Introduction
Poetry has always depicted war as a despicable evil that ends all. Poets have shown war by mourning over dead soldiers, eternity and immortality, patriotic, romanticism, and the overwhelming force of war. This essay discusses three poets who wrote poems during three different period of history – Emily Dickinson, Thomas Hardy, and Randall Jarrell. This essay discusses three war poems by Dickinson, Hardy, and Jarrell.
Main body
Emily Dickinson wrote her best-known poems during the period of American Civil War i.e. 1861-65, which scholars have termed as the “flood years”, and the poem in discussion, “Because I could not stop for Death”, was written during this time (Kirk 81). It is one of the most intriguing poems on death and immortality. The poem is an expression of dueling opposites i.e. between temporal and eternal and life and death. The poem written during the Civil War has a distinct character of its own. In the poem, death is personified as a gentleman with “Civility”. The first line of the poem, “Because I could not stop for death”, shows that the poet is unwilling to recognize the power of Death over her. In this very line, Dickinson shows that by not allowing Death to overpower her she was embracing immortality as mortality is a phenomenon of the mind. The second stanza depicts the speaker as a true warrior looks into the eyes of death and therefore escapes its holdover her. She exhibits no fear as they ride together in a carriage:
“We slowly drove – He knew not haste
And I had put away
My Labor and my leisure too,
For His Civility” (Dickinson)
Then moving from the stage of childhood, the speaker relates images of “School”. Then in the fourth stanza, he mentions the Sun as it “passed us” as the speaker leaves the Death’s carriage and stands “The Dew … quivering and chill” (Dickinson). Thus, the poet skillfully presents the cycle of life and death. Dickinson experienced a great amount of attachment towards the Civil War and her expression for the cause had been expressed through the expression of death in its spiritual and eternal nature.
Thomas Hardy and the war poems he created arose out of the “grand disillusionment” of the First World War (Pite 35). “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy points out at the irony of war. Two men born in different place by fate become enemies, who otherwise may have been friends. Hardy points out that man at war as much alike as two friends do. Had he not listed in infantry, he may not have killed the man:
“But ranged as infantry,
And staring face to face,
I shot at him as he at me,
And killed him in his place.” (Hardy)
Hardy points out to the irony of life in the poem – when two men could have been friends in any other circumstances and enjoyed a “nipperkin” fell prey to war and fought to kill each other. The third stanza of the poem shows the ambiguity in the soldier’s mind as he states that the other person was his foe: “… my foe of course he was;/ That’s clear enough; although” (Hardy). Then Hardy points out that the dead man had enlisted, just like the narrator, to find some work and “No other reason why”, clearly indicating that the other man, nor he had enlisted in the war out of mutual hatred or enmity, but rather as a means of livelihood. The last paragraph points out the irony of war – “Yes; quaint and curious war is!” – that makes one kill a person whom “You’d treat if met where any bar is”. Therefore, in the poem, war as a theme is treated with irony and the futility of the violence is hinted at. Further, the soldier who killed the other man, is mourning the death of his “foe” as he thinks that had it been any other circumstance, they would have been friends.
Randall Jarrell is one of the best-known American war poets who wrote about the Second World War (Vaughan 32). The poem by Jarrell, “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” clearly presents the anti-war imagery of the poem. The imagery drawn by Jarrell is that of sleep, animalist circumstances, and birth as the poet tries to present to the readers the nightmares of war (Bassett 20). In the poem, Jarrell presents the horrors of war. The poem begins with an ironical touch of the imagery of sleep. The imagery presents two ideas – first is a state of sleep in numb consciousness, and the second is in nightmarish consciousness. Jarrell implies that only when a mother is sleeping, could the State take away her child to war. The second imagery shows that a soldier could fight only when he is asleep. The irony presented in the poem is that life for a soldier is a “dream” while reality surfaces as a “nightmare fighter”. The animal imagery of war is presented through the theme of dehumanization. The soldier realizes that the jacket presented by the Air Force is not sufficient to keep him warm as his “wet fur froze”. The birth or immortality theme is reiterated in the poem with the third imagery wherein Jarrell shows a soldier positioned himself in his mother’s foetus:
“From my mother’s sleep I fell into the State
And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.” (Jerrell)
In this section, Jerrall presents the traumatic imagery of birth separated from the womb, and provides the image of the harsh realities war. Thus, birth for Jarrell does not signify life but death.
Conclusion
Of all the themes dealt in war poems, one recurring idea is that of death. This theme is reiterated in the three poems discussed in the essay. Thus, one common factor that unites the theme of the three poems, “Because I could not stop for Death” by Emily Dickinson, “The Man He Killed” by Thomas Hardy, and “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner” by Randall Jarrell discusses the common theme of war, death, and immortality.
Works Cited
Bassett, Patrick. “Jarrell’s The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” The Explicator (1978 ): 20-22.
Dickinson, Emily. “Because I Could Not Stop for Death.” n.d.
Hardy, Thomas. “The Man He Killed.” n.d.
Jerrell, Randell. n.d.
Jerrell, Randell. “The Death of the Ball Turret Gunner.” n.d.
Kirk, Connie Ann. Emily Dickinson: a biography. New York: Greenwood Publishing Group, 2004.
Pite, Ralph. “’Graver Things… Braver Things’: Hardy’s War Poetry.” Kendall, Tim. TheOxford handbook of British and Irish war poetry. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.
Vaughan, David K. Words to Measure a War: Nine American Poets of World War II. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2009.