Beach Burial Essay -- essays research papers

AWARENESS OF NATIONAL IDENTITY ORAL EXAMINATIONSoftly and Humbly to the Gulf of Arabs,The convoys of dead sailors comeAt night they sway and wander in the waters far under,But morning rolls them in the foam.Between the sob and clubbing of the gunfire Someone, it seems, has time for this,To pluck them from the shallows and accept them in burrowsAnd tread the sand upon their nakednessAnd each cross, the driven stake of tidewood,Bears the last signature of men,Written with such perplexity, with such bewildered pity,The words choke as they begin "Unknown seaman" the ghostly pencil Wavers and fades, the purple drips,The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptions As blue as drowned mens lips,Dead seamen, gone in search of the same landfall,Whether as enemies they fought,Or fought with us, or neither the sand joins them together,Enlisted on the other front.El Alamein.Although not blatantly obvious at first, Kenneth Slessors emotive and poignant poem Beach burial is a p oem concerned with raising the awareness of discipline identity. straightaway I found this hard to believe at first For me to be able to use this poem, (as it has been my one of my favourites for years) I though that for it to have ANYTHING to do with home(a) identity I would have had to use my creative ability to dissect and warp aspects of the poem that COULD have something to do with national identity if the poet had actually elect to write astir(predicate) national identity. Basically a lot of windbagging- and as much I was looking forward to see how great my powers of persuasion were I finally realised that they wouldnt be necessary. I realised that even though Slessors Beach Burial doesnt ramble on about the Australian lifestyles and the Australian landscapes, It is a poem solely based on the importance of national identity heck- it doesnt even mention the word Australia in it But what Slessor is trying to say here doesnt refer just to the Australian identity it refers to the importance of every countries national identity and, in the immense run, the unimportance of it.To give you a bit of a background, Kenneth Slessor was an eminent Australian Journalist for a great part of his life, and because of this, When World War 2 came nigh he was chosen be Australias official war correspondent. He was to report on the Australian act... ...d in this poem have been from both sides of the war. The bodies were floating alongside enemies and allies, yet from the beginning of the poem Slessor made them all equal in death. As I pointed out earlier this can be seen in his reference to the dead sailors as convoys groups of dead men that were travelling together with the same personified feelings and actions. World War 2 was, is in its simplest form, one nation against another(prenominal) nation, fighting for land, fighting to increase their national identity. For the expansion of their own national identity, humans were willing to kill other human beings. Just because of different national identities, the soldiers treated the enemy inhumanely."the sand joins them together, Enlisted on the other front" The land for which they fought, joins them together in death, the reference to enlisted on the other front is an eloquent illustration for the sailors deaths. They are now enlisted into the world of the dead, just as they enlisted to join the navy. It is ironic that these men, so proud and patriotic of their national identity, have lost not single the record of which country they were serving but also their own identity.