Speaker or Narrator, and Point of View
The narrator is a first person narrator who recalls the events from a first person point of view.
Form and Meter
The ballad is written in ballad stanzas or quatrains of alternating lines of iambic tetrameter and iambic trimeter, known as ballad meter.
Metaphors and Similes
In the first stanza, the draught is compared with who Andy must fight. This comparison has the purpose of emphasizing the problems the people had to face during draughts and that for them every day was a war against nature.
Alliteration and Assonance
The alliteration ’’and may the grass grow green and tall’’ emphasizes the role weather had in the people’s life. For them, grass was a metaphor for hope and prosperity while draught was similar to a death sentence.
Irony
No irony appears in the ballad Andy’s gone with the cattle.
Genre
Ballad
Setting
The action of the ballad takes place in the 19th century in Australia in the so called bush areas, the rural areas outside major cities.
Tone
Frightening, hopeful
Protagonist and Antagonist
The protagonist is Andy and the Antagonist is the draught.
Major Conflict
The major conflict is between Andy and the forces of nature and the conflict consists of the knowledge that man must fight against nature in order to survive.
Climax
The climax is represented by the moment when Andy leaves his family.
Foreshadowing
The line ‚’ Our Andy's gone to battle now ‘’ foreshadows the problems Andy will have to face while droving, described in the poem.
Understatement
When the poet admits that Andy’s departure left his family a little affected proves to be an understatement as the rest of the poem focuses on the emotions felt by Andy’s departure.
Allusions
The whole poem can be considered as being an allusion to the conditions in which the drovers lived in. the poem focuses on the hardship they endured while also alluding that the society they live in does nothing to help them. While many other writers who chose to write about droving presented it in a romantic light, the poet decides to adopt a more realist approach and to reveal the truth about drovers.
Metonymy and Synecdoche
The aunt and uncle that appear in the poem can be considered as being used in a metonymical sense, as it stands for the families of those who went away droving.
Personification
Fortune Frowns her Blackest
Hyperbole
The hyperbole ‘’ showers in torrents fall’’ has the purpose of emphasizing the desire felt by Andy’s family to see him back home.
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia appears in the ballad when the poet describes the sound made by the riders who ‘’In storms the `riders' rattle’’.
