Gone Again Edward Thomas free essay sample

He personifies life, and by life he means people, because it’s important to being happy in life. And another   reason for making life so important would be because how lonesome and horrid war can be and from seeing so much death. Imagery – â€Å"Outmoded, dignified, Dark and untenanted†, The empty house is described by these description but once again is linked to war. From being in a trench so long, war gets â€Å"outmoded†, War is often glorified or â€Å"dignified†, all war is â€Å"Dark†, and the longer war goes on the more vacant or â€Å"untenanted† it becomes. But Edward Thomas could quite possibly be describing himself and how he is feels from being in the war. Allusion – â€Å"Blenheim oranges† this is an allusion to tell of the location in the poem, It was found at Woodstock, Oxfordshire near Blenheim in England. And at that time, England was involved in World War 1. Repetition – â€Å"Gone, gone away†, the narrator repeats this phrase and it shows that he is lamenting about how his life has passed him by because of war but also because the man he was before the war is gone too. Pun – â€Å"Not one pane to reflect the sun†, by not one pane he is mean that he has no more pain because he feels nothing and nothing could hurt him more than the war. Attitude: Elegiac is eminent throughout the poem. The narrator can be seen as an old man who has lost his youth to the war, who is sad because all his friends are dead, who is empty on the outside and has no â€Å"panes† to reflect to outside world but also no pain because there is nothing left in the world that can harm him. He is alone and knows this.. Shift: In the first through 5th paragraphs, the narrator is lamenting over the past and the loss of his friends, and then the last two paragraphs shift to more of sorrow because of how empty he is and there is nothing left for him. Title: The title mean that his life, friends, happiness and everything that he was has Gone, Gone Away. Theme: War can take everything away from a man and leave him an empty shell but even though there may be nothing left, life is still something to be thankful for. Critical Perspective: In â€Å"Gone, Gone Again,† the narrator is describing the effects the war had on him. The lines â€Å"The Blenheim oranges/ Fall grubby from the trees/ As when I was young,† correspond with Thomas’ youth in that he lived in the countryside at a place called Elses Farm before enrolling in the army. Thomas spent three years of his life in the war; three years of which he informs the readers were very monotonous and solitary through the lines â€Å"Gone gone again/ May, June, July,/ And August gone/ Again gone by. † The net two lines â€Å"With grass growing instead/ Of the footsteps of life,† symbolize how the leaders think of the soldiers as units rather than live people. The narrator then says â€Å"I am something like that;/ Only I am not dead,/ Still breathing and interested/ In the house that is not dark. † Once again, he is trying to prove to the reader and society that he is more than just a soldier. Indirectly, he might also be trying to prove this to himself as well. At first glance Edward Thomas poem, Gone, Gone Again, seems to be about an old man reminiscing about his life and past experiences. It is even possible that the old man is looking back on his life with burdensome feelings of regret and sorrow. What could possibly have happened in this mans life to cause so much sorrow and despair ? The first few paragraphs of this poem describe the loss of time; Thomas gives the sense that a significant portion of time has gone by, and that it has passed by quickly. The repetition of the words gone and again help illustrate the narrators feeling of how time has just slipped by. Also, the summer months of May, June, July, and August only occur once every year, so by pairing these months with the phrase gone, gone again Thomas emphasizes that a whole year has come and gone more than once. This organization helps the reader to understand that the narrator is looking back over a period of several years, maybe even several decades. It is typical to think of time moving quickly when one looks back from the present; consider the fact that on New Years Eve we often perceive the year as having flown by, but in April the year seems like it will never end, that it is proceeding at a snails pace. Also, children often perceive time as passing much more slowly than adults do. These clues reveal that the narrator of the poem is an elderly person; he is looking back on his life that seems like it went by very quickly and the tone of the poem reveals that he has little to look forward to in the future like most young people do. Further, the second paragraph conveys that the years that have passed were unimportant because the old man describes them as not memorable. The beginning of this poem foreshadows the loneliness, apathy, and sadness seen in the rest of the poem as the the old man describes the water flowing by the empty piers. One can already see in the first few paragraphs that part of the reason the narrator is sorrowful is because his life has flown by with little to show for it, and he has little hope for the future because of his advanced age. In the next few paragraphs, the old mans sadness is more obvious than at the beginning of the poem. The old man talks about how the Blenheim oranges are ripe at this time of year and falling from the trees. Blenheim oranges are actually a popular type of apple that are preferred for cooking as well as eating. Blenheim oranges are also very pretty; they are usually bright green with streaks of red-orange on the peel (Keepers Nursery 1). By the time the apples are ripe enough to fall from the trees, they have gained their full flavor and are optimal for eating. However, the old man says that: The Blenheim oranges / Fall grubby from the trees There is something about this location or this type of tree that reminds the old man about events from his past; these events obviously greatly sadden the old man because he perceives that the usually beautiful apples are now only grubby. The old man says:The Blenheim orangesFall grubby from the treesAs when I was youngAnd when the lost one was hereAnd when the war beganTo turn the young men to dung. Clearly, the old man is sad because the lost one is no longer with him; perhaps the Blenheim orange tree reminds the old man of the happier times he spent with the lost one. After reading these lines, one cannot help but wonder who is the lost one? It is possible that the lost one was a friend from the old mans youth that was killed in the war. Perhaps the old man and his friend joined the war together, but only the old man returned alive while his friend was one of the young men [turned] to dung. With the loss of his friend in the context of the war, perhaps the Blenheim oranges falling may remind the old man of gunfire or of soldiers falling, thus explaining why he feels that they are grubby. Maybe something similar to the size of apples was what killed his friend, so the falling apples recall one of the saddest events in the old mans life. Regardless of the old mans associations with the Blenheim oranges, one can see that the heaviness he carries with him now is largely from his experiences in the war and the loss of his friend(s ). The remainder of the poem describes an old, abandoned house and the similarities the old man feels to such a house. The house is in disrepair; it is dark and untenanted / With grass growing instead / Of the footsteps of life. The house is not only empty, but nobody wants it anymore and it has become rundown. Conceivably, the old mans friends are all gone, gone again like the tenants of the old house. The loss of his friends (by the war or otherwise) has left the old man rundown emotionally like the house is rundown physically. The next lines of the poem say: In its beds have lain / Youth, love, age, and pain. The past tense of these lines illustrates the fact that this was how the house used to be, but it isnt like that anymore. Similarly, the old man is a remnant of what he once was, but has since given up on himself and stopped caring about anything. His spirit has been broken by the war and all of his friends are gone, leaving him lonely and apathetic. Perhaps he may have felt confident and joyful before all this time passed, but now he feels unimportant and ignored, just like the house. The old man even admits the similarities he feels to this scrap of a house when he says I am something like that in the seventh and eight paragraphs. In fact, the seventh paragraph is the only part of the whole poem where a glimmer of hope is seen in the old mans attitude. The old man says that, yes, he is similar to this old house, Only [he is] not dead, / Still breathing and interested / In the house that is not dark. It could be that in this case, the old man is admitting to himself that his deceased friends are more like the house than he is; the friends are all used up like the house, but the old man is not dead yet and still has a desire to be happy. However, maybe the old man feels that his friends are lucky to be dead because they have no longing to be young and carefree again like he wishes to be. It seems as though the old man realizes the ambiguity of what he said in the seventh paragraph, because in the final paragraph he realizes that it was probably silly for him to entertain such unrealistic thoughts. The old man again admits that he is like the windowless house with nothing left to reflect the joys of the world. The old man realizes that man can no longer do him any harm; there is no joy left in life because all of his friends are dead and he is all alone. He has reached the depths of despair. At the conclusion of this poem, one may wonder what the significance is of the broken windows. If the house were just old and rundown, but still had the windows in tact, would the old man end his thoughts on a positive note? Would the windows signify that there was, in fact, hope for the old mans life? Truthfully, windows in a home do not offer very much physical protection, but perhaps the presence of windows in this old house would have helped the man begin to recover from the emotional damage he has experienced so far.