The USA English Forum Blog

This poem is about not only WWI but war in general. The guns and bombs going off are literally loud enough to wake the dead. It’ s so loud in fact that the dead think it is Judgement Day. The spirits are all reflecting on how the world is still a mess even after they have been dead for forty or five hundred years. God’s commentary shows how useless war is and goes against the classical image of a forgiving and merciful God becuase he hints he might decided to not blow the trumpet that will signal the end of the world when the dead are supposed to be raised. He also states that if he does decide to blow the trumpet that the world will be in even worse shape than it is now. Hardy shows that the world at this point was a mess and predicts at the same time that it is unlikely to get any better.

I think that is poem is displaying how pointless war really is. The author is constantly stating that it is not in God’s will for mankind to constantly be fighting with one another.The discussion of Earth and things of nature assists in the author’s comparison of all sorts of God’s creations. The author also seems to have a kind of sympathy, or rather pity, on men that have war on their minds. He laughs at them and calls them helpless. It’s a different view of war than many of the other poems. Few author’s tend to bring God’s will into the discussion of warring men.

So in “paragraph 2″ I was thinking about the part where God decides not to blow the trumpet. We, as in mankind, are almost always at war in one place or another, so I think whenever God does decide to blow the trumpet somebody is going to be messed up anyway. Now might be a good time though, because the war being fought now is a religious war so everyone should perhaps be strong in their faith.

I think that this poem is about WWI but also about what God would say about war in general. I think that this poem could still be used today to describe war. This author seems to be rather bold to bring in God the way he does and to speak of the Day of Judgement and it is especially bold of him to write that God mocks humanity. I like the risks he takes and the way he puts it all out there.

In al of my readings of WW1 poems I have noticed a common thread - That people were shaken in their foundational beliefs about God and what he would or would not do. Maybe this was because it had been a long time since a major war had taken place, or it was the shere magnitude of the war, the amount of deaths and the fact that this was the first war that used modern guns, chemical warfare, trenches, etc., or the combination of all of these elements, shook peoples basic ideas about God. The poems seem to depict a certain note of disappointment in God. Like John the Baptist, when Jesus did not seem to care and deliver him from death (good analogy at Easter).

Hardy even goes so far in this poem as to portray God as mocking and indefferent to their fear and their efforts.

I think WW1 instead of strengthening peoples faith, actually caused peoples beliefs to crumble under the reality of the horrors of war. They could not believe that God was not going to interven and deliver them “out of” their “just” war.

A lot of people today are looking for and thinking the same thing - escape!

so I am a few days behind, but I guess late is better than never. It seems like this poem is from the dead people’s perspective. War is so bad and awful that the dead were thinking it was judgment day. The mouse did not want food because it was so scared. God is also brought into the picture, telling the dead it is just war. It is like God is saying this is what men are doing-isn’t it a terrible thing? Here are the dead thinking it is judgment day, but really men are shooting and killing each other. War can be evil. So the dead go back to their graves.