Bruce Dawe and Michael Leunig

Bruce Dawe, Micheal Leunig and the ideas they convey about society in the poems 'Enter without so much as knocking', 'Life Cycle' and the cartoon 'Sunrise'. Bruce Dawe has used the techniques similes, aliteration, imagery and compound words to express his views on society while Micheal Leunig has used exageration and symbolism to draw and show his.
Bruce dawe's main purpose in his poetry is the express the unspoken social issues concerning the comon Australian suberban resident. Dawe has a mocking approach to the issues he presents in two of his poems 'Enter without so much as knocking' and 'life cycle'. Both poems have a similar themes with the cycle of life and the lack of uniqueness within these familes lives. 'Enter without so much as knocking' shows a negative impact on society as the poem describes the life of a man living in the suberbs. It starts of with the birth of a baby that was blinked into a life of consumerism instead of that of a loving family with one economy-sized Mum, one Anthony Squires-Coolstream-Summerweight Dad along with two other kids straight off the Junior Department rack. A technique Dawe uses to exspreses himself are compound words. The words ‘set - up’, ‘well - equipped’,‘smoothly - run’ and ‘economy - size’ are all a reflection of language commonly used in advertising, further exspressing the idea of consumerism. He effectively uses a number of imagery techniques also, examples of these are "Human Life as a Game show" and "Family as an advertised product". In general, Bruce Dawe tries to portray that people in these societies are too ashamed to face the fact that they have surrendered to consumerism.
The poem 'Life cycle' is very similar to 'Enter without so much as knocking' in the way that it starts with both families bringing in a child the world to almost smother it with there ideas of sports and teams, its almost religious. When Dawe writes the poem his tone is slightly mocking as he describes how the families act, covering...