Beach Burial Essay Questions

How does the poem itself mirror what the unknown person who marks the sailors’ graves does?

An unspecified person in the poem has taken advantage of a temporary break in the fighting to drag the bodies from the water and give them a proper burial. This person is attempting to memorialize the sailors’ deaths so that their courage and heroic actions are not forgotten. In the action of writing “unknown seamen” on the makeshift driftwood crosses, he is symbolically writing them into history by recording for posterity their identities and sacrifices. The fact that he is writing this history with pencil that is destined to quickly fade testifies to the harsh truth about the futility of war and the many anonymous men who have died in service of their nations. The poem mirrors this act by undertaking the same goal of maintaining the record of heroics destined to fade from memory. Like the unknown person in the poem, Slessor documents and mourns the loss of these men, whose own families may not be aware of their fate. And like the speaker—who appears to have been emotional over the speaker’s death—Slessor is solemn about the devastating effects of war.

How does the poet use alliteration?

Alliteration in the poem reinforces the unknown mourner's repeated need to drag each body from the water onto the shore. By repeating the same letter at the beginning of multiple words, the poem linguistically mimics the repetition of the unknown person's mourning and burying. The poem uses alliteration at the very moment that it is describing this person's actions: "Between the sobs and clubbing of the gunfire / Someone, it seems, has time for this" (Lines 5-6). Later in the poem, alliteration is again used to mimic the action being described. In Stanza 4, Slessor uses alliteration to describe the inscriptions being washed down the cross: the memorial "wavers and fades, the purple drips, / The breath of the wet season has washed their inscriptions" (Lines 14-15). Like written words blurring together in the rain and humidity, the words in these lines run together through the use of alliteration.

How does irony function in the poem?

The poem is deeply ironic, juxtaposing the traditional, heroic depiction of war with its bleak, hopeless reality. The beach is a location that typically evokes leisure and pleasure, and it is ironic that it becomes a graveyard. Some men are called to serve their country at the moment that it is at war and their lives can literally be put on the line and this call to service often results from fantasies of becoming a hero and being recognized for bravery and honored for their courage. The ironic subversion is that so many of them will die in utter anonymity which offered no chance to become heroes or in situations characterized by abject fear rather bravery. Even the attempt to mourn these men is ironic—graves are used as permanent markers to memorialize those who have passed away, but the makeshift graves here are already becoming corroded by the rainy conditions. The final irony is illuminated at the end of the poem—it isn’t even known for which side those buried on the beach were fighting. This is ironic because the soldiers are risking their entire lives to fight for a particular side; they die without anyone knowing which side they were committed to.