HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

"Weapons Training" is a piece of
war poetry War poetry is poetry on the topic of war. While the term is applied especially to works of the First World War, the term can be applied to poetry about any war, including Homer's ''Iliad'', from around the 8th century BC as well as poetry of th ...
written by Bruce Dawe in 1970. A
dramatic monologue Dramatic monologue is a type of poetry written in the form of a speech of an individual character. M.H. Abrams notes the following three features of the ''dramatic monologue'' as it applies to poetry: Types of dramatic monologue One of the m ...
spoken by a battle-hardened
drill sergeant A drill instructor is a non-commissioned officer in the armed forces, fire department, or police forces with specific duties that vary by country. Foot drill, military step, and marching are typically taught by drill instructors. Australia Aust ...
training recruits about to be sent off to the
Vietnam War The Vietnam War (1 November 1955 – 30 April 1975) was an armed conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia fought between North Vietnam (Democratic Republic of Vietnam) and South Vietnam (Republic of Vietnam) and their allies. North Vietnam w ...
, its anti-war sentiment is evident but more oblique than in Dawe's other well-known war poem, "Homecoming", written two years earlier. Dawe had direct experience with military life, having served in the
Royal Australian Airforce The Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) is the principal Air force, aerial warfare force of Australia, a part of the Australian Defence Force (ADF) along with the Royal Australian Navy and the Australian Army. Constitutionally the Governor-Gener ...
from 1959 to 1968. Dennis Haskell, Winthrop Professor of English and Cultural Studies at
University of Western Australia University of Western Australia (UWA) is a public research university in the Australian state of Western Australia. The university's main campus is in Crawley, Western Australia, Crawley, a suburb in the City of Perth local government area. UW ...
, has pointed that the drill sergeant's harsh tirade to the recruits with insults both sexual (e.g. "why are you looking at me are you a queer?") and racist (e.g. "a brand-new pack of Charlies are coming at you, you can smell their rotten fish-sauce breath") makes him seem like an exaggerated cartoon-like figure. However, he goes on to say that Dawe maintained he had not completely invented them: "Many f themwere addressed to me or other members of the squad of RAAF recruits I was part of in 1959." Haskell notes that "Weapons Training" had not started out as solely a dramatic monologue, and its original title was "Portrait of a Drill Instructor". The early version contained an introductory verse with a soldier's memory of him which specifically identified the instructor as British:
I can still see his face
thrust forward out of love
for the little sunburned rookies
hunched in their chairs
or sweating at attention
see, too,
his true-blue British eyes ..
The introductory verse was omitted from the final version making the poem less of a personal portrait and more of a general depiction of the military culture which the sergeant personified with his macho dehumanising language. In their 2009 analysis of the poem from the perspective of
systemic functional linguistics Systemic functional linguistics (SFL) is an approach to linguistics, among functional linguistics, that considers language as a social semiotic system. It was devised by Michael Halliday, who took the notion of system from J. R. Firth, his ...
, David Butt and Annabelle Lukin have proposed that while the drill instructor is ostensibly teaching physical skills to the recruits, the structure of his language "foregrounds the regulation of mental experience as central to the training", training that fosters the unquestioning obedience to authority that may be crucial to their survival in combat. The poem ends with the instructor's warning to the recruits who do not follow his advice:
and you know what you are? You're dead, dead, dead
"Weapons Training" is included in the 1971 collection of Dawe's poetry ''Condolences of the Season'' and in his ''Sometimes Gladness: Collected Poems, 1954–1992''. It is also published in several anthologies of Australian literature, including ''Two Centuries of Australian Poetry'' (
Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the publishing house of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world. Its first book was printed in Oxford in 1478, with the Press officially granted the legal right to print books ...
, 1988) and '' Clubbing of the Gunfire : 101 Australian War Poems'' (
Melbourne University Press Melbourne University Publishing (MUP) is the book publishing arm of the University of Melbourne. The press is currently a member of the Association of University Presses. History MUP was founded in 1922 as Melbourne University Press to sell text ...
, 1984), and frequently appears on the English syllabus of Australian schools.Mahoney (2009) p. 87


Notes and references


Sources

*Butt, David G. and Lukin, Annabelle (2009)
"Stylistic analysis: construing aesthetic organisation"
in
Michael Halliday Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday (often M. A. K. Halliday; 13 April 1925 – 15 April 2018) was a British linguist who developed the internationally influential systemic functional linguistics (SFL) model of language. His grammatical descri ...
and Jonathan Webster (eds.) ''Continuum Companion to Systemic Functional Linguistics'', pp. 190-215. Continuum International Publishing Group. *Dawe, Bruce (1993). ''Sometimes Gladness: Collected poems, 1954-1992'', 4th edition. Longman Cheshire. *Haskell, Dennis (2002)
''Attuned to Alien Moonlight: The Poetry of Bruce Dawe''
Univ. of Queensland Press. *Mahoney, Blair (2009). ''Poetry Reloaded''. Cambridge University Press. *Spurr, Barry (2004)
''Bruce Dawe''
''Excel HSC English Study Guide Series''. Pascal Press. {{ISBN, 1741250331 Australian poems Vietnam War poems Anti-war works