19 pages • 38 minutes read
John McCraeIn Flanders Fields
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Themes
The Nobility of Sacrifice
The central theme of the poem is concerned with the nobility of sacrifice in wartime, suggesting that the war casualties who narrate the poem are fallen heroes instead of victims. While the poem does not shy away from detailing the tragedy of a premature, wartime death, such deaths are nevertheless consistently framed as both justified and admirable.
The poem’s narration is plural instead of singular, creating a chorus of fallen soldiers who speak in unison and who take ownership of both the setting and the significance of the event that the poem depicts. They claim the cemetery of Flanders Fields as “our place” (Line 3) and explicitly identify themselves as the veterans who are buried in the graves, proclaiming, “We are the Dead” (Line 6). In using this plural narration, the poem gives a direct voice to those who have sacrificed themselves in the war, presenting the narration as representative of how the fallen view their own deaths. While the dead speak of their previous lives with wistful affection, reminiscing how, “Short days ago / We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow / Loved and were loved” (Lines 6-8), the emotional weight of these lines serves to emphasize the extent of their sacrifice, suggesting that their willing surrender of all the joys of living shows the depth of their commitment to their cause. While the soldiers speak candidly of what they have lost, they never once express or hint at any regrets about their sacrifice—rather, they present a unified front in representing their sacrifices as worthwhile.
The fallen soldiers’ unshakeable belief in the nobility of their sacrifice and the worth of their cause is made even more explicit in the poem’s final stanza. The soldiers speak directly to the living, using “you” and “yours” to create a direct and seemingly personalized address to their audience: “To you from failing hands we throw / The torch; be yours to hold it high” (Lines 11-12, emphasis added). By urging the living to take up the “torch” that the fallen soldiers are attempting to pass on, the soldiers stress that the fight is ongoing. They also clearly express their desire for the living to keep fighting for the same cause instead of surrendering or even questioning that cause. Furthermore, they add that if the living “break faith with us who die” (Line 13) by refusing to fight, then the soldiers will find no peace in death: “We shall not sleep” (Line 14). In endorsing the continuation of the war, the dead emphasize that sacrificing oneself is both noble and necessary, and that the living have a duty not just to remember the dead but to fight on in their place, as their memories and projected wishes continue to influence the ethos and actions of the living.
The Peace of Nature VS Human Warfare
While the poem is centered upon a battle and the fallen veterans of the war, the war itself is only alluded to indirectly and figuratively, with no scenes of violence actually depicted. Instead, the poem uses the natural beauty and tranquility of the poem’s setting to create a striking contrast between the peacefulness of the scene and the violence of the war that has created the graveyard in Flanders Fields.
The peace of nature is embodied in the natural imagery that suffuses the poem. The poem opens and closes with the imagery of the poppies—the poem’s most important symbol (See: Symbols & Motifs)—growing on the new graves of the fallen. In the poem’s first lines, the poppies are “blow[ing] / Between the crosses” (Lines 1-2) that mark the graves, while the poem’s final lines depict the poppies “grow[ing] / In Flanders fields” (Lines 14-15). The presence of the poppies emphasizes the beauty and resilience of nature even in the cemetery, with the poppies both speaking of and reflecting the soldiers’ sacrifice (since they are blood-red) and the cyclical rhythms of the natural world, which continues to renew itself even in wartime and even in a place of death. In the poem’s first stanza, the speakers also describe the “larks” that are “bravely singing” (Line 4) in the sky above the battlefield, with the adverb “bravely” once more representing nature’s resilience in the face of human violence. Although the birdsong is “Scarce heard amidst the guns below” (Line 5), it is still there in the background—nature may be currently overshadowed by the manmade warfare raging on the ground, but it has not been completely eliminated by it.
Against this natural backdrop of renewal, beauty, and tranquility, the contrasting reality of war makes its presence felt, albeit in subtle ways. The poppies are growing on graves, with the description of the “crosses, row on row” (Line 2) revealing that the fields are a graveyard. The many “row[s]” of graves filling the field suggest a high number of casualties, hinting at the scale of the human loss. While the poppies speak of life and renewal, the poem’s narrators represent the world of the dead: “We are the Dead” (Line 6). The “guns” in Line 5 allude to the violence of the war that has ended their lives prematurely, while the “torch” (Line 12) the fallen wish to pass on to the living symbolizes the “quarrel with the foe” (Line 10) for which they sacrificed themselves. The speakers also make it clear that their fallen state has severed them from experiencing the natural world’s beauties directly: While they fondly recall how they “felt dawn [and] saw sunset glow” (Line 7) while alive, they are now deprived of such sights.
Finally, the setting of the graveyard in “Flanders fields” itself is highly significant. The notion of “fields” conjures up a rural space of greenery and peace, while the presence of the graveyard within these “fields” once more draws a contrast between the natural world and the manmade sphere of war that has intruded into it. Although the fallen have now been committed to the ground and are permanently a part of nature, they remain concerned with the ongoing fight, the “quarrel with the foe” (Line 10). The speakers’ commitment to their military cause endures even in death, suggesting that the peace of nature—like the larks’ birdsong in the first stanza—is ever-present but still tantalizingly just out of reach.
The Importance of Remembrance
“In Flanders Fields” is not just about commemorating the fallen from a particular battle. Instead, the poem explores the theme of remembrance in a way that transforms remembrance into an active force, one that creates ongoing ties of obligation between the living and the dead.
The cemetery described in Flanders Fields is a physical act of remembrance of the dead. The dead have been carefully collected and buried by their comrades, with the “crosses, row on row” (Line 2) that “mark [their] place” (Line 3) saving the fallen from the anonymity of death. The fields have been transformed into a memorial, granting the veterans an honorable burial while standing as a lasting reminder of the specific battle that claimed their lives. The poem, however, does not simply speak of the fallen as participants in a historical event that is worthy of passive remembrance alone—instead, the poem’s speakers urge the living to use remembrance as inspiration for actively continuing the fight. The speakers “throw” the “torch” from their “failing hands” (Lines 11-12) to the living, urging the living to “hold it [the torch] high” (Line 12) by “Tak[ing] up [their] quarrel with the foe” (Line 10) and fighting on for the same cause. The speakers thereby create a connection between the dead and the living, explicitly exhorting the living to follow in their footsteps by also serving as soldiers.
The speakers also represent the living’s active remembrance as a form of “faith” (Line 13) that must not be broken, as though it were a sacred vow or promise that the living must make (and keep) to the dead. The dead represent themselves as still affected by the actions of the living, warning, “If ye break faith with us who die / We shall not sleep” (Lines 13-14, emphasis added), with the phrase “We shall not sleep” suggesting that the fallen can only rest in peace if their cause continues to be upheld by the living. Thus, remembrance is not just an act of memory but an obligation for active service on the part of the living, suggesting that the living and the dead are forever intertwined through both remembrance and duty.
