Let Go By Jack Davis: Culture And Identity

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Let go- finished

Good morning/ afternoon thank you for having me here to celebrate NAIDOC week with you all. Today I will be analyzing the poem “Let Go” by Jack Davis. Jack Davis was an Indigenous poet and activist. He was born in a small town of Yarloop in western Australia. Jack Davis uses poetry to provide a voice that helps us understand the culture that he lives in and his true identity. In order to prove the thesis statement, I will discuss the theme, poetic devices, and Jack Davis’s use of poetry and the way he uses imagery to symbolize his culture and identity.

The main theme of Jack Davis’s poem “let go” is of Aboriginal people getting held back from their full potential by the white people. In lines 1 & 2, “ let go of my hand, let me be what I want to be” proves that the white people has changed the Aboriginals culture so much that the aboriginals cant achieve their full potential. Jack Davis uses this theme to tell the audience how the whites have held back his culture’s rights. Does Jack Davis’s poem make you think twice about how Aboriginals are treated?
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The repetition of “let go of my hand” helps the audience understand his culture and identity, by emphasizing the message of how his culture has been held back by the white peoples laws. The personification in lines 16 & 17 “I want to fashion a rainbow, that arcs through the sky” states what jack Davis wanted to achieve throughout his life, however he was being held back from his full potential by the whites changing the way Australia used to be. Jack Davis effectively used poetic devices to strengthen the audience’s understanding of his culture and

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