Beach Burial and Sleep

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Both poems Sleep and Beach Burial by Kenneth Slessor explore similar concepts, and through alike literary techniques, while still maintaining their individuality. Sleep focuses primarily on exploring elements of both the physical and non-physical world. While the title suggests that the poem is based on “utterly” giving yourself to sleep and that it narrates the journey of the sleeper from the sleep to the awakening, extended metaphors in the poem allow the reader to realise that it can also be interpreted as the journey to the womb from the ovaries for a foetus, through growth and development, to birth. As such, Slessor, in both poems, communicates the universality and timelessness of his subject matter. For example, the “slumber” and consequent “harsh birth” in Sleep and the death conveyed in Beach Burial are imminent and inevitable parts of human life. For example, Beach Burial is able to lament both the “convoy of dead sailors” while at the same time focusing on an individual “unknown seaman.” This gives the poem the power of combined universality and particularity of reference. This is again mirrored in Sleep through the portrayal of the universal concept of birth, while still marginalising the subject through the second person “you” used in the first stanza. Both poems also delve into the totality of nature and Slessor executes this through using intermittent references of the ocean throughout both poems. In Sleep, the “huger waves” immediately evoke an image of the ocean; however, this may be used as a metaphor for the all-encompassing nature of a mother’s womb. Similarly, in Beach Burial through the line “the convoy of dead sailors come; at night they sway and wander in the waters far under”, Slessor communicates the idea of the soldiers now being immersed in death, as they are physically immersed in the water. Slessor not only has parallel themes in
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