Graves

I must admit I am a bit confused by this poem bough of nonsense, but there is a clear morbid and absurdist notion. The first image of the bird’s nest made of skulls and flowers provokes this. The choice of the nest is an interesting one, it creates this idea of nurturing, it could be referring to the pre war environment that made people believe in the war or it could be the post war environment that the next generation has to grow up in. there are also references to exotic and colorful things like monkeys Bright Pink birds and banana trees. The references to the exotic could refer to the colonies that Europeans possessed which is an extension of their nationalism, was a factor that started world war one but also national pride became useless once the men got into the trenches. But primarily this use of the exotic I think is sarcastic and absurdist, contrasting to the death in the poem. The people in the story have this sort of sarcastic false happiness about them that their aware of  “before this quaint mood fails” that their trying to deal with the tragedy, since the death it self had little purpose or meaning the life after is just as ridiculous. There are references to the Galatians in this poem, which I wasn’t familiar with before but I found that they were people from the New Testament that Paul wrote letters to and were one of the first people to accept Christianity. The description of the temple they built crushing them creates the sensation that they chose to believe the Christians too quickly and the their faith had no foundation so it ended up destroying them in the end. Also their faith didn’t prevent the nations from starting world war one, and certainly didn’t give soldiers any dignity in their death. Another thing I find interesting about this poem is that it’s a homing journey, shared by an elder and a man who is presumably young to mid age. Traditionally I would think that the poem would be advice given by the elder to the younger man but they seem to be on about the same level here, which shows that in battle sometimes these social orders can be transcended into brotherhood, this might relate to how Jake and bill are close because of their mutual veteranship. The journey home by soldiers is usually considered to be a positive thing, I would have expected this poem to be filled with nostalgic memories of family to return too, but that’s the opposite of what was done. The poem described things in the present through an absurdist lens, because the war undermined the entire foundations of values and sense of home that they had previously known and home just wouldn’t be the same when they returned because of the atrocities they had seen.