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  • Essay / The Human Experience in the Poetry of Bruce Dawe

    A poet who energetically contemplated the world around him, Dawe was not just a dedicated Australian writer dreaming that his work would one day be analyzed. It was a book full of ideas, complex ideas, often about the essence of life and beyond. Through his poems Bedroom Conversations, Up The Wall, and Enter Without So Much As Knocking, Dawe presents his complex view of the human experience in an interesting light, one that illuminates both the paradoxes and cynicism of our world. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Bruce Dawe explores the human experience as a paradoxical cycle that depends heavily on the cynical nature of society. Although this nature brings society together through consumerism and materialism, it tears them apart at the same time. Disjointed and disconnected relationships form due to the inability, or rather unwillingness, to fully empathize with differing worldviews. These broken relationships create a strong sense of dissatisfaction, leaving individuals wanting “something more”; wants to “complete” their world. However, the cynical nature of society ensures that these desires go unfulfilled, leaving only chaos behind. Through Bedroom Conversations and Enter Without So Much As Knocking, Dawe explores the human experience by highlighting the cynical nature of society. The vain qualities that humans encompass are borrowed from the world around them. This creates a cycle that continues to shape and manipulate each new generation. Written in 1959, Enter Without So Much As Knocking demonstrates the effect of post-war consumer inflation. The line “Ten days… the first thing he heard was Bobby Dazzler on Channel 7” immediately sets the scene of a little boy, born into a self-centered world. The absence of emotion and cultural allusion to "Bobby Dazzler" illustrates the value of materialism in this society over the celebration of life. The fifth stanza further reveals human cynicism through the metaphor "Kick wherever you see a head and kick the one who is down", demonstrating the influence of a self-centered world on an individual. Likewise, vanity is recognized in the two young girls in Bedroom Conversations. They are distracted by their own reflections when they “stop abruptly as they pass the mirror.” The pause highlights the children's short attention span and carefree thinking, while the mirror symbolizes how vanity shapes their experiences. Through these poems, it is clear that the cynical human nature adopted by society impacts an individual's experiences. The cynical nature of society leads to the disjunction of relationships. Dawe illustrates how humans are incapable of sympathizing with other worldviews. Up The Wall highlights a typical 1960s view of the relationship between a self-centered, oblivious husband and a hard-working wife. Written in response to the sexual revolution, it expresses the perspective of a woman who, before that time, was silenced. The rhyme scheme of the first stanza represents the housewife's routine, however, it is ironic because her routine creates chaos rather than order. The superficial statement "'It's a quiet neighborhood,' he says to his friends" reflects the husband's mental separation from his wife as he is oblivious to her difficulties. This correlates with the disconnected relationships displayed in Enter Without So Much As Knocking. In the final stanza, the lack of emotion at the subject's funeral depicts his lack of importance to society, emphasized by the metaphor "..