The Union Buries Its Dead

The Union Buries Its Dead

"The Union Buries Its Dead" is a well-known sketch story by iconic Australian writer and poet Henry Lawson. The story takes place in Bourke, and concerns the burial of an anonymous union labourer, who had drowned the previous day "while trying to swim some horses across a billabong of the Darling." The narrator, possibly Lawson himself, examines the level of respect the Bushfolk have for the dead, supplementing the story with his trademark dry, sardonic humour.

Read more about The Union Buries Its Dead:  Plot Summary, Characters, Lawson's Avoidance of Stock Conventions, Factual Basis of Story, Quotes, Publication Details

Famous quotes containing the words union, buries and/or dead:

    Maybe we were the blind mechanics of disaster, but you don’t pin the guilt on the scientists that easily. You might as well pin it on M motherhood.... Every man who ever worked on this thing told you what would happen. The scientists signed petition after petition, but nobody listened. There was a choice. It was build the bombs and use them, or risk that the United States and the Soviet Union and the rest of us would find some way to go on living.
    John Paxton (1911–1985)

    Most of the stone a nation hammers goes toward its tomb only. It buries itself alive.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    There couldn’t be a society of people who didn’t dream. They’d be dead in two weeks.
    William Burroughs (b. 1914)