\'Flanders Fields\' essay PDF

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To what extent does McRae's poem, 'In Flanders Fields’ exemplify how the war was still perceived as a romantic, patriotic endeavour in 1917? Write a written response analysing the poem and exploring the context of the poem and its relation to the rest of the poems in this section of Up the Line to Death. Please use the assessment criteria attached to self-assess your essay. Highlight the band which best fits your essay. The poem ‘In Flanders Fields’, written by John Mc Rae in May of 1917, at first glance may seem to be quite traditionally romantic and patriotic, having been used in propaganda efforts and appeals to recruit soldiers that could fight in the war. As keeping the wartime morale was crucial to a country’s war efforts, many poets and authors were not advised to publish, imprisoned, or put into mental institutions such as Craiglockhart, from this it can be concluded that McRae’s poem had strong notes patriotism and to some extent romanticised the war. Although, despite many accounts of how the poem came to be written, one element stays constant in them – the death of McRae’s close friend Alexis Helmer. It is thought that this had a very potent effect on him, giving the poem, which is essentially about death, a much darker and solemn undertone. McRae uses the image and presence of nature to show how it intertwines and exists during war- a force that destroys it. The first line of stanza 1 introduces the poppy as a key symbol of the poem. Poppies are seen to be a traditional symbol of rest and death, but here, they also demonstrate the resilience of the natural word and how it continues to produce new life, no matter the circumstances. The flowers themselves, then, are the poem's first hint that life and death are intimately connected and perhaps even inseparable. The contrasting image of the ‘crosses’ reinforces this idea; the speakers use the repetition of ‘row on row’ to create the sense that the graves here are endless, just like the flowers. Yet, it could also be a tribute to the routine that the soldiers had, as the crosses ‘That mark our place’ are placed ‘row on row’, a manner that may allude to how they would have marched out into war or had war drills where they had to stand in a certain formation, a procedure in which they were not individuals, rather a mass that had to coordinate their movements and thoughts for a greater good, as seen in the use of the collective pronoun ‘our’. This may have been McRae’s attempt at conveying to the reader the unnaturalness and invasiveness of the war, which will haunt the soldiers long past their deaths. Yet, the image of the poppy defies this, as it grows wherever it wants, and by it being close to the graves, yet in no particular pattern or place relative to it, it goes beyond the constraints which the cross has, and is free to be as it wants. The flowers can be seen to give new life to the dead, as if from their deaths, something better and worthwhile may come, which in itself, is quite a romantic and patriotic note to the poem. Additionally, the enjambment at the end of line 1 suggests a very close link between the two images, suggesting that the forces of life and death work together to create overall balance in the natural world. The image of death as a collective experience is felt throughout the whole poem, but is felt most in the second stanza, which begins with “We are the Dead.” The length of the statement can be seen to be indicative of the shortness of the soldiers' lives, and how their deaths are a matter of fact, a tragic, yet patriotic sacrifice for their country. Furthermore, the capitalisation of the collective pronoun ‘We’ and the adjective ‘Dead’, as they are both indicative of the soldiers’ warped sense of identity, and of the how collectivism had turned death into a romantic sacrifice. Moreover, this short, yet declarative sentence confronts the reader with the harsh reality of the loss of life. The vivid descriptions of what the speakers have sacrificed in the name of war, noting in lines ‘We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow’ and ‘Loved and were loved’ signifying what they have given up even such essential things as sunrises and love. By bringing the reader into the soldiers’ personal experience in this way, the poet creates a sense that war is communal, and that everyone in a

society at war shares the soldiers’ fate in some sense, and will see the same ‘sunset glow’, signifying the end of the cycle of life. Being the smallest stanza out of the three, it suggests that the sadness bought on by death is temporary, but necessary for the greater good, as it not only connects the other two, but gives the poem a human voice. Furthermore, the phrase ‘Loved and were Loved’ has strong connotations with the theme of ‘carpe diem’, commonly found in traditional romantic poetry, therefore turning war into a romantic pursuit. Although, by using the collective pronouns ‘We’ and ‘Our’ that so often appear throughout the poem, McRae may suggest that even those who are still physically alive, are no longer living as who they used to be, with ‘Dead’ being their new identity, or rather their old selves being lost and substituted for a new, collective ‘We’. The war left many soldiers, contrary to what traditional romantic and patriotic poetry led people to believe, with severe post-traumatic stress disorder, among many other things. There was a prominent divide between those who had fought, and those who were in power, meaning that most poems that were used as propaganda were not an accurate depiction of how soldiers really felt. McRae worked as a war-time surgeon, meaning that he saw and experienced the last moments of many of his patients, who had died seemingly at the hands of their government. The effects of the war on the population became a prominent theme of discussion in post-war literature, as they bring a new perspective to what war really entails, as well as highlighting the existence of the so-called ‘lost generation’, coined by Gertrude Stein in 1926, almost 10 years after the release of ‘In Flanders Fields’, and icons of which were writers such as Ernest Hemingway, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Erich Maria Remarque, Richard Aldington, John Dos Pasos, Thornton Wilder and the poet Thomas Eliot. Despite so little time going by since the end of the First World War, people were able to discuss the war with a freedom that they had previously not had, and the effects of the sudden transfer from combat to peace could be seen quite clearly in the soldiers who had returned from the war. The term ‘Lost Generation’ referred to the lack of purpose or drive resulting from the horrific disillusionment felt by those who grew up and lived through the war and were then in their twenties and thirties. Having seen pointless death on such a huge scale, many lost faiths in traditional values like courage, patriotism, and masculinity. Some in turn became aimless, reckless, unable to believe in abstract ideals. Through this, although the term not yet existing in 1917, by using simple, nostalgic associations such as ‘We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow’ and ‘Loved and were loved’, McRae shows the reader how little the soldiers needed for happiness, and how the immaterial had taken forefront in their minds, showing readers the subjective in nature our priorities are. In the third and final stanza of the poem, McRae seems to increase the intensity and dichotomy between patriotism and criticism towards the war. As well as making the point of taking responsibility for the war explicit, as the poet asks the reader to ‘take up [their] quarrel with the foe’ and state that they ‘shall not sleep’ if the reader doesn’t carry on the fight that they began. Again, it seems crucially important to the speakers that the battle be waged by everyone, not just soldiers. This could seem to be incredibly patriotic, as so long the war is not being actively fought, ‘breaking faith’ with the fallen soldiers who have sacrificed their lives for the safety and victory of their mother land, ‘they shall not sleep’. Yet, this stanza could also be seen as a cry of lamentation for the soldiers who have died, with only the hope that their death is not in vain. Even the poem’s meter breaks down at the words ‘In Flanders Fields’ in lines 9 and 15, departing from the steady iambic tetrameter of the other lines. It seems, then, that the speakers may actually see this battlefield as the site of a breakdown in the world’s natural order. Considering this second interpretation, the poet’s intention may be to try to convince the readers that war in fact is an unforgivable atrocity, which is very

different to the surface level romantic patriotism that it displays at first glance. The responsibility symbolised by a ‘torch’, in this case, then has the potential to bear a much more complicated meaning than to just keep running with the ‘torch’ of war from generation to generation, like an Olympics of death and sacrifice. In this interpretation the fire is mercilessly burning people down but may also be the McRae’s attempt to shed some light on the horrors of war, so that each generation may see ‘the foe’ not as another country, but the tragic losses suffered by the soldiers and their families. The last line of the stanza, ‘We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders Fields’ is almost like a question that has been left open, as we as readers will never fully know McRae’s true feelings towards the war, and whether he wanted to fight it or not. But one thing that is made clear, is that the reader holds in their hands the responsibility for their future; they have the possibility and knowledge to decide. The plea to ‘ hold the torch high’ demands that the readers hold themselves accountable for complicity and responsibility in the war. This is irregardless of any possible interpretation that a reader can have of the last stanza, an what side of the ‘quarrel’ they chose....