Bruce Dawe's Enter Without So Much As Knocking

1328 Words6 Pages
“How important are the voices of individuals in shaping your understanding of other people & their worlds? “ Voices of individuals are very important in shaping our understanding of other people & their worlds. This can be expressed through the use of dialogue. Dialogue is the exchange of ideas, thoughts & feelings through speech or spoken words creates communication of an interpersonal nature. Voices of individuals may be marginalised or controlling and can be used to help people shape their understandings as well as through the use of language conventions such as pace, tone, rhyme or rhythm. These language conventions illustrate the immediacy in dialogue. Bruce Dawe’s poems “Up The Wall” & “Enter Without So Much As Knocking” and episode…show more content…
The poem is an ironic comment on gender relations and the extremely frustrating domestic situation that women found themselves in, in the 1960s. The voice of the free husband and fed up wife shape our understandings of their individual worlds. The tone of their voice, which is created through dialogue contrasts the lives of men and women in that era and convey the difference between their relaxed verses frustrated worlds. The use of third person “he &she” and the anonymity of the husband and wife being unnamed represents how normal it was for women to be isolated and “so alone” in the 1960s. Ironically the “cloudless day” is far from perfect. The insignificant noises of the home that mark off a normal domestic day, the “talk back radio, children’s voices and the shriek of the boil” are important when explaining the individual’s normal routine every day. The personification of “shriek” creates an extremely negative impact on what is actually happening to his woman. Consequently her voice becomes the voice of one who is no longer rational and reasoned. The “scream” and cry for help serves as justification to marginalise her and the fact that she will always go unnoticed and

More about Bruce Dawe's Enter Without So Much As Knocking

Open Document