On Home Beaches- Les Murray

The poem is a contemporary sonnet in form. Sonnets are generally about love: soft and gentle. The poet ironically turns the very concept of a sonnet inside-out, using it for a poem that is about mortification and ridicule, the very opposite of love in some ways, for humiliation is one of the worst feelings a person can experience.

The imagery in the poem is completely that of the seaside, describing sand, towels lying around, waves, foam, surf, ocean, and people surfing, swimming, and playing ball on the beach. ‘Belch’ faintly hints at the squelching sound made by feet walking on wet sand. Words like ‘cash’ suggest the sound of the ocean. ‘Sliding’ brings to mind waves sliding off the beach. ‘Strappy’ could refer to swimsuits. This would generally give a very positive, light tone to any poem, but various other words used sharply contrast this pl

Thus, the poet, using effective imagery, metaphors and contrasts, gives the poem a hard-hitting touch, leaving a definite bitter taste after you are done with it, yet provoking thought.

The exclusion and loneliness of fatter people is another prominent theme in the poem. The ‘family’ of well-toned and shapely people is spoken of as excluding those who are less perfect than them. For example, ‘faces averted’ and ‘some are smiled to each other.’ They ‘look down’ on overweight people, suggesting superiority, ‘glare’ at them for trespassing on what they consider belongs to beautiful people. The poet describes this group of people, significantly, not as a verb, glaring, but as ‘glares’. This lumps them into a big group, devoid of individuality, united in their contempt of the speaker. ‘She turns’ could refer to somebody turning to stare at a body she regards ugly, or alternatively turning away to avoid it. Both link up to the idea in the next line: averted faces or glaring eyes.

The poem begins by relating the tenseness and nervousness felt by the overweight speaker. He walks on an edge, barely controlling his terrible fear of ridicule, always anticipating the laughter like a gun shot, which will kill off his self-esteem. It effectively describes how much people are made to care about their body image and how society has programmed itself to regard slim and young as beautiful.

The idea that cars are the surf at the hawk of the beach’s back inverts land and sea. The sea is as dangerous as a hawk looking for victims to swallow. Cars suggest land. Here, however, cars are referred to as surf, saying that land is also like the sea, where the hawk of humiliation hunts for less-than perfect people to prey on and make an example of.

easant scene to the fe

Some topics in this essay:
War II, Les Murray, Home Beaches’, body image, perfect body, less-than perfect, ‘on home beaches’, describes people, poem hard-hitting, speaker piece, overweight people, consumerist society, shed vulnerable, poet describes,