Homecoming- Bruce dawes

1. What is the setting of the poem?

2. Who are ‘they’, and why are ‘they’ not named?

3. What is the poem about?

4. Write down three things that we learn about the WAR from the language used.

Support this with evidence from the text.

5. What is the overall tone of the poem? What gives it this tone?

6. Find three examples of repetition and comment on their use and effectiveness.

7. What is the purpose of Dawe’s lists, such as ‘curly-heads, kinky-hairs, crew-cuts,

balding non-coms’? What do these terms mean?

8. What does the use of ‘ing’ words throughout the poem achieve?

9. Find examples of Dawe’s use of simile, e.g. telegrams tremble like leaves

from a wintering tree’. What does this add to the poem?

10. What do the final words ‘…too late, too early’ mean?

11. What is the point of this poem? Would you consider this an anti-war poem?

Explain.