Migrant Woman On A Melbourne Tram Analysis

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In her poem Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram, Jennifer Strauss explores the concept of unfamiliarity experienced by a migrant woman as a newcomer to Australia, who is trying to make her way and navigate to an unknown destination in the Melbournian suburbs. The portrayal of the migrant woman ‘hunch[ing] sweltering’ embodies a sense of discomfort and the lack of ease she feels. She is described as having ‘sweating hands’, ‘twist[ing] a scrap of paper’, which articulates the idea of how troubled she is feeling, and the sibilance established by Strauss, ‘she hunches sweltering/twists in sweating hands/a scrap of paper’ further emphasises this as its tonal qualities almost create a threatening and unsettling atmosphere, much as to what the migrant…show more content…
The word ‘forlorn’ creates the impression of the migrant woman’s isolation and loneliness, further elicited through its alliteration in ‘forlorn in foreign words and voices.’ The simile of comparing poverty to the ‘whiteness’ of bones employs the meaning of how easily visible poverty is, as well as the incorporation of another synecdoche where ‘bone’ represents skeletons, and possibly even death. The paradox of the ‘great silences of sea and sky’ can be correlated to the ‘calling names’ and ‘echo’ (seen in the first stanza), signifying and emphasising on the woman’s isolation. Beyond ‘echo’, the most prominent element in the poem is the Strauss’ repetitive use of the ‘impossibly’. This ironic emphasis is seen as although it is deemed ‘impossible’, is it still done – as follows, through the migrant woman’s ‘impossibly black’ clothing, the ‘impossibly obscure’ voices she hears around her, the ‘impossibly dark’ undecipherable words, and how she has ‘impossibly departed’ from the familiarity of her past life and culture brings to her despair and once again, the nature of her isolation and alienation. Jennifer Strauss’ Migrant Woman on a Melbourne Tram is a highly evocative piece – the alienation, unfamiliarity, loneliness, and this sense of utter displacement and ‘impossibility’ as portrayed by the migrant woman is powerfully pieced; through the use of many literary devices, the allusion to other famous texts and what is more, the eloquent language of the poem remarks a detached tone that can only endeavour to capture what it may feel like being an immigrant in another

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