator. Yet the wonderfully ambiguous nature of the poem defies any single explanation, so it remains up to the critical reader to develop his own opinion.
Writer and political activist Oodgeroo Noonuccal’s poetry represents and captures the growing reaction by a new generation of Indigenous Australians against the long-standing colonial mentality. Oodgeroo uses poetic and language techniques such as repetition and emotive language to portray these