Comparative

Comparative Essay In both of Bruce Dawe’s poems, “Homo Suburbiensis” and “Up the Wall”, he deals with contemporary Australian issues as it portrays the difficult domestic life of everyday working class Australians in Australian suburban settings. The poem “Homo Suburbiensis”, embodies the idea of an ordinary man all alone in his garden with use of parody and metaphor. In the other poem, “Up the Wall”, Dawe uses cliche and repetition in the housewife’s dialogue to illustrate a stereotypical housewife suffering from seclusion. Essentially, both poems target the idea of isolation, ordinary, common residents living in a suburban setting.

In “Homo Suburbiensis”, the title leads us to consider that the man is not an individual but a metaphor for all the everyday working class Australians. The man is a metaphor for ordinary people as it is effectively shown with the use of plural in the title “Homo Suburbiensis”, a new fictitious species Dawe invented to classify the man. This emphasises suburban residents and the same common routine they live every day. His use of parody in the title also mocks the traditional species classification of human, the homo sapiens.

The average, dull, boring tone used throughout the poem further demonstrates the poem of an ordinary common man with many frustrating problems. Dawe examines the everyday life of a common Australian housewife in “Up the Wall”, with the use of cliche in the title. The poem’s title reminds us of the cliche of being driven up the wall, usually used to describe someone in a situation of desperation. It often occurs in a domestic setting, as in being driven up the wall by the rant from her children which is carving the mother’s mind up .

This is significant as the phrase “Up the Wall” is an overused expression, similar to the housewife’s life as she is stereotypical and common. Dawe often draws on such cliched phrases in his poetry, especially when he is examining and satirising social and cultural behaviour. Certainly, the setting of this poem is domestic from the beginning. Homo Suburbiensis, the poet shows that the man is secluded by letting the man deals with his problems such as busy work and family life alone in his vegetable patch.

The metaphor used signifies the vegetable patch as the man’s sanctuary for his thoughts, feelings and emotions. Homo Suburbiensis uses one man’s escape from his demands to represent out everyone’s need to consider and resolve our own doubts in life in our own special place. The garden is a private territory of contemplation, meditation, tension release and working things through for the man, making him feel more isolated with no way out. Up the wall, explores the isolation of the suburban housewife because of the absence of her working husband.

The poet emphasises the loneliness of the housewife with the use of repetition in dialogue in the second stanza. The repetition of “she says” highlights the fact that there is no one around for the mother to make a conversation. The voice is heard repeatedly, which each of her statements being a cry for help. She feels “so alone” since she cannot have the company of her husband. It is also ironic as the husband who escapes the drudgery in the home thinks that the neighbourhood is “too quiet”. Her husband is oblivious to her suffering and interprets the life in the suburbs entirely different.

In conclusion, Dawe’s two poems ‘Homo Suburbiensis’ and ‘Up the Wall’ both deal with two contemporary Australian issues. Dawe has chosen to covey the feeling of isolation and lack of sociality within the society from average Australian’s perspectives, allowing the readers to be able to relate to. His themes were expressed through the use of various techniques such as metaphor, cliche and the repetition in dialogue. The two poems without doubt deal with contemporary Australian issues as the two poems are based in an Australian suburban setting accompanied with difficult domestic life of everyday working class Australians.