16 pages • 32 minutes read
Wallace StevensThe Death of a Soldier
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1923A 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 Desensitizing Effect of Chronic Fatality
Even though war is a defining aspect of a soldier’s death, the poem does not focus on the war itself, and instead grapples with resolving a forgotten death. The speaker does not name the soldier, nor does he describe the fatal event. Instead, death is a looming predator, a breeze that blows across the earth, and the soul and the body blow away in death like the leaves blow away in autumn: “Death is absolute and without memorial, / As in a season of autumn” (Lines 7-8). These lines specifically state that death itself is without memorial; under these circumstances, death is as mundane as falling leaves. Like anything else with value, the more deaths there are, the lesser their significance. Each individual soldier’s death is a drop in the ocean compared to the 20 million deaths that resulted from World War I—but the speaker rebels against this, using irony and cynicism to convey how tragic this attitude towards death truly is.
The speaker is troubled by this feeling of apathy and helplessness against the breeze of death and is primarily concerned about the soldier not having a proper burial. He discusses the matter in an ironic tone, “He does not become a three-days personage, / Imposing his separation, / Calling for pomp” (Lines 4-6). The lines convey the injustice of the soldier’s death going unacknowledged, as the world passes by all this suffering without a momentary glance: “When the wind stops and, over the heavens, / The clouds go, nevertheless, / In their direction” (Lines 10-12). There is a calmness and quietness that occur right as the soldier dies. Up above, the clouds keep moving. The poem foregrounds the way the war desensitizes a person to death, such that death becomes essentially unremarkable. The speaker’s ironic tone, in contrast, suggests the soldier’s death does deserve “pomp” (Line 6) and “memorial” (Line 7). The poem calls attention to the way immense, chronic tragedy can engender apathy.
The Civilian’s Experience of War from a Distance
Even though the poem is about a soldier’s death, the war itself and the violence are described in the text. The speaker seems to stand at a distance from the war. Either he is not privy to those details or he is primarily concerned with the philosophical implications of a fallen soldier’s lost identity. Stevens himself remained in the United States working as an insurance lawyer during World War I, so he did not have the perspective of a soldier first-hand witnessing the carnage. Instead, Stevens saw the daily trauma of lost friends and relatives. For a civilian back home, the experience of war is anxiety and grief, always awaiting the next catastrophic report. It would therefore make sense that the speaker feels a lack of closure for the many wartime deaths. The speaker asserts that “death is expected” (Line 1) in times of war just as the seasons change every year, “as in the season of autumn” (Line 2). The lines convey that death is a given for so many soldiers every day of the war. The speaker observes the consequences of this violent war without fully reckoning with that violence because he does not personally witness it. Instead he describes death as a ceasing wind, “As in a season of autumn, / When the wind stops” (Lines 8-9). The absence of the chaos in the poem mirrors the absence of the chaos of war in the speaker’s daily life. The speaker can’t describe the gory details and instead experiences death as a mundane daily occurrence from a far away threat he cannot fully describe.
War’s Erasure of Identity and Mourning
Although the poem is cynical—particularly with the Benjamin Franklin reference, “three-days personage” (Line 4)—an irony acknowledges the gravity of the constant news of destruction. One of the most traditional ways of dealing with death is to hold a memorial ceremony, but these fallen soldiers were often denied individual celebrations of their unique lives, and the war’s fatality carried on, relentless and indifferent. There is no mourning period, no paying the proper respects to the millions who lost their lives “As in a season of autumn” (Line 2). Civilians would need a place or a ceremony to work through the trauma of all this death and destruction, but instead “Death is absolute and without memorial” (Line 7). The poem’s portrayal of death as a kind of bleak naturalism suggests a twofold tragedy: the soldier is anonymized, stripped of any sacred or immortalized identity, and his loved ones are deprived of appropriate mourning. Lines 11 and 12 underscore a cosmic indifference: “The clouds go, nevertheless, / In their direction” (Lines 11-12). The clouds seem to be only concerned with themselves, much like the war is only concerned with achieving its own ends.
Related Titles
By Wallace Stevens
