"The Silo" Long Essay

Essay by amy121 June 2004

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Set in Rural Australia, The Silo, by John Kinsella, portrays many of the author's thoughts and concerns about the rural Australian landscape and those people who inhabit it. He reveals these feelings through literary techniques including metaphors, personification, enjambment and most importantly, imagery. Some of the themes included within the poem include the isolation of the Australian bush, and the code of silence that exists in rural communities. The ideas within the poem are reinforced through the use of enjambment in the poetic structure.

One of the main themes within The Silo is the code of silence that exists within rural Australian communities and farming families. The rural world portrayed within The Silo, is, above all, human. It has its good points and its bad points. The silo that is at the heart of this poem holds a secret that only the family knows about.

Visitors, as if they knew, never remarked

On the old silo with its rammed earth walls

And high thatched roof

There is an air about the silo, and the way that the family acts around it, that warns visitors to the farm, it makes them cautious about mentioning the silo.

People don't talk about what happened to the silo, nor do they talk about bringing the silo back into use. It is analogous to any closed communities where people have a vested interest in keeping their business shut off from the outside world, the family does not burden other people with their problems; they keep silent, and allow their emotions to build up.

Another of the main images within the poem is that of the silo itself. It is old and neglected, and avoided at all costs. The imagery used to describe the silo is very strong, and individual.

The sun had bleached...