Impact of War in Rudyard Kipling’s Poem the Bridegroom

October 9, 2021 by Essay Writer

War has had a huge impact on many known people in our society. It is the case of the poet Rudyard Kipling, who has been surrounded by lots of guilt after the great period of World War 1. After losing first his daughter and then, later on, his son John in the war, Rudyard Kipling wrote many mournful poems such as “The Bridegroom” from Epitaphs of War, to picture his sentiments. “The Bridegroom” refers not only to the poet’s feeling towards his son, but also to many soldiers who fought in the war and ended up never coming back home. The main focus of “The Bridegroom” is the death of a soldier on a battlefield. By using devices such as metaphors, personifications, and tone, Kipling is able to make the readers slowly understand the pain of many fighters that have been carried off to the afterlife way too soon.

First of all, it is easy to detect that the poem portrays the life of a young married man. Just by the title, the bridegroom, one can come to conclusion that the speaker is getting married or has just gotten through the engagement. Later on, the entire poem let’s the reader understand that the bridegroom is actually a young soldier that won’t be going back home to his wife. Instead he is going to meet his more ancient bride, death. Kipling personifies death as his ancient bride since death has always been present before the existence of anything else. The first paragraph already starts demonstrating the guilty and remorseful tone of the speaker as he apologizes and asks his wife to not call him false, in other words, to not think of him as unfaithful, as he rests in another woman’s arm. Why? Because she is no other woman but death. The speaker also represents his relationship with death as a marriage, and explains to his wife that it had already been set for a long time, but by chance, had been reported. In other words, he had luckily been able to survive the war a little longer.

Second of all, as the poem goes on, its main theme, death, is smoothly brought forward by personifications and metaphors used by Kipling. In the first stanza, the speaker states that he is now resting in someone else’s arms, describing himself as now, living near someone else, death. The arm represent in some sort of way death’s easy and vast embrace. He, then, in the second stanza, describes his ancient bride as someone he coldly embraces, which can easily be referred to a body in the dead state, which is usually very cold and welcomes death without any emotions nor resistance. In the third stanza, he describes its marriage as consummate and as something that cannot be unmade. Consummate, from its definition describes a marriage that has been completed by physical contact. Therefore, when he talks about his marriage that cannot be unmade, he is referring to his union with death, which has physically been concluded. He has been killed and is now resting in his “bed”, referring to his grave, eternally. Towards the end of the poem, in the last stanza, the speaker personifies his actual wife’s memory, as is a disease, while its own as immortality. He commands to his wife to go on with her life and to not go into depression. He knows that memories of them two are still present within her; however, with time, life can still cure her by offering her new ones. To him, his memory, just like immortality, is a frozen, endless moment that will follow him into his grave.

In conclusion, just like the speaker in the bridegroom, many other soldiers have had to welcome death as their new spouse during the war. Since Kipling was living a great period of culpability and was surrounded by the death of more than one family member, he probably felt the need to write “The bridegroom” to reflect his thoughts and emotions and to reflect the pain his son and other soldiers have had to face. It is obvious that death was a considerable threat during World War 1, therefore by reading and understanding Kipling’s “Bridegroom” readers can recognize the sorrowful path many soldiers had to follow on the battlefield.

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