The Union buries its dead

A detailed Summary of The Union buries its dead

Henry Lawson's "The Union buries its dead is a story which explores the procedure of a union burial for a man whose identity is unknown and whose presence was obviously barely noticed. "He was stranger in town, and the fact of his having been a Union man accounted for the funeral" . The story that surrounds the burial is told through the eyes of a narrator who seems to be jaded by a world who pretends to care. Thus, through the realistic narrator's bitter tone and language we are led to believe that the majority of members in the small town possess anything but true feelings for the deceased union man. As we discover this realism by the end of the story we can see that the burial of this unknown man would have been fortunate to have had little or any impact on anyone.

Throughout the story the narrator is positioned in relation to the characters as a local within the town but perhaps an outsider in his thoughts and values. In general, he seems to assign great degrees of importance to non-linguistic forms of communication an

As the story draws to a close it is evident that the narrator begins to become fatigued by the burial of this stranger as he describes the last scenes with a great sense of realism and truth. The picture painted by the narrator's powerful words adds a degree of sincerity to the narrator's values and portrays the unfortunate fact that the union man was indeed a nobody. Thus, there is no conveyance of the heartbroken mournful family, nor is there an illustration of the beautiful lonely wife, but instead the cold reality that these people were no doubt absent in this man's existence. As the story further unfolds we can definitely see the appropriateness and relevance of the title. The title leaves us without a name of the union man, as does the story, and therefore seeks to depict the feeling that the union man was exactly that, just a union man. His real name was unknown by everyone, the presence of his friends and family were absent, and so it is suitable that the title reads "The union buries its dead", for if was not for h

Some common words found in the essay are:
Lawson's Union, ignorant publican, union buries dead, union buries, unknown presence, union burial, narrator's bitter, buries dead,

Approximate Word count = 693
Approximate Pages = 3 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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