Don T Call Me Lad Dad Poem Analysis

As unemployment has been a common issue in Australian society for decades, it is not surprising that people’s opinions are diverse. Renowned late 20th century Australian poets Geoff Goodfellow and Bruce Dawe both discuss unemployment in their respective poems ‘Don’t Call me Lad Dad’ and ‘Doctor to Patient’. Although, both poets are peers of similar background, each presents unemployment in a different light. In order to create and enhance their differing messages, Goodfellow and Dawe both use poetic devices such as setting, form, and language techniques. Yet, the way in which each poet applies these techniques significantly varies to provide their audiences with different insights into the theme.

The setting of each poem is utilised by Dawe and Goodfellow to establish their views on unemployment. Dawe use a recognisably serious setting to convey the message …show more content…
In order to create an informal, relaxed and unconcerned tone Goodfellow uses language techniques including a lack of proper capitalization and punctuation, basic words, contractions such as ‘i’m’ and ‘i’d’, purposeful misspellings such as ‘y’’ and ‘y’r’ as well as the use of ‘&’ instead of ‘and’. Consequently, the relaxed apathetic tone emphasizes the indifferent attitude towards unemployment that Goodfellow promotes to his audience. For the purpose of amplifying the message that unemployment should be taken seriously, a formal and serious tone is created by Dawe in Doctor to Patient. Specifically, the tone is produced through the use of language techniques including sophisticated vocabulary such as ‘vulnerability’ ‘anodynes’ and ‘personified’, pleasantries such as ‘please’, complete sentences, and proper punctuation. Don’t call me lad dad and Doctor to patient show that the same literary techniques can be utilized in different ways in order to emphasize different