Choose an aspect of Australian life and consider how poets have regarded that theme.
             Using two poems you have studied in class, analyse what features gave you this insight into Australian life.
             Australian life is extremely varied. It ranges from barbeques to beer drinking. One aspect of Australian life is war. War plays, or rather, has played a big part in forming the Australian way of life and culture. The two poems "Martin and the Hand Grenade" by John Foulcher and "Beach Burial" by Kenneth Slessor both discuss different aspects of war and war times.
             The first poem chosen, "Martin and the Hand Grenade" by John Foulcher, depicts many aspects of war such as the mental impacts as well as some physical impacts and aspects of the grenade. Throughout the poem, the point of view changes from 3rd person, someone looking and explaining what the subject, Martin, is doing, "Martin displays the grenade" to a 1st person's point of view, the subject's perspective, "No-It had limited power: ten yards, then the spread became too loose to catch a man's mortality."
             Aspects such as "the small war" and "hurls across mind fields, tears the heart ahead" gives us an image of what war was really like for our soldiers of the two world wars especially the mental impacts of pointlessly loosing friends and family to explosives and weapons.
             The second poem chosen, "Beach Burial" by Kenneth Slessor, also depict aspects of war but this time of the more graphical and visual realities. It explains in detail the realism and the tragedy of war, especially the loss of life. The sadness portrayed to the reader through phrases such as "the sob and club of gunfire" reveals the depressing, continuous sounds heard throughout wars. "Someone has time for this it seems", the phrase given, represents a person, out of a mark of respect, burying the dead b...