Bruce Dawe Enter Without So Much As Knocking Summary
Bruce Dawes poems explore the impacts of consumer culture and are an indictment of the growing materialism in modern society. In Enter Without So Much As Knocking (1962), Dawe portrays a world dominated by consumerism, which has lead to `conformity, and eroded the individuality of many people. The idea that our view of the world can only be seen through television and that our experience of life is restricted and controlled by it is highlighted in the satirical poem, Tele Vistas.(1977) This idea is revisited in The Not So Good Earth.(1966) Television in consumer society is the prime source of information and entertainment. Dawe expresses his concern that we have become desensitized to human suffering because it is presented to us as entertainment.
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Dawe’s biblical allusion emphasizes that it doesn’t matter how many consumer items and materialistic things are bought, everybody ends up the same way, back to dust again. Society is portrayed as the product of the consumer age and human life is determined as a by-product, lacking in real value and soon rendered obsolete. Dawe suggests that contemporary society is false and superficial. The intertextual reference to 'Bobby Dazzler' epitomizes this: an empty smile behind the welcoming façade reinforced through the superficial cliché “all you lucky people” undercut by Dawe’s mocking tone in “and he really was lucky because it didn’t mean a thing to him”. The family is defined in terms of what they look like in advertising jargon: the mother is 'economy size'. Consumerism now defines identity or lack of individuality. This brings the idea that in order to belong to a consumer based society, the individual must conform. This idea is reinforced through negative listing in “he was old enough to be realistic like every other godless money-hungry back-stabbing miserable so-and-so”. The derogatory labeling is a clichéd reference to the gossiping and derisive comments that characterize the materialistic culture Dawe is criticizing in his
Dawe’s biblical allusion emphasizes that it doesn’t matter how many consumer items and materialistic things are bought, everybody ends up the same way, back to dust again. Society is portrayed as the product of the consumer age and human life is determined as a by-product, lacking in real value and soon rendered obsolete. Dawe suggests that contemporary society is false and superficial. The intertextual reference to 'Bobby Dazzler' epitomizes this: an empty smile behind the welcoming façade reinforced through the superficial cliché “all you lucky people” undercut by Dawe’s mocking tone in “and he really was lucky because it didn’t mean a thing to him”. The family is defined in terms of what they look like in advertising jargon: the mother is 'economy size'. Consumerism now defines identity or lack of individuality. This brings the idea that in order to belong to a consumer based society, the individual must conform. This idea is reinforced through negative listing in “he was old enough to be realistic like every other godless money-hungry back-stabbing miserable so-and-so”. The derogatory labeling is a clichéd reference to the gossiping and derisive comments that characterize the materialistic culture Dawe is criticizing in his