Preview

Themes in Poetry: Death

Good Essays
Open Document
Open Document
761 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Themes in Poetry: Death
"Themes in Poetry: Death"

There are many frequently occurring ideas in poetry. The basic message of a poem is called a "theme." All poems have a certain theme that they revolve around, such as love, nature, life, and confusion. In different poems by different poets, the same themes correlate with each other because they all revolve around the same subject matter. Although seen through different angles and viewpoints, the same message is present and intertwined within the poems. One of the most commonly used themes in poetry of various poets is the theme of death. There are many different aspects of death that can be written about, but still, all the poems connect in the fact that they are about death.

For centuries, poets have been fascinated with death. The mystery of it is so intriguing to the writers. The uniqueness of it is that no one is sure what death is like, because the only way to find that out, obviously, is to actually die. It is an undiscovered secret that the poets can only guess and hypothesize about. Some write and wonder if their dead loved ones can still see and hear them or if they know what they are sorry for or think about their dying; such as in "Unforgotten" by Laurence Hope. "Lying alone, aside, do you ever think of me, left in the light, from the endless calm of your dawnless night?" The question of life after death always is a frequent. What does a person do after death? Are they just gone completely, or is there a spirit that continues on? Is it better to just die? These mysteries will always remain mysteries to write about. Samual Hoffenstein's poem, "The Dead They Sleep," describes death as peace and rest. "The dead they sleep a long, long sleep; the dead they rest, and their rest is deep; the dead have peace, but the living weep." Still, many poets have written about the fear of what may come after life. Oliver Mbamara writes of his fear of death. "I wait not for thy appointed day, for in it you instill thy fright and trouble

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    Black Anzac Poem Theme

    • 1335 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Poetry is a powerful and moving form of stories, and it can have many different meanings throughout the poems, they can range from happiness to sadness and anger, which help set the mood of the author and how he/she is telling it. Main themes that are present are Racism, War, and Death and how they can be paired hand in hand and help reinforce the message of the Poem.…

    • 1335 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Unfortunately the relationship between the speaker and the mother in the poem is unclear as it is stated that her mother has passed away and is in a grave, which is shown here in the following excerpt “… into the grave!” but all throughout the poem she speaks of her mother’s courage, which is shown here “courage that my mother had. Went with her, and is with her still… if instead she’d left to me. The thing she took into the grave!–That courage like a rock” which is not typically something that is said by someone who didn’t have a good relationship with the person who’d passed…

    • 108 Words
    • 1 Page
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Death causes the Bundren family to deal with change. Each character selects a unique way to cope with the family’s loss. By coping, the characters satisfy personal motives while simultaneously moving on with their lives. Coping mechanisms differ in the character’s emotional connection or “closeness” with death. Ranging from a strong emotional relationship to complete separation and dissociation, the “close” spectrum charts a character’s effectiveness in coping with death. As Faulkner addresses the idea of closeness he tests the constraints of emotional connection. Can the emotional connection become too “close,” enough to drive someone to the brink of insanity? As I lay Dying offers insight and response…

    • 2772 Words
    • 12 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Death is a constant presence in life that can not be escaped and is experienced by everyone. Dylan Thomas’s “Do not go gentle into that good night” and Emily Dickinson’s “Because I could not stop for Death” and both deal with different perspectives of death. Thomas’s poem looks at death from an external perspective of watching a person die where Dickinson’s poem looks at death through the perspective of a person experiencing death. These perspectives on death show the acceptance of death and eternity and death and disparity of life ending.…

    • 653 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In the poems of Dickinson “Because I could not stop for Death”, Housman “To an Athlete Dying Young, and Thomas “Do not go gentle into that good night” were written in different time period or era, it also seemed to refer to perceptions death; however, these poems could be referring as life experiences. Dickinson in her poem it seemed to have a connection with death the afterlife, Housman expressed acceptance towards, and in Thomas’s poem the author seemed to express desired to be alive and to fight death.…

    • 449 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Better Essays

    Ivan Ilyich Suffering

    • 1371 Words
    • 6 Pages

    Throughout history many authors have chosen to write about death and how they perceive it. These three stories…

    • 1371 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Better Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson Poem 465

    • 947 Words
    • 4 Pages

    poem is, for me, so chilling. So many of the poems insist on a life after death,…

    • 947 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Death Final Draft

    • 823 Words
    • 3 Pages

    The topic death isn’t always the typical pleasant discussion everyone is up for. Usually in a day to day conversation one is asked “How’s life?” not “How’s death?” Most people would say death is scary or feel really uncomfortable answering such a question. This really is a natural response, but when reading Walt Whitman’s poem “Song to Myself” one can see that Whitman’s view on death is that of the exact opposite of a natural response. In this very egotistical poem Walt Whitman literally celebrates himself through fifty-two glorious lines and shares his thoughts on numerous subjects; one of which is death.…

    • 823 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Gilgamesh Theme

    • 1801 Words
    • 8 Pages

    Theme is a very important part of any work, whether that work is a poem, a short story, a novel, or even a play. The theme incorporates a common idea, emotion, or item that is expressed throughout the work using different literary tools and styles. Themes allow a reader to relate to the story, learn a lesson or a moral, or understand a point that an author is trying to get across. In literature, death is a predominant theme. Death is a major part of any religion or worldview, and every group handles it differently. Death can be a celebration of afterlife for the deceased or a time of grieving for the loss of the deceased. Funerals, burials, masses, ceremonies, and cremations are all events that could take place as a final closure to the deceased's…

    • 1801 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Death is an odd thing, humans do not know what waits for them the moment their hearts stop beating, they do not know where they’ll end up going- but death is a common topic. Whether it be in movies or writing, death has made its impression on the world; especially on poet Emily Dickinson. Dickinson’s poems, “I heard a Fly buzz- when I died” and “Because I could not stop for Death” focus on a consistent theme of death and her own curiosity on what it might be like to die herself. Dickinson’s life and use of the archetypal device have a connection to helping fuel her dreary, death revolving, poetry.…

    • 511 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Emily Dickinson Diction

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages

    There is a multitude of poems written with the theme of death, be it in a positive light or negative. Some poets write poems that depict Death as a spine-chilling inevitable end, others hold respect for this natural occurrence. In Emily Dickinson’s poem “Because I could not stop for Death”, diction and personification is utilized to demonstrate the speaker’s cordial friendship with Death.…

    • 429 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    To An Athlete Dying Young

    • 581 Words
    • 3 Pages

    This theme may also be related to a common subject found in a multitude of his other poems; preoccupation with death. Simply put, you never know what is going to happen in life, or how, so make the most out of it while you…

    • 581 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    If we can imagine something similar the the human population it becomes something personal and makes it okay but if the author would have left death something dark and mysterious it wouldn’t be as personal and would be harder to except making the author push death away. The tone in this poem is blissful. The main character is dying but she doesn’t realize completely until the end. She is driving past…

    • 802 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    Since the very beginning of the appearance of literature, the theme of the death was one of the most important ones. This theme was more prominent in the tragedies than in other literary genres. In ancient Greek, for example, death was used inevitably in odes and was always presented as an obstacle that could never be overcame. In classic tragedies, it is common that the role of death occupies the central role, as in the work of Plato, Phaedo, which narrates the death of Socrates. This tragic view was altered in the West because of Christianity, which always defended the immorality of the soul. In the Middle Ages, death was less important than the idea of salvation proclaimed by the Christian view. The Renaissance, on the contrary, was a more individualistic period and the followers of this movement saw death as an end of the individual existence. One of them, for instance, was Mitchel de Montaigne, whose famous quote “that to philosophize is to learn how to die” had great influence on the soliloquies written by Shakespeare for Hamlet. In this period, death was also seen as an association with sexual love. This love and death connection could reside in a religious guilt or, as Freud suggested, in the desire for an union with the mother. This relationship of death and love is present in important works such as Romeo and Juliet. In the Romanticism, this topic became an obsession for the writers, as we can see in the poem of Percy Shelley, Adonais, an elegy about the death of John Keats. In modern literature, the greatest representation of death is in the work The death of Ivan Ilych by Tolstoy and a short story called The dead by James Joyce.…

    • 2179 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Death Poems

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages

    Throughout most of Japan’s history poetry played a large part in the process of death. A jisei is a death poem, a poem that any person on their deathbed was encouraged to write. While if you were a samurai, according to the bushido code of honor, if you wanted to die with honor and not at the hands of your enemy, if you had dishonored yourself or fellow samurai, or if your master had died you would commit the ritual of seppuku. Seppuku is a ceremony (if not committed on the battle field) in which a samurai is bathed, dressed in a white robe, and fed his favorite meal followed by being placed in a small public circle where they would take a small sword or wakizashi and place it in front of the samurai. At this time the samurai would begin to read his jisei quietly to himself. When he had finished reading his poem he would reach forward taking the wakizashi and stabbing it into his abdomen cutting left to right. At this time an appointed Kaishakunin (usually a friend or skilled swordsman) would use a katanna to behead the samauri ending his life and the seppuku ceromoney. Whether an ordinary jesei or a jisei used during a seppuku, death poems of any sort are one of the most powerful pieces of literature composed. This critical essay aims to prove that a jisei more than any other type of poem can show the reader immense amounts of insight into the authors life through the great quality of the words not the quantity.…

    • 1181 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays