Immigrants at Central Station, 1951

The understandings and range of immigrants and their experiences highlights a range of issues they encounter such as rights, freedoms, beliefs, power, etc. All this issues a emphasized and focused in Peter Skrynecki’s poem “Immigrants at Central Station, 1951”. The experiences faced by Peter and his family is highlighted in this poem and this helps us to understand the immigrants experiences towards the new world of which displays the integrity, emotion and suffering towards the new world and we as the readers are engaged into these aspects of life through trains, time, control and journeys.

The experiences that is faced by Peter Skrynecki and other immigrants are conveyed in this poem through use of literature technique. One of his main techniques he uses in this poem is writing the poem in first person. Through this, he displays to his readers that it’s him that has experienced this painful and sorrowful journey and the things that have resulted from the journey which makes the experience more real. The second technique that was present in his poem was imagery and onomatopoeia.
‘‘It was sad to hear
The train's whistle this morning’’

The imagery used in this poem reflects the train and represent the physical aspect towards the new world. The poem starts off with “It was sad to hear, the train’s whistle this morning” using onomatopoeia, to give the train a human or living like characteristic with the use of ‘whistle’ but also using the tone of the poem towards a negative tone using the word “sad”.

The other example that is used in this poem is simile and allusion could be when he describes him and his family as being:
“Space hemmed us against each other like cattle bought for slaughter”

This is when everyone is waiting to catch the train that will take them to a unknown destination and could hold there future. He tries to make the normal events he experienced as dramatic sounding as possible to show people how uncomfortable the journey made him feel, which is another way of communicating what he meant when writing this poem. This line also conveys the fear of immigrants relating to there unknown future to this new land. The allusion in this line is reflected on WWII and the Holocaust during that period.

The stanza continues to portray a sense of loss, sadness and hardship through the use of imagery as they await the train with the line:
“All night it had rained” ... “But we ate it all, the silence, the cold and the benevolence of empty streets”

This symbolize that the surrounding around them is filled with fear, sadness and a sense of dislocation. This set the emotion of the poem and the