We Are Going And Municipal Gum Poem Analysis

Complete first draft of assessment task 3 "Australian views"

Paste your draft here: 800 words New experiences can be confronting and emotionally meaningful for individuals, leading them to challenge their own moral assumptions and perspectives. The distinctive identity of Australia has been shaped by such individuals. Different cultural and migrant groups have shaped their own perceptions of Australia through various unique experiences. These distinct views of Australia have been exemplified in various texts: in the poems We Are Going and Municipal Gum by Oodgeroo Noonuccal, the sense of loss, dispossession and discrimination as a result of colonisation is conveyed through the perspective of an Indigenous narrator; the poem My Country

As Oodgeroo devotes her life to ensuring that the stories of Aboriginal people were told, the poem "Municipal Gum" successfully brings an awareness of her people's experience to other Australians. Through her careful and deliberate choice of words, Oodgeroo clearly positions her readers to adopt a sympathetic attitude towards the tree. The juxtaposition of "hard bitumen around your feet" and "the cool world if leafy forest halls" reflects to the physical environment of the tree. Each word has a very different connotation which brings up different association and feelings in the audience, which is the feeling of disorientation. In the stanza 1, the descriptive words such as hard, broken, strapped, are used effectively to guide the audience into understanding that the city is not an ideal environment for the tree. It is also the metaphor which links the fate of the tree with the of the Aboriginal people that they do not belong to the city as the result of the colonisation. The tree is personified by ascribing human feature and actions such as "you should be", or "around your feet" or "listless mien express", which make the connection to the cultural identity and reinforce the strong relationship to Aboriginal people. Furthermore, the central metaphor "gum tree" intensively deliberates the vision of Australia's complex context about what has been inflicted on Aboriginal people since the arrival of white, European culture. White people assumed that that had right to control the land, whereas Indigenous Australians felt that they had to live harmony and preserve it. As the result of different point of views, "Municipal Gum" reveals the interpretation to fact of injustice society, that is evident in Oodgeroo's poems. This protest poetry successfully conveys author's concern about the naturals resource and