Have mercy on the souls of these young men

When viewing war, soldiers are generally seen as faceless warriors sent to a foreign field for a greater cause. Besides the families directly affected by war, it is rare that people think about how these young people were “torn” from their worlds and thrown into the war. Flint’s poem, “Lament”, was able connect the effect of war on society through the lives of young men with the use of Biblical references and other metaphors.

Flint begins the poem with a discreet reference to the faith based lesson of Abraham and his willingness to sacrifice his son for a greater cause, which in that situation was the Lord’s will. At the end of the first stanza he says, “The young men of the world/ Are condemned to death/ They have been called upon to die/ For the crime of their fathers.” This could be perceived in several ways. The “crime” could refer to Adam’s picking the forbidden fruit in genesis. More realistically, it could refer to the decisions of the young men’s forefathers whose actions may have led to the war and their son’s potential deaths. Adam’s crime eternally banished humans from the Garden of Eden. By eating from the Tree of Knowledge and Truth, Adam and Eve realized how crude their situation was by living unclothed and exposing their bodies. It could be said that eating from the fruit led to war due to jealousy, competition, and other challenges brought with this newly found knowledge. The passage shows how these young men go off to war for crimes they did not commit and how they may be forced to pay the ultimate price.

As these young men go on to war, Flint describes, “The young men of the world, the growing, the ripening fruit, have been torn from their branches, while the memory of the blossom is sweet in women’s hearts.” This passage uses the specific imagery of a fruit being picked from a plant prematurely. The men are these fruits and the tearing Flint describes is more violent due to specific word choice. The fruit being picked or falling from the main plant that provides sustenance and life would have sounded more natural. This tearing could be the same motion that tears a soldier’s arm off due to the violence that war encompasses. The women in these men’s lives that are referred to are most likely the mothers that remember their sons as children, just beginning to grow into men that would be workers and fathers that would build the future society. Most of the mothers had probably not raised their sons to be slaughtered, but instead to become men similar to their husbands. Flint finishes the stanza by saying “They have been cast for a cruel purpose/ Into the mashing- press and furnace.” This means that these young men are not even considered humans by their superiors as they are thrown into deadly environments similar to a “mashing press and furnace.” The fruits of man’s labor are mankind’s greatest achievements which includes the younger generation of men.

Flint discusses how these young men are no longer in control of their action, but rather their actions control them. He wrote, “The young men of the world/ No longer possess the road:/ The road possesses them./ They no longer inherit the earth:/ The earth inherits them.” The second metaphor is referring to the Bible once again from the beatitudes, in particular “The meek shall inherit the Earth.” Flint is calling these men “meek” because they are still gentle and not yet belligerent and changed by war; however, they shall not inherit the earth because they will no longer maintain that passiveness after the war, if they survive. The earth inherits them as their bodies are put into the ground when these men are buried. These young men that entered World War I were similar to animals being sent to a slaughterhouse. They had lost control of their lives by joining the war effort. Flint’s poem was able to illustrate the abstract aspects of war that don’t always involve direct violence.

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Is there more than dust after death?

Hamlet: Alexander died , Alexander was buried, Alex-/

ander returneth to dust; the dust is earth; of earth/

we make loam; and why of that loam whereto he/

was converted might they stop a beer barrel?

(5:1:214-19)

Death. Is it a moment, an action, or an infinite amount of time? The thought of it brings chills to the spines of people in younger generations and comfort to many in the last phase of their lives due to their acceptance of its inevitability. After our deaths the memories that the living have of us are the only things that keep us partly alive on earth. After decades of erosion and decay to our physical bodies, it is only natural that our physical existence decays as well. I have frequently pondered what the next phase after death will bring and so this passage from Hamlet caught my attention.

Alexander the Great is one of the most respected and well known names throughout history. In his brief lifetime, he was able conquer the majority of the known world making him seem invincible. Similarly to King Hamlet, however, he died of a sickness induced by either poison or sickness. The point of the matter being that he died in his prime in an unexpected manner much like the murdered King of Denmark. The passage enticed me because a man that  Great”, in the grand scheme of things, was reduced to nothing or from whence he came, the dust. When thinking of dust, most view it as petty, insignificant, and even irritating. Does this prove our ignorance of human creation and the chain of existence or do we throw these thoughts of death away simply because of our fear of it? Death has been feared by humanity as long as we have had knowledge of its existence. Our instincts are constantly attempting to prevent it from happening whether it’s from a violent attack to the body or a simple cold, the body is always fighting for survival. The passage relates to me in a particular sense because several years ago I stared death in the face when one of my peers at a summer camp attempted to drown me. Even if he was only trying to scare me or threaten me, I was not thinking that while I was submerged. While under the water my life literally flashed before my eyes and I knew, from somewhere, that I had not completed my primary objective on this Earth and that I needed to live. I was able to remove his hands from my body and surface the water. If I had died in this scenario, what would my legacy have been? I had no significant achievements, I was only known within my family, St. Christopher’s, and my church, and I was only 12 so I could only be remembered as either a bright young man with a bright future, or a troublesome child that was bound to end up as another statistic. At that early phase of my life, I could not have been ready to end up as another name in the Richmond Times Dispatch obituaries.

The fact that all bones and dust from a magnificent emperor to a starved pauper mirror each other when compared, does not cease to amaze me and yet, it acknowledges the fact that we need to make use of our time on earth and make a name and do as much as possible. The passage can be interpreted in both ways. The first message delivered is that every living organism will return to nothing which could potentially mean that its accomplishments and honors are worthless because when dead and away from worldly possessions, a God-like king, for example Xerxes, consists of the same chemistry and will be mixed in the same soil as a common foot-soldier that died for him in the battle of Thermopylae. The more optimistic view is that one needs to stand out in society and become a hero to the masses that are too afraid to fight for their rights, for example Gandhi who led the passive rebellion against the British in India and gained India’s independence. Hamlet seems to question the idea of death and whether he should commit suicide due to his emotions over his late father and the current situation in Denmark the country that he should be governing if he had not been at his University in Wittenburg. The decision is a personal one dependent on how a person lives.

Hamlet like many other humans, has questioned his existence and if he is any different from other dead bodies laying in the graveyard. These suicidal thoughts and fear of worse suffering keep him alive until he is killed by the poisoned blade of Fortinbras. Humans continue to pursue a greater knowledge of what is to come after death because most will not accept a fate of simply turning into dust that will be used to patch a hole in a barrel of beer. This paradoxical statement by Hamlet helps him to make the decision to fight for what he believes in because his fate will be similar to the multitude of men that have fallen before him.

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