Analysis
of The Poem Aboriginal Australia by Jack
Davis in Aboriginal Literature
History
of Australian Literature
Eka
Yuniar SS, M.Hum
Firda Prihatin
2014130036
UNIVERSITAS DARMA PERSADA
Jl. Raden Inten II (Terusan Casablanca), Pondok
Kelapa
Jakarta
Timur 13450 Telp. 8649051/8649052
Content
Chapter
1
1. Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Concept
a. Intrinsic
1. Definition
of Literature
2. Definition
of Poetry
3. Definition
of Metaphor
4. Definition
of Alliteration
5. Definition
of Imagery
b. Extrinsic
1. Definition
of History
2. Definition
of Era
3. Definition
of Biography
Chapter
2
2. Analysis
poem Aboriginal Australia by Jack
Davis in the Aboriginal Literature
2.1 Poem
2.2 Summary
2.3 Historical
Background
2.4 Biography
2.5 Characteristics
2.6 Intrinsic
and Extrinsic Analysis
Chapter
3
Conclusion
Bibliography
Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 Background
Australian
literature, the body of literatures, both oral and written, produced in
Australia. This general proposition holds true for both indigenous Australians
and those descended from later European arrivals, though the perception of what
constitutes the community is quite radically different in these two cases. The
white Australian community is united in part by its sense of having derived
from foreign cultures, primarily that of England, and in part by its awareness
of itself as a settler society with a continuing celebration of pioneer values
and a deep attachment to the land. While for Aboriginal people in their
traditional culture, story, song, and legend served to define allegiances and
relationships both to others and to the land that nurtured them. For modern
Aboriginals, written literature has been a way of both claiming a voice and articulating
a sense of cohesion as a people faced with real threats to the continuance of
their culture.
1.2 Concept
a. Intrinsic
1. Definition
of Literature
Literature
is a term used to describe written and sometimes spoken material. Derived from
the Latin litteratura meaning "writing formed with
letters," literature most commonly refers to works of the creative
imagination, including poetry, drama, fiction, nonfiction, journalism, and in
some instances, song.
2. Definition
of Poetry
Poetry
is literature in meter form. It is a form of
written word that has pattern and rhythm and rhyme. It can be serious or
it can be fun. Poetry is as creative as you make it. Basic poetry is in verse
form, called a stanza, made up of meters
created by feet. The amount of lines there are in a stanza decides what type of
poem is written. There can be more than one stanza to a poem and then for
effect throw in a chorus and a refrain. Poetry is what in a
poem makes you laugh, cry, prickle, be silent, makes your toe nails twinkle,
makes you want to do this or that or nothing, makes you know that you are alone
in the unknown world, that your bliss and suffering is forever shared and
forever all your own.' Acoording (Dylan Thomas). Or According to (Percy Bysshe
Shelley) Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors
of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present the words which express what they understand
not; the trumpets which sing to battle, and feel not what they inspire; the
influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged
legislators of the world.
3. Definition
of Metaphor
The figure of
speech which compares one thing to another directly. Usually a metaphor is
created through the use of some form of the verb “to be”. The comparisons made
by metaphors are thus usually more subtle than those made by similes.
4. Definition
of Alliteration
The
repetition of the same sound at the beginning of several words which are near
one another. The most commonly known example of alliteration is the old jingle
about Peter Piper picking a peck of pickled peppers. The string of “p” sounds
gives a rhythmical, enchanting effect.
5. Definition
of Imagery
Images,
pictures, or sensory content, which we find in a poem. Images are fanciful or
imaginative descriptions of people or objects stated in terms of our senses.
For example, we can refer to the pattern of disease imagery in Hamlet, to the imagery of light in the
religious poetry of Vaughan, etc.
b. Extrinsic
1. Definition
of History
History
is the study of the past, particularly people and events of the past. History
is a pursuit common to all human societies. Human beings have always been
interested in the past, for many reasons. History is a tremendous story, a
rolling narrative filled with great personalities, struggle and suffering, turmoil
and triumph. Each passing generation adds its own chapter to history, while
reinterpreting and finding new things in those chapters already written.
History also gives us a sense of identity, helping us to understand who we are.
2. Definition
of Era
The definition of an era is a period of time in history that
is unified by cultural or historical factors. An example of an era is the
industrial era. A fixed point in time from which a series of years is reckoned
b
: a memorable or important date or event;
especially
: one that begins a new period in the
history of a person or thing. A system of chronological notation computed from
a given date as basis. Era is period identified by some prominent figure or
characteristic feature
<the era of the horse and buggy> b
: a stage in development (as of a person
or thing)
c : a large division of
geologic time usually shorter than an eon
<Paleozoic era>.
3.
Definition of Biography
A biography or simply
bio is a detailed description of a person's life. It involves more than just
the basic facts like education, work, relationships, and death, but also
portrays a subject's experience of these life events. Unlike a profile or
curriculum. a biography presents a subject's life story, highlighting various
aspects of his or her life, including intimate details of experience, and may
include an analysis of the subject's personality. Biographical works are
usually non-fiction, but fiction can also be used to portray a person's life.
One in-depth form of biographical coverage is called legacy writing. Works in
diverse media, from literature to film, form the genre known as biography.
Chapter 2
Analysis of the poem Aboriginal Australia by Jack Davis in
Aboriginal Literature
2.1
Poem
Aboriginal
Australia by Jack Davis
To the Others
You once smiled a friendly smile,
Said we were kin to one another,
Thus with guile for a short while
Became to me a brother.
Then you swamped my way of gladness,
Took my children from my side,
Snapped shut the law book, oh my sadness
At Yirrakalas’ plea denied.
So, I remember Lake George hills,
The thin stick bones of people.
Sudden death, and greed that kills,
That gave you church and steeple.
I cry again for Warrarra men,
Gone from kith and kind,
And I wondered when I would find a pen
To probe your freckled mind.
I mourned again for the Murray tribe,
Gone too without a trace.
I thought of the soldier’s diatribe,
The smile on the governor’s face.
You murdered me with rope, with gun
The massacre of my enclave,
You buried me deep on McLarty’s run
Flung into a common grave.
You propped me up with Christ, red tape,
Tobacco, grog and fears,
Then disease and lordly rape
Through the brutish years.
Now you primly say you’re justified,
And sing of a nation’s glory,
But I think of a people crucified -
The real Australian story.
2.2
Summary
Aboriginal Australia
told about the dismal history of Australia, and the events ongoing persecution
of Aboriginal people. The first of this poem wrote “To the other” which
describes a conflict in the community, the intent of the word is another person
that is a white man who was described by the author. This poem clearly tells of
wars and persecution of the whites people and the blacks or the Aborigines. In
this poem, Jack Davis represent of all blacks and telling their pain occupied
by their own lands. They suffer and distinguished in terms of social status.
Written in this poetry how white people killed, massacred and buried in a
common grave Aboriginal people.
All
dark image associated with death, suffering, humiliation and pain experienced
by Aboriginal people. They all experienced such violence and clearly
illustrated the rigors of their sufferings. This violence and repression
emphasize crime, greed and callousness of whites people by Aborigines.
2.3
Historical Background
In
the 1970th era, Aborigines have decided to return to their land which they
called the “holy land”. They tried to reoccupy their land will be seized by
whites people. Though the land that is their home, and they are the indigenous
people who inhabited the land before the white people took it away from them. Aboriginal
land rights granted each of them, not the communal title as the most preferable
because it would prevent the part being sold. The situation of Aboriginal
people at the time desperately need help from the government, but at that time
the government was slow to address the issue of their land and help them.
In
1972 many people have moved back into their traditional homeland. But the white
people is still trying to seize their land in any way, even by killing though.
These conditions make the Aborigines in those days it was very tragic. So in
the poem, Jack Davis tried to express his feelings and concern for the Aborigines.
Jack Davis, who is an activist trying to open the eyes of all the people about
how the pain of Aboriginal life at that time. He is someone who was born and
coexistence with Aboriginal people in Western Australia. He was relentless
demand the rights of the indigenous people of Australia that are Aborigines.
Then the Aboriginal Australia poetry
is a form of Jack Davis criticism and reflection on the future of Aboriginal
people and told “The real Australian story”.
Jack
Davis was born in Perth in 1917 and brought up in Yarloop and the Moore River
Native Settlement in Western Australia. He spent several years living on the
Brookton Aboriginal reserve where he first began to learn the language of the
Noongar peoples of the South West of western Australia. Later he worked as a
stockman in the North West which brought him into contact with tribal
Aboriginal society. A tireless activist for the rights of Indigenous
Australians, he was the first Noongar playwright to achieve commercial mainstream
national and international success. Davis had been writing poetry and short
stories from the early 1950s publishing his first collection of Poems, The
First Born in 1970. In the early 1970s he began to write for performance. His
produced plays include; The Steel and the Stone (1973), The Biter Bit (1975),
Kullark (1979), The Dreamers (1982), No Sugar (1985), Honey Spot (1985),
Barungin (1988), Moorli and the Leprechaun (1989), In Our Town (1990), Widartji
(1990) and Wahngin Country (1992). His plays deal with the history of
Indigenous experience of invasion from the early wars between Indigenous and
non-Indigenous Australians through to the present, the Stolen Generation,
deaths in custody, the treatment of Aboriginal war veterans and racism in small
Australian towns. His works mark and anticipate major points of transition in
the process of reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians. Davis wrote in order to claim space for Indigenous voices, to
provide an opportunity for those voices to speak in public spaces and re-centre
the Indigenous experience within Australian narratives. He was strongly
committed to countering and reconstructing the perceived images of Indigenous
Australians within the larger context of establishing the Indigenous community
as an important force within the Australian society.
2.5 Characteristics
The
characteristics of Aboriginal literature are oral literature, traditional life,
a picture of Aborigin life, scarcity, mythical, traditional story telling, and
song. When first
encountered by Europeans, the Australian Aboriginals did not have written
languages individual words were collected from first contact, but languages as
systems were not written down until well into the 20th century. Their songs,
chants, legends, and
stories, however, constituted a rich oral
literature, and, since the Aboriginal “tribes” had no common language,
these creations were enormously diverse. Long
unavailable to or misunderstood by non-Aboriginals, their oral tradition appears from
researches undertaken in the last half of the 20th century to be one of
considerable subtlety and complexity.
The oral literature of the
Aboriginals has an essentially ceremonial function. It
supports the fundamental Aboriginal beliefs that what is given cannot be
changed and that the past exists in an eternal present, and it serves to relate
the individual and the landscape to the continuing spiritual influence of the
Dreaming, or Dreamtime widely known as the Alcheringa, or Altjeringa, the
term used by the Aboriginals of central Australia, a mythological past in which
the existing natural environment was shaped
and humanized by ancestral beings. While the recitation of the song cycles and
narratives is to some extent prescribed, it also can incorporate new experience
and thus remain applicable both part of the past called up by the Ancestors and part of the present.
Then the
characteristics of Jack Davis as the author of this era are drama and poetry, irony, socio-political commentary, humour, and influenced by traditional Aborigines. As we know he
is a tireless activist for the rights of Indigenous Australians, he was the
first Noongar playwright to achieve commercial mainstream national and
international success. His works deal with the history of Indigenous experience
of invasion from the early wars between Indigenous and non-Indigenous
Australians through to the present, deaths in custody, the treatment of
Aboriginal war veterans and racism in small Australian towns. He wrote Aboriginal Australia as an expression of
concern for Aboriginal people in America. Davis wrote in order to claim space
for Indigenous voices, to provide an opportunity for those voices to speak in
public spaces and re-centre the Indigenous experience within Australian
narratives.
2.6 Intrinsic
and Extrinsic Analysis
Intrinsic Analysis
Metaphor
This poem Aboriginal
Australia by Jack Davis is using metaphor. Metaphor is a way to convey the
meaning in a poem to express something different with the real meaning or
commonly referred to as figuratively. In this poem seen the use of Metaphor in
the eleventh line The thin stick
bones of people. That
sentence is refers
to Lake George hills which is where the power of the Aborigines previously. So The thin
stick bones of people could be interpreted as the power of the Aborigines.
Then
there is also a metaphor on the line to sixteen and seventeen And I wondered when I would find a pen. To probe your freckled mind. The true
meaning of the sentence is Jack Davis tried to express his concern for
Aboriginal using a pen (his works) and try to open the minds of White people.
Furthermore, the metaphor is also used in the second last
line in this poem. But I think of a people crucified. The real meaning of this
sentence is basically saying that the Australians
felt proud of the Australia they created and felt justified to murder and
massacre the Aborigines in the name of the Church but the real story is the the
Aborigines who had to be “crucified” (massacred) for Australia to get where it
is.
Alliteration
Alliteration
is the repetition of the same sound at the beginning of several words which are
near one another. Alliteration in this poem can seen by the fifteen line Gone from kith and kind,. Kith and kind in this line is
alliteration because it has a repetition at the beginning of several words.
Imagery
Images,
pictures, or sensory content, which we find in a poem. Images are fanciful or
imaginative descriptions of people or objects stated in terms of our senses. In
this poem is also using imagery. We can seen the imagery at the line twenty
two,
You murdered me with rope, with gun. This
sentence of the poem is using imagery because the word rope and gun is
a depiction of the weapons used to kill by white people to the Aboriginal
people.
Then imagery is also used on the line twenty
three of these poems, the sentence
is The massacre of my enclave,. The sentence describes that “enclave” an imagery for their tribe is Aboriginal.
Extrinsic Analysis
Aborigines
have decided to return to their land in the 1970th era which they called the “holy
land”. They tried to reoccupy their land will be seized by whites people.
Though the land that is their home, and they are the indigenous people who
inhabited the land before the white people took it away from them. Aboriginal
land rights granted each of them, not the communal title as the most preferable
because it would prevent the part being sold. The situation of Aboriginal
people at the time desperately need help from the government, but at that time
the government was slow to address the issue of their land and help them.
Many
people have moved back into their traditional homeland in 1972. But the white
people is still trying to seize their land in any way, even by killing though.
These conditions make the Aborigines in those days it was very tragic. So in
the poem, Jack Davis tried to express his feelings and concern for the
Aborigines. Jack Davis, who is an activist trying to open the eyes of all the
people about how the pain of Aboriginal life at that time. He is someone who
was born and coexistence with Aboriginal people in Western Australia. He was
relentless demand the rights of the indigenous people of Australia that are
Aborigines. Then the Aboriginal Australia
poetry is a form of Jack Davis criticism and reflection on the future of
Aboriginal people and told about the real Australian story.
Jack
Davis is an activist who coexist with Aborigines in Western Australia. His
works are mostly a form of defense of the rights of Aborigines who at that time
many were tortured and even killed by white people. Not only Aboriginal Australia, Jack Davis also
made works of drama titled The Dreamer
the story of a country-town faily and old Uncle Worru, who in his dying days,
recedes fro urban hopelessness to the life and language of the Nyoongah spirit
which in him has survived ‘civilisation’.
In
Aboriginal Australia clearly
illustrated story about the bitterness of the Aborigines at the time because
they were colonized by the white people. Therefore, Jack Davis expressed his
feelings and concern for black people or the Aborigines through his poetry
entitled Aboriginal Australia.
Chapter 3
Conclusion
The difference should not be a big problem in
the world. Differences make the world more colorful with a variety of existing
differences. We should not make a difference as a measure of power, giving rise
to social status differences are striking. In this poem clearly visible picture
of the striking difference between white people with black people or referred
to as Aborigines in the area of Western Australia. This poem tells of torture
white people against black people or Aboriginal. Differences in social status
and the gap between them is very obvious and it is also used as a major
problem. In addition, annexation, which can also be referred to as the
occupation of white people against black people make an imprint of history for
the Aborigines. They chased away by their lands, they are tribal or indigenous
people of Western Australia. This event really left a very lasting for
Aborigines at the time. Even to obtain their own right, it was not easy. Nevertheless
the government at that time considered slow in dealing with the suffering of
Aborigines. Jack Davis, in this case is an Aboriginal rights campaigner. He was
an activist who is able to express his concern for the Aborigines. Even his
works were able to open the eyes of all people and make them take care of the
problems experienced by black people. So slowly problem between white people
with black people ended peacefully, although it could cause injury, pain, even
death against the black people. Aboriginal
Australia poetry is able to tell all the pain that is felt by Aboriginal
people at the time. As if this poem summarizes all the experience they had.
However, with this poem that he wrote, is able to open the eyes and hearts of
all people so that they understand that difference and social inequality should
not be a big problem that causes misery and even bloodshed.
Bibliography
