Municipal Gum Poem Analysis

Words: 383
Pages: 2

The difference of perceptions for different cultures, especially indigenous Australians and the non-indigenous Australians
Municipal gum is about a tree symbolizing the aboriginals and how they are being trapped and unable to move like the tree can in its natural environment instead it is stuck in a city unable to move freely.
He links it to the aborigines using words such as ‘us’ to link the readers to the aborigines fate alongside the tree this links them together and brings sympathy for the aboriginal people from this poem the poem is showing how the aboriginal people have been taken from theior world and everything that is known to them and they have been trapped in our society shown by the comment about the tree being stuck in the bitumen
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Throughout the poem similes and metaphors are used to compare to other objects rather then linking directly to the aboriginal people until right at the end where Noonucal writes ‘O fellow citizen’ the language used is very useful at linking the aborigines to the tree which the raders are brought to feel empathy for from the beginning
In municipal gum the words used such as “Like that poor cart-horse” and “Castrated, broken, a thing wronged” show the emotion of the writer who is comparing the aboriginal tribes to these broken things showing how the once proud and mighty tribe has been brought down and crushed
The structure of the poem is fairly simplistic starting out bringing the topic to mind then elaborating on the aboriginal tribe and how they have been brought down by the use of the tree stuck in the bitumen. Oodgeroo Noonuccal believes that Europeans have deemed themselves powerful and practice in a manner that is