3.3.8 Symbolism

Through symbolism or the use of symbols, the poet is striving to make the reader aware of and understand certain abstract ideas. These could be as numerous as something like peace, love, evil or even lost time. In the example below the kangaroo represents the qualities of the Australian landscape and its first inhabitant, the Australian Aboriginal. James Hackston, the poet, sees the kangaroo, who is master to no one, with its strength to survive appalling conditions and covering great distances, its fur the colour of the landscape and vegetation. It represents the strength of the land, its particular qualities of huge distances, rocks and trees and gullies, and peculiar blue-grey vegetation. It even symbolises the original inhabitant of the land, the Aboriginal, who, in his knowing ways, lived and moved unperturbed, across the great distances of the land and managed to survive despite the climatic conditions. In short, Hackston represents through the kangaroo an untamed, not to be grasped, land that is Australia matched only by the original inhabitant that understood it.

Example:

I am the rock and tree,
The wide plains dry,
The gorges wild and free
The blue-hot sky,
The blue-grey greenery -
Gully and rise,
The Aboriginal.
And his far eyes.

(From Jack Hackston's "The Kangaroo")
(In Poets and Poetry (1992). R.K. Sadler, T.A.S. Hayllar & C.J. Powell (Eds.). Melbourne: Macmillan Education.)