Category: An Irish Airman Foresees His Death

When it comes to modern writers, there are many representative modern writers, such as Thomas Stearns Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Atwood, and Martin Amis. In their novels, readers are asked to acknowledge their inherent difficulties and admit their current situation. Western modernity literature is part of the capitalist culture of the 20th century. It does not advocate that readers use works to reproduce life, but advocates starting from people’s psychological feelings, to express the oppression and distortion of life to people. Modern writers also ask readers not only to be tolerant, but also to accept discomfort, and how to turn that discomfort into a more comfortable feeling. They direct their readers in unpleasant art, and they do not seek to please their readers, but to wake them up from their romantic dreams to face the real situation and see what they really are.

Modernity literature has the characteristics of anti-rationalism and irrationalism. On the one hand, modern writers understand things by opposing reason and advocate a kind of intuition and using unorthodox characters. On the other hand, modern writers pay attention to show the phenomenon of human alienation and dehumanization to readers through their works. Based on these aspects, the writers actually want to reflect the display and the society, to attack the society from the perspective of the individual and the perspective of the outsider, to give people a vague impression and at the same time to deny the society. For example, in “The Waste Land”, the representative work of the later symbolist writer T. S. Eliot, he created a decadent world with spiritual exhaustion and broken civilization, which showed the emotion and inner disorder of a generation. In “Burial of the Dead” sentences like ‘Only there is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock)’ and ‘Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! You! hypocrite lecteur! – mon semblable, – mon frère!’, through a series of images, Eliot reduced the western world to a ‘wasteland’, showing its lifeless symbolic significance. On the one hand, through image superposition and symbolism, the author expresses the inner abstract emotional experience and wants to convey to the readers that the world is indifferent to human beings and life is meaningless and boring. The author shows the readers the true state of a world without divinity, in which western civilization has fallen into total depravity and darkness pervades the world. On the other hand, he tried to wake up readers from the romantic dream to know the real self and admit the real situation in their lives. People and things in the real world are cruel. When you brave to face your life, you can survive in such an indifferent world.

Modern writers focus on using alienation to describe society as absurd, hostile and uncontrollable. The world is so full of thorns that one can hardly move. In most of the works, the relationship between people has become increasingly estranged, and people become indifferent and hostile. In Yeats’s “Sailing to Byzantium”, for example, an aging man finds himself in an unreal world. A sentence like ‘Monuments of its own magnificence; And therefore I have sailed the seas and come to the holy city of Byzantium’, it shows that the old man is disgusted with his dying body, and also implies that he will leave this earth and go to the holy heaven. It also shows the reader the ancient pain and the longing for eternal life. And in his other work “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death”, it shows the world is indifferent and even though people know what will happen in the future but they can do nothing to it just like the airman cannot do anything to his foreseeing death.

From another modernity writer Margaret Atwood’s work “Oryx and Crake”, a character snowman has a real internal conflict. He has changed his name from Jimmy as a child to a snowman, who cannot get rid of the memories, but he wanted to. Crake tried to kill everyone with a virus and created a new species “Crakers” to show the indifference of him.

Another work of Cormac McCarthy “No Country For Old Men” also shows readers the indifference and brutality of the world. Chigurh and Crake are doing the same thing. They both speak for the universe and do not care about people’s death anymore. Both are indifferent and they think there is no difference between humans and other species. Based on the above, modern writers want to persuade readers to face their reality and accept the truth of our situation by describing the real world ruthlessly, like McCarthy said “You should admit your situation.

There would be more dignity in it.” Martin Amis’s work “Night Train” also shows that the modern writer’s work is not designed to please readers, but to warn them how to face the world’s unkindness and accept reality. The author has no answer as to why Jennifer committed suicide. Suicide is a difficult thing to understand for a woman who doesn’t have any unhappiness in her life. Through this nihilistic hypothesis, the author wants to remind people to stay away from the poison of the merciless and indifferent world, face life correctly and find the value of life again.

In short, the relationship between modernist writers and readers is close and warm and does not hurt the fragile human beings like the indifference of the world to people. The purposes of the modern writers are not intended to please the readers, not to make them like their works, not to praise them, but to warn human beings to face their own life and acknowledge their current situation.

In the short works, ‘The Animal Mummies Wish to Thank the Following’ by Ramona Ausubel, ‘The Zombies’ by Donald Barthelme, ‘Bog Girl’ by Karen Russell, and ‘An Irish Airman foresees his Death’ by William Butler Yeats, the authors delve into themes of death and the division of power. These pieces expose deep seated human tendencies which can be examined through a Marxism lens of theory and some Colonialism themes as well, as the two are often closely linked. While Marxism looks at the divide between those with urgency, and those without it, Colonialism often deeper explores the reasons behind why certain people have the resources to acquire said urgency over others. Simply put, this is an examination of the haves and have-nots in selected short works of literature in order to deeper view the works and human nature.

In ‘The Animal Mummies Wish to Thank the Following’, Ausubel imagines the inner thoughts and feelings of mummified animals that were forcibly taken from their Egyptian pyramids. These include a sarcastic remark in which they thank “the British colonial government, without whom the animal mummies might still be at rest, deep in granite tombs, cool and silent” (Ausubel, 194). This mention of colonialism shows how the consequences of colonialism are made clear even among these animal mummies.

‘The Animal Mummies Wish to Thank the Following’ effectively works as an annotated list, in which the mummified creatures at the museum offer thankfulness to the people who keep them tethered to the world. “If the cat mummies must be grateful for one thing,” Ausubel explains, “it is that they are forever-cats and not forever-rodents. The cat mummies can think of nothing so embarrassing as that — the great gift a vole gets is, finally, to die” (Ausubel, 196). Even in the afterlife, the hierarchies remain. The cats still hold power and superiority over the rodents, showing the social conflict and class relations that remain prevalent between the two species.

Ausubel describes some of the mummies as being so dead that they no longer possess bodies, dubbing them “nothing mummies”. These “nothing mummies are filled with prayers written on slips of papyrus, organs of faith. If the scientists came and cut them open, the nothing mummies wonder: Would the little piece of hieroglyphed papyrus rolling out be any less beautiful than the dried raisin of a heart? Aren’t they not only the container but the prayer itself?” (Ausubel, 199). The nothing mummies in this situation have no agency or control over their “lives”. They are alienated from other mummies that have identities and they are put on display to entertain the living.

In ‘The Zombies’, Barthelme makes great use of the list to get his point across. He makes substantial inventories with his list-making which is often seen as sloppy, or lazy, writing, but in Barthelme’s hands the list functions more like an elision; he makes staggering masses of nouns, evidence to the strength of juxtaposition. His lists feel noetic in the way that they bounce from idea to idea as he continues to dump more and more information onto the reader. In this piece, he uses a list to describe the many foods in a breakfast when “A zombie advances toward a group of thin blooming daughters and describes, with many motions of his hands and arms, the breakfasts they may expect in a zombie home” (Barthelme, 2).

The list that follows is the ideal vehicle for the situation. It’s an efficient tool for comedic purposes, but it also pulls back the curtain, letting the reader share in the wry humour that Barthelme likely felt as he wrote it. Humans eat so many things that the human experience has come to encompass “rice cakes” and “fried liver”, to say nothing of courtship rituals centered on ingestion. The zombies in this situation are doing whatever they can to impress the women, hoping desperately that their offers for breakfast are satisfactory enough to please the girls. This situation clearly depicts the the two parties of have and have-nots; the zombies are working hard to prove that the myths that accompany their social class are false, and that they eat more than just brains.

‘Bog Girl’ approaches the topic of power divide from a different approach. On a remote island in northern Europe, a 15-year-old turf cutter, Cillian, falls in love with a 2,000-year-old girl that he’s found in a peat bog. Believing himself to be the girl’s rescuer, Cillian brings her home and cares for her in what he considers to be a perfect romance until an unexpected gesture topples everything he thought he knew about her. The boy gave himself the power and agency in the relationship that he concocts, and he is happy until the bog girl tries to take some agency for herself. This story illustrates how the unknowable is present within everyone, as no one can ever fully know what it’s like to be in someone else’s shoes.

In ‘An Irish Airman foresees his Death’, the speaker, an Irish airman fighting in World War I, knows that he is doomed to die fighting among the clouds. He declares that he does not hate those that he fights against, nor love those that he fights to protect. His country is “Kiltartan’s Cross,” his countrymen “Kiltartan’s poor.” He says that no outcome in the war will make their lives worse or better than how they were before the war began. The Irish airman explains that his choice to fight was not influenced by any law or sense of duty, nor because of “public men” or “cheering crowds.” Rather, “a lonely impulse of delight” drove him to “this tumult in the clouds.” He says that he weighed his life in his mind and, in doing so, found that “The years to come seemed waste of breath,/A waste of breath the years behind.”

The Irish pilot is fighting for Britain in the First World War and he predicts that he will die in the war, but he feels no sense of patriotic duty towards Britain, the country that he fights for. He is fighting for Britain because, although he is Irish, Ireland was under British rule during the time of the war. The airman, therefore, identifies as an Irish patriot, rather than a British one. In doing so, he is effectively resisting against the dominant culture.

The author uses first person to portray the airman as he prepares to go into war in the sky. In the first quatrain, Yeats depicts the airman’s conflicted emotions that he harbours about his place fighting in the war. Even with these mixed feelings, however, he is sure that he will die in this adventure. Not only is death from enemy contact possible, but he also faces the chances of a mechanical error that multiplies the dangers that he faces in the air.

This ambiguity continues as the airman realizes the pointlessness of his participation in the war. He realizes that no matter the outcome of his own combat, it will not affect the overall war effort. The airman also acknowledges that the outcome of the war will not affect the lives of the Irish peasants that he identifies with.

In the last line of the final quatrain, the author leaves the first person when he says, “In balance with this life, this death.” Yeats’s shift to “this” life and “this” death as opposed to using “my” universalizes the airman’s experiences, going beyond the politics of World War I and highlighting the futility of all wars and any waste of human life. In the final line, Yeats shows how anyone can be in the same shoes as the Irish airman.

Throughout these short pieces of literature, a Marxist lens of theory can be applied to show the social conflicts and class relations that are present within them. A Colonial theme can also be seen in some of the texts as it can often be attributed to why a divide between social classes is present. The haves and have-nots of the world are represented in these stories as privileged people, who have agency, and have access to resources that those without agency or privilege lack. In Marxism, agency comes from wealth, education, and health; a focus on obtaining these resources is what leads to materialism. Marxism focuses on class divisions and how they lead to struggle, how certain jobs award levels of varying status, how those with agency can obtain what they need or want, and how people are placed in competition in a fight for resources.

Having studied Yeats’ poetry, I agree completely with the statement informing us that it was the contrast between the “real world” in which he (Yeats) lived and his own vision of what an “ideal world’ should resemble which is the definition of his work, as well as the motivation for a significant amount of his writings in his later life: generally more cynical works with a clear sense of loss compared to the starry-eyed romantic idealism of his earlier works of poetry. I have formed this viewpoint in agreement with the statement upon studying Yeats’ poems ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, ‘September 1913’, ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, ‘An Irish Airman Foresees his Death’, ‘Easter 1916’, and ‘Sailing to Byzantium’.

At the time Yeats was writing ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’, it is quite clear that he was struggling with coming to terms with the grim realities of life, that his life in the city is loud and restless, with “the pavements grey” serving only to trigger his fanciful, though ultimately foolish daydreaming of the pastoral utopia that is Innisfree, versus the dull, drab urban world “the pavements grey” serve to represent. Yeats yearns to escape the trivialities of everyday life, to “arise and go now, and go to Innisfree”.

Yeats’ vision of Innisfree is one of a place of respite: serving as an escape from the clutches of his true reality. He paints for us, those reading, a most-wonderful picture of his most-deeply-desired lifestyle; there is a musical quality to the island where “the cricket sings” which contrasts hugely to the barely notable “roadway” on which Yeats finds himself. The natural, colourful beauty of Innisfree at noon, which Yeats describes as a “purple glow”, allows us to be able to relate to his struggle with the true “grey” surrounding his environment. While Yeats is insistent that his departure shall be imminent, his words ring slightly hollow. His fantasy is too idealistic even by typical standards of fantasy, and we are left in a state of belief that he will forever continue to hear the island’s calling “in the deep heart’s core”, and keep it a fantasy.

In his poem ‘September 1913’ Yeats (similarly to in ‘The Lake Isle of Innisfree’) displays a sense of pure disgust for the society of the world in which he finds himself. At the opening of the poem, he sarcastically remarks that this so-called ‘society’ has “come to sense”; they now understand their purpose in life is merely “to pray and save”, doing both for purely selfish reasons and out of fear of what might happen otherwise. Yeats finds this idea disturbing — he cannot believe that it was “for this Edward Fitzgerald died”, along with his fellow men “of a different kind”. It is clear that Yeats views their deaths as representative of the end of an era; Fitzgerald, his men and the ideals they themselves held were sadly all that Yeats’s idealised view of Ireland ever amounted to.

Yeats implies that everyone should think in the same manner as himself and these deceased men, expressing remorse that said men had died in search of the possibility of a better future for “Romantic Ireland” (at the time ‘the Irish Free State’), only for it to amount to people adding a mere “half pence to the pence”. Reality has become unattractive to Yeats, as he is left having to deal with the knowledge that his dream for a better tomorrow is “dead and gone”, “with O’Leary in the grav”.

However, with ‘The Wild Swans at Coole’, Yeats’ interest in societal values has subsided somewhat in favour of his struggle with the concept of mortality: the gradual but inevitable approaching of death. Observing and counting a group of swans for the second time since his youth, “The nineteenth Autumn has come upon” himself since that time, Yeats ponders the absentminded bliss and beautiful simplicity of their lives, how they (from his perspective) seem to live forever, looking exactly as he remembers them, while he himself will continue age and die. He describes these “brilliant creatures” as “unwearied still” by the troubles of life, though it is likely that the swans are not the same ones as from his youth. Regardless, “all’s changed” for Yeats, while the swans’ “hearts have not grown old” (from his perspective) and they are truly free to pursue whatever they may in the future, while Yeats himself clings to the past, insisting that his most fruitful days are behind him.

His fantasy of the swans serves only to remind him of his own mortality, and as a result he begins to fear that the swans will leave him behind. He is aware of the reality of the situation; it is indeed possible that he will “awake some day to find they have flown away”.

Another poem that made me examine my own history was ‘Easter 1916’. This rather cleverly-structured poem was rather demanding both in terms of subject matter and style. It has four stanzas, two containing sixteen lines and two containing twenty-four lines thus, commemorating the date of the Easter Rising – the 24th of April, 1916. The poem is an interesting retrospective take on the Easter Rising, Yeats admitting how he had had incorrect assumptions about those involved and his subsequent guilt over his feelings of scepticism. The first two stanzas detail said initial scepticism about the Rising’s participants, how he had been “certain they and I But lived where motley was worn”. The term “motley” refers to a pageant or the clothes of a clown, indicating Yeats’ intention to say that he had not taken the Rising’s participants remotely seriously and believed that they were merely outwardly passionate, that their true nature was more ‘clownish’ than anything else. The poem’s theme revolves around the paradox “All changed, changed utterly: A terrible beauty is born.” I found this difficult to unravel at first but after further thought, I realised that the poet’s views had “changed utterly”. The passion and altruism of the martyrs was beautiful but it also caused much pain and suffering for others.

This is why he considers it a “terrible beauty”. I had not considered this concept before or the fact that those with a patriotic nature had to be completely single-minded. I was fascinated with the imagery Yeats used to describe this: “Hearts with one purpose alone Through summer and winter seem Enchanted to a stone”. Yeats reinforces this idea by providing images of movement and change as “The stone’s in the midst of it all”. The poem provoked me to think about the nature of fanaticism and like Yeats, I hold an admiration for the men and women of the rising, whilst still acknowledging the “terrible beauty” it caused.

“My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor.” Despite the title of this poem being ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, there is little sense of patriotism at the national level typically displayed by Yeats in his poetry. Rather, his allegiance is to Kiltartan Cross, a small parish in the Co. Galway in Ireland, a remote part of the British “empire” which is unlikely to be greatly troubled by the concurrently-occurring First World War and then-upcoming War for Independence: this Irish airman’s ‘sacrifice’ matters next to nothing to the “poor” citizens of Kiltartan Cross, who are likely to remain poor no matter the victors of either war. The concept that soldiers in the First World War had fought “for King and Country” indeed made for good propaganda, and was undoubtedly true in the case of many English poet, but it wasn’t true of everyone, and many were motivated by more regional or local pressures: fighting to protect their loved ones, or to avoid the scorn of their neighbours incurred by not fighting. And this was even truer, Yeats seems to suggest, of Irish fighters, who had less invested in England or Britain than, say, a young man from Shropshire or the Home Counties. The Irish airman described in Yeats’ poem fights out of a sense of duty rather than national pride, whether it is British or Irish doesn’t matter in the slightest. Therefore, Yeats gives insight into the thoughts and feelings of an Irish Airman, perhaps minutes before his death. These words are so simple, and yet so profound, resonating across generations with all who have felt the seemingly senseless tragedy of war; they construct for those reading a pathway into the heart, mind and soul of one who gave his life for a cause which was not his own. With this poem, Yeats gives a voice to an Irishman in his dying moments, speaking for him with a sense of having known the man personally, sharing his feelings and belief about the war. An Irishman himself, Yeats knew those to have fought having fought a war not their own, having fought another’s enemy and defended another’s homeland. The understanding of these feelings gives Yeats’ the authority to speak from his friend’s point of view, allowing the readers into the thoughts of a man about to die for a country not his own. In the final lines of ‘An Irish Airman Foresees His Death’, the speaker reveals his thoughts in the final moments of his life to be of his initial reasons for joining the war effort and risking his life in the first place. Although having previously cited impulse as his reasoning behind joining the Air Force, these lines reveal the true source of the deep-rooted impulse to risk his life, that after having thought about everything, and “balanced all”, he had come to the conclusion that the years behind him and the years in front of him were but a “waste of breath”, i.e. that everything is meaningless, and that if his life is destined to be short anyway, and that everything seems without meaning, then dying for such a cause would give his life more meaning than it had before. For this reason, he decides to risk his life and join in the fight. Although he does not love the people he is protecting, nor hate those he is fighting, he does want his life to have a purpose. Therefore, he risks having a shorter life in order to have a more meaningful life. This is the Airman’s way of embracing his death in his final moments.

Yeats struggles with his mortality once again in ‘Sailing to Byzantium’. Again, the reality of the situation he finds himself in is unappealing. He has become aware that Ireland “is no country for old men”, but has instead fallen into the hands of the young, who serve only to “neglect” its various forms of “unageing intellect”. As a result, Yeats retreats to his ultimate fantasy, his ideal world; Byzantium. In this seeming utopia, Yeats sees immortality in the form of the appreciation of art. He wishes to take on the form “of hammered gold”, as he sees his body as nothing but “a dying animal” to which his heart and soul are “fastened”. The image of Byzantium is almost the opposite of the world in which he currently lives, and so there is a powerful contrast between the two in the poem. He now views Ireland as a place to die, while Byzantium represents to him an everlasting life, and the knowledge of “what is past, or passing, or to come”.

Ultimately, it is Yeats’s struggle between his ideal version of the world and the uncomfortableness that is his reality which drives his poetry. These six poems in particular are the result of his perpetual longing for a better life, the descriptions of which allowed for the creation of some genuinely beautiful and thought-provoking poetry.

The representation of people in W.B Yeats’ poetry is greatly dependent on the demonstration of real-life events to enable readers to perceive and understand the true and genuine emotions of the human experiences of these people. In both “Easter 1916” (published in 1916) and “An Irish Airman Foresees his death” (written in 1918) written by Yeats, focuses on real-life scenarios with real people to express the passionate flow of ideas to persuade and engage the audience, allowing them to reimagine the themes and ideas depicted in the poem. Yeats conveys the ideas of heroic bravery and personal sacrifice for public fulfilment to resonate within the audience allowing them to experience and empathise with the people represented in the text. Hence, Yeats represents people in real-life events to enable the readers to understand and perceive the emotional problems these people face.

The idea of heroic bravery is depicted in the poem “Easter 1916” through the inspiration of heroic figures seen in the Easter uprising in Ireland. Throughout the poem, the persona is in self-conflict with the Irish nationalist during the Irish independence protests, though is still able to realise and appreciate their heroism during this time of nationalistic war. Despite this, the poem conveys that true heroism can transcend personal flaws and, as to transform a person “utterly”. The poem encompasses the persona’s exploration of the meaning and nature of heroism, transforming the people present in the poem into heroic figures that should be honoured. “A terrible beauty is born” uses oxymoron and biblical allusion to convey the blood sacrifice of the rebels for rebirth and renewal of a secular incarnation of a sacred season. This in effect, interests the person about how the deaths are the “terrible beauty” to which they gave birth due to their undying bravery. In the following stanzas, the speaker suggests that despite the misguided violent uprising, the persona honours them for their bravery in “we know their dream; enough / To know they dreamed and are dead” alluding to the participants of the uprising to convey that regardless of their flaws they should still be considered heroic figures. Thus, the heroic representation of the rebels during the Irish independence enables the audience to question and perceive the experiences of these people.

Additionally, the poem of “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death” portrays heroism in a new view of personal exhilaration. Whilst this poem can be perceived as a heroic composition, the persona himself is a fighter pilot that does not typically fight for the love of his people or country but rather for the sheer pleasure he feels when he is in the air. “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death” was written in memory of Major Robert Gregory who died in WWI, is considered as an elegy for Robert which Yeats’ takes advantage of to describe and speak in Robert’s sense of life, death, war and to meditate on the senselessness of conflict. The use of paradox seen in “Those that I fight I do not hate./ Those that I guard I do not love” is ambivalent in how the audience perceives the persona’s experience in self-fulfilment in the war despite his bravery to fight. We also see that the persona meditates on the senselessness of war, realising that either outcome won’t “leave them happier than before” dismissing the reasons why people go to war, whilst outlining his reasons for joining the war. The repetition of the metaphor “waste of breath” expresses the persona’s views on how he regards his life as pointless hence, portraying that he fights for the sense of exhilaration is driven by “a lonely impulse of delight” and in a sense is sacrificing himself for this death stricken “delight”. Ultimately, the portrayal of heroism for personal exhilaration allows the readers to understand the multiple variations of heroic bravery to understand the experiences and reasoning of the speaker in “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death”.

Personal sacrifice for public fulfilment through the loss of the human condition is a significant idea conveyed in the poem “Easter 1916”. Through the use of nature imagery, Yeats conveys the lasting effects on the human condition when involved in such matters like the Easter uprising in Ireland. When Yeats refers to the “terrible beauty”, the beauty not only refers to heroism but also how politics changed the rebels, in addition to the talents and opportunities they gave up as well as the individual commitment to political goals and ideals. The persona also suggests that total commitment to the protests can exclude one to the natural human inclination, resulting in personal sacrifice for public fulfilment. The persona metaphorically outlines normal life in “moor-hens dive,/and hens to moor-cocks call” to symbolise the basic human condition. Yet, the symbolism of the stone in “The stone’s in the midst of all” shows the stone’s inability to share in simple human condition rather, stays in an unchanging state of a death-like condition. suggesting, that the rebels are metaphorically more dead than alive and died in a sense by losing their natural human condition. Also, the stone represents the purpose and strength of the people and the rebellion being necessary if there is ever to be change. Hence, through the blend of form and language feature, Yeats’ represents the people to be self-sacrificing to convey the experiences of the people to allow the audience to feel compassionate towards such individuals.

The spirituality of self-sacrifice in “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death” is a prominent theme throughout the whole poem. Despite the persona’s lack of self-sacrificing motivation, the audience can understand that the act of participating in a world war or any war at all is still a sacrifice and thus, feels a sense of sympathy towards the speaker. In the elegy, Yeats moves us not for what Gregory was, rather the centralisation of the views and mentality of the persona, causing the audience to see that the sacrifice made by Robert Gregory being no different to the sacrifices made by the other young men during the world war. “Nor law, nor duty bade me fight” has subtle expressive language to encompass the persona’s lack of self-sacrificing motivation yet, Yeats portrays the persona as more heroic and special in a different view of personal sacrifice for public fulfilment. Additionally, the poem centralises its persona’s thought on the senselessness of war with the use of metaphor in “a waste of breath the years behind / In balance with this life, this death” to criticize the savage ways of war explaining the pointless ideals of patriotic fervour. The use of chiasmus “I Balanced all, brought all to mind” emphasizing the idea that one must realise that war is not a reasonable way to resolve conflict which suggests that his self-sacrificing death is worthless. Thus, the spirituality of self-sacrifice can be portrayed in many variations, allowing the audience to empathise with the persona present in the poem.

In conclusion, the poems “Easter 1916” and “An Irish Airman Foresees his Death” characterises the themes of Heroic bravery and personal sacrifice for public fulfilment to provoke the audience to understand and perceive the variations of such ideals and experiences and feelings of the represented people.