Crossing the Red Sea

Peter Skrzynecki

Crossing the Red Sea

This poem captures the immigrant experience between the two worlds, leaving the homeland and towards the new world. The poet has deliberately structured the poem in five sections each with a number of stanzas to divide the different stages of the physical voyage. Section one describes the refugees, two briefly deals with their reason for the exodus, three emphasises their former oppression, fourth section is about the healing effect of the voyage and the concluding section deals with the awakening of hope. This restructuring allows the poet to focus on the emotional and physical impact of the journey.

In the first section Skrzynecki suggests that the physical journey is both literally and metaphorically away from Europe and the tragedy of war and represents the undertakers’ changing perspective. The introductory stanza of the first section immediately describes the undertaking of the physical journey which the poet implies is an escape but the voyage is described in an ambivalent tone. The adjective many denotes the fact that there was a whole mass of the immigrants and heat implies that the discomforting and cramped situation of the migrants wasn’t pleasant. Never see again emphasises the fact that these people are migrating and will never return to their homeland. The migrants’ physical description Shirtless, in shorts and barefooted stresses the lack of their belongings as they’ve left everything behind and their milk-white skin implies that their skin colour isn’t right for their adopted country, Australia and depicts that they won’t be comfortable there. The second stanza’s description of the migrants with the imagery of shackles, sunken eyes, ’secrets and exiles portrays them in disgrace as if they are running away from their homeland. Their sunken eyes also conveys their hardship in suffering and the war’s adversity and the shackles further emphasises their oppression and their confinement. To look for shorelines implies their desire to purge their suffering and inner turmoil as they find some consolation and hope in starting a new life. The last word of the stanza exiles implicates their expulsion from their land in fact they actually chose to leave.

The subsequent section is concise as it provides the depressive historical context of the poem. The usage of factual period of time 1949 and the war / Now four years dead- conveys the suffering of the exiles and their endurance of the lengthy wait to migrate as they weren’t economically or physically capable to leave earlier. The present tense denoted in the word now and the usage of the nominative personal pronoun we involves the responder as their sympathy is evoked in the migrant’s necessity to leave. Neither masters nor slaves symbolises the equality between everyone onboard as all of their memories are similar. The positive attitude with the usage of the colour red banners is emphasised as being ceremonies and their hopefulness. Time symbolises the separation of their suffering from reality and salute emphasises their importance.

In the third section the composer gives the many individuals a voice as their mixed reminiscences in quoted speech are made more vivid and poignant. The images from the line Patches and shreds / Of dialogue give the responder an idea of the physically worn out clothes of the immigrants and metaphorically their fatigued emotional turmoil and their former unwholesome life. Hung from fingertips implies their attempt to express their suffering to one another and the imagery implies in unshaven faces, respite and the passing waves implies their emotional entrapment in the past, present and the future and the fact that their present life is in a limbo but the waves convey their optimism for the new country. The second stanza with its individual case studies conveys the nostalgic and sentimental emotions in I remember a field / Of red poppies which contrasts strikingly with the ensuing imagery of blood. The blood is a metaphor for their torture and torment