Death by W. B. Yeats

Thinking Activity

Death by William Butler Yeats

This blog is written as a thinking Activity assigned Dr. Dilip Barad sir, Department of English, MKBU to study some of the poems of W. B. Yeats'. In this blog I am going study a poem 'Death' by Yeats.

Introduction:-

         Death is one of the most famous and shortest of all his poems. ‘Death’ was written in 1929 and included in Yeats’s 1933 volume The Winding Stair and Other Poems. It contains 12 lines and 6 couplets. In this poem it deals with human attitude towards death and compares and contrasts it with the death of animals which are far beyond the fear of human beings towards death.

        Yeats compares man’s awareness that he will die one day which Yeats compares with an animal’s lack of awareness of this, an animal neither fears death as  it has no concept of dying, nor hopes for life after death as man does, consoling himself through religion that death will not be the end. In "Yeats' Death: A reading" Ronald Marlam also discusses 'Concept of human death and resurrection'. Men's journey of life is continuously hoping.   In the third couplet Yeats says that,

Many times he died,

Many times rose again

          In these lines the poet shares the general or sentimental approach towards death. Not only death can end the man but there are so many things that a person goes through. He dies before dies finally. But the best thing about this death is that he rises again which is not possible after the final death of a person. We get failure which can be compared to death as in the difficult time we consciously or unconsciously utters words to get death. The bollywood comic movie 'Phir Heraferi', Baburav continuously utters words, "उठा ले रे बाबा...". Like him we also say the same everyday

          After the death we don't get another chance. But in failure, we get another chance to make our lives good.

        Here, he is probably echoing a sentiment put forward by Shakespeare in Julius Caesar: ‘Cowards die many times before'.

           The next line of the poem refers as it does to ‘A great man in his pride’. Indeed, a ‘great man’, one who has to deal with, and confront, men who commit murder, has learnt to ridicule man’s fixation upon death, which is described as mere ‘Supersession of breath’. ‘Supersession’ is an intriguing word here. The trouble of the ‘great man’ as Yeats mentions, ‘knows death to the bone’ and knows that ‘Man has created death’ – that is, death is a man-made concept. Of course, Yeats is not denying that men die; what he is rejecting here is the notion that death or mortality is something we should dwell too much upon.

"Men has created death. Death is not a clinical cessation of breed to the sentient great man, Noor has he anything but ridicule for a life in which merely breathing supersedes everything without his dreading and helping all, his death meaningless. Nothing attends the numb demise of a passive animal; actively conscious to the narrow, the great man, Alto murdered has awaited even created his end".(Yeats' Death: A reading)

             This poem can be compared or contrasted with the poem of John Donne, Holy sonnet number 10: Death be not Proud.

At one interpretation both the poems are having contrast. In 'Death', Yeats gives illustration of the fear of death of Human beings, whereas in 'Death be not Proud', Donne gives illustration that death has no command over a man. But on the other hand both can be similarly compared with each other.  Both these poems give a similar idea that death can not end human beings. Last line of both of these lines declares the same idea.

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die. (Death be not Proud)

He knows death to the bone –

Man has created death. 

(Death)

      The ending lines of both these poems declare the idea that death can't kill man. Death is created by man. Man has death in each moment if he thinks of it like that. 

Structure:-

        The poem contains 12 lines, divided in 6 couplets. The rhyme scheme is ABAB. 

Conclusion:-

        In a nutshell, in the initial part Yeats gives illustration of the fear of death of humans whereas in the later part he contrasts his initial statement that death is created by man in his thoughts.

Click here to read "A prayer for my Daughter'

References:-

Marken, Ronald. “Yeats’s ‘Death’: A Reading.” Irish University Review, vol. 10, no. 2, 1980, pp. 244–50. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/25477354. Accessed 18 Dec. 2022.

I hope this blog will be helpful to you have better understanding of this poem.

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