What Role Do We Play In Our Life Cycle By Bruce Dawe

There is not just one factor that influences our identity.
The hundreds of different involvements we experience throughout life will each play a role in developing our unique personality.
The context of identity is fraught with complexities and as a result, there are many factors that influence our overall persona. Throughout our lifespan, there are many experiences that may compel us to alter our sense of self. Our physical attributes are inherited from our family which consequently shapes our identity from birth. Although we do not consciously choose our family, they are a factor that shapes our character from conception due to family being our first social group. Being human beings, we have a strong aspiration to belong to communities.
Our parent’s morals and ethics whether right or wrong, will become ours because of belonging to the family unit. Life Cycle by Bruce Dawe, explores the life of a child brought into a Victorian family. The baby’s life is destined to revolve around football due to the family being football supporters and him being ‘laid in beribboned cots, having already begun a lifetime’s barracking’. Due to our family being the first social group we encounter in life, it with be from these people our standards and culture will develop from, with this family passing on their love of football. Sometime parents fail to teach these basics, due to society being focused on teaching the technicalities in the modernised world we live in today. Teaching the Syllabus presents the idea that we have somewhat failed to instruct a child on the basics in life. Forgetting to teach ‘Dogs to bark again; lions to roar…’ we have instead focused on ‘teaching lions to leap through flaming hoops’. Through this exploration, the poem has shown that some things cannot be taught in life, and instead must be naturally experienced. Moreover the family unit is just one factor that influences our final