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Bruce Dawe - Enter Without so Much as Knocking + Lifecycle

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Poems: Lifecycle – Enter Without So Much As Knocking
The poet’s role is to challenge the world the see around them.’ How far is this true for the poetry of Bruce Dawe? How (ie through what techniques) Does Dawe achieve this? Discuss a maximum of 2 poems.
Bruce Dawe is one of the most inspirational and truthful poets of our time. Born in 1930, in Geelong, most of Dawe’s poetry concerns the common person – his poems are a recollection on the world and issues around him. The statement ‘The poet’s role is to challenge the world they see around them.’ Is very true for Bruce Dawe, as his main purpose in his poetry was to depict the unspoken social issues concerning the common Australian suburban resident. His genuine concern for these issues is …show more content…

Children are innocent until we pollute their minds with the filth of society is what Dawe is saying. Owen describes the sky as “Littered with stars”, ironically, as the stars are pure and not soiled with the filth of mankind. Thus by saying the sky is littered with stars, he is taking the point of view of society – the fact that they would want to bring order and conformity to everything. These stars are scattered across the sky in an unorderly fashion, and “no one had got around to fixing [them] up yet”. He is highlighting that society takes beautiful, unadulterated natural things and pollutes them with their rules and regulations. Moving from childhood to the middle ages in but a few lines, highlighting that it’s not worth mentioning the rest of his childhood, as it was all had too much of a resemblance to what has already been said. There is a quick and noticeable change of tone as the man is described as a “money-hungry”, “back stabbing” and “miserable”, no longer the image of innocence as he was portrayed in the first 4 stanzas. Not guarded by adolescence any more, he enters the real world and is instantly polluted with the filth of society. He says goodbye to the stars – their natural splendour no longer interests him, he is now a part of the materialistic world. He will no longer show any emotion, and he is now ‘realistic’, in other words, fake. The following dialogue is a symbol of the man’s beliefs, what he has been taught and what he now accepts

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