Similarities and Difference Between 'Weapons Training' and 'Homecoming' by Bruce Dawe

Weapons Training and Homecoming are two poems written by popular Australian author Bruce Dawe. Both poems oppose the Vietnam war however they approach the topic in very different ways.

Weapons Training is brutal in its topics and its language. It describes the training that new recruits undertake before being sent to war. It records the berrating of a new group by their Sergeant Major who forcefully conditions them to become unthinking killing machines. The poem suggests that it is better for the new troops to be ready to kill instinctively as any hesitation in field could lead to them being shot first: worse luck or you'd be set too late you nit

In addition to the insults the Sergeant hurls, the automation of killing is encouraged by dehumanizing the enemy in words like “mob of little yellows”, “a pack of Charlie’s” and “their rotten fish-sauce breath”. Physcologically it is easier to shoot an object rather than a person

Because of the dehumanizing, the insults “look to your front if you had one more brain”and ”you in the back row with the unsightly fat”and the suggestion the recruits are homosexulas “why are you looking at me are you a queer?”, the reader might hate the Sergeant. However, Dawe suggests that the Sergeant might act this way so that recruits remain safe as shown in the final lines” you've copped the bloody lot just like I said and you know what you are? You're dead, dead, dead” You almost feel sorry for him as he has probably trained many recruits who did not return from the war. This is very different to how the poem starts.

Homecoming is also an anti-war poem though it is much more reflective and subdued. It speaks about the horrors that soldiers go through during their time serving. “They’re picking them up, those they can find, and bringing them home” Each soldier has seen their battalion members die a painful death. Has had to to pick up their fallen comrades, because they will never be able to pick themselves up again. The horrors that they face are imaginable, some soldiers are never the same after they serve.

The mood of the poem is very sombre and sad, you can feel the pain and the sorrow that not only the soldiers feel but also the families of the fallen and returned soldiers.

While Weapons Training dehumanises, in Homecoming there is a lot of personification “Telegrams tremble like leaves from a wintering tree and the spider grief swings in his bitter geometry” It makes it seem as if these ordinary objects are alive, that they have their own emotions. “The noble jets are whining like hounds” Dawe has compared the planes carrying the dead soldiers as dogs, stating the sound that the plane made was similar to the whine that a dog would make when it’s sad. Dawe has expressed that the plane feels the emotion of sadness. “The howl of their homecoming rises” As the plane is seen on the horizon, the citizens celebrate, not knowing that this plane brings home the fallen soldiers, but a howl can convey different emotions.

Weapons Training and Homecoming are anti-war poems, both expressing the horrors of war. One preparing you for the possibility of death and the other preparing you for what happens after death. Yet both poems use different structures, language and emotions to express this.