Bruce Dawes Poems

The dialogue in the play “One Day Of the Year” effectively reveals key issues and concerns characterising Australian society during the 1950’s. Dialogue is a powerful tool in which Alan Seymour manipulates to shape responders understanding of many cultural changes in Post War Australia. Seymour seeks to represent perspectives of significant periods of social change, in the post-war era. This new found Americanisation lead to notions of Australian identity, class distinctions and generational change symbolized by changing attitudes towards Anzac Day.


In the play Seymour captures the changing Australian identity prevalent in the 1950’s through the Characters Alf and Hughie’s dialogue. Alfs sense of identity, a working class Australian, can be seen to be a reflection of the pre-war period in which he grew up.   This contrasts with that of his son, Hughie, who reflects a new post- war understanding of Identity. In the opening dialogue of the play Alf states “I am a bloody Australian and I’ll always stand up for bloody Australia”, this declaration immediately establishes Alf’s characterisation as person of emphatic and strong opinions concerning his sense of Australian identity. His assertion suggests he is aggressively patriotic capturing his defensiveness expressed as belligerence. Alf’s use of slang and profanities suggests his working class status and a passionate man unable to express himself in more articulate ways. Alfs use of Derogatory slang “Poms and I-ties. Bloody I-ties. ....New Au- bloody-stralians” to describe people of non Australian background conveys his narrow understanding of Australian identity, through his fear and suspicion of ‘outsiders’. “The Country ain’t what it used to be, it it?”, Alfs use of slang contraction ‘ain’t, through the emphatic tone demonstrates his feelings of anxiety over the changes he is required to accept within the changing society. This contrasts with Hughie …...



Within the many conflicts evident in seymours...