Discoveries can lead us to new worlds and values, stimulate new ideas, and enable us to speculate about future possibilities. Discoveries and discovering can offer new understandings and renewed perceptions of ourselves and others. Robert gray is a modern Australian poet that uses poetry to portray his view about the world, and show what he thinks the world is becoming through the inner discoveries his poetry makes. This is very predominant in the poems "Meatworks" and "Flames on Dangling Wire". It can also be seen through the political song by, Nickelback "when we stand together". .
'Flames and dangling wire' is a didactic poem in which Robert Gray warns the reader about the consequences of change. In the poem, Gray makes heavy use of language techniques to bring his discovery of the materialistic lifestyle we live. The city is described as being 'driven like stakes into the ground', symbolising the curiosity wonder of the persona looking over the world, and leaving them wondering how can someone leave their "home" like this. .
This inner epiphany the persona is undergoing throughout the poem, show how we as humans are single handedly destroying the world we live in as we become more and more materialistic that is starting to consume itself. The people who fork through the trash symbolise this and is shown through, 'with an eternity in which to turn up some peculiar sensation'. This demonstrates the self-destructive nature of the society we now live in. .
The persona's inner epiphany of a self destructive society is furthered strengthened through the allusions to "the raft of medusa" which is a painting that alludes to shipwreck survivors that have resorted to cannibalism as they float across the sea. The people on the raft represent the all people, consuming themselves while on the materialistic society that is eating society from the inside.