Surreal Freedom

The possession of an appreciable feeling of belonging to a certain spot on this vast planet is a rare blessing. Home is where one’s identity is shaped, and is where one’s perceptual consciousness comes to live. The clashes between cultural identities and human desires are the ultimate source of misery; ready to give up everything and anything, humans follow their desires, subliminally melting the sentimental and supernatural bonds that tie them to their “homeland”. In W.B. Yeats’s poem, An Irish Airman Foresees His Death, the author discusses the significance of identity while being in a state of emotional distortion on the meaning of “home”. The hypocrisy of war was explicitly stated in this poem, rebutting those who believe that war is nothing but a mere patriotic burst-out. Yeats’s subconscious realization of time passage is greatly emphasized in the music of the poem, for he “foresees his death”. The iambic tetrameter was Yeats’ tool in generating the sound of a throbbing heart, gasping for a few, counted moments to finish the poem.

The poem starts off by “I know that I shall meet my fate” which employs a sense of resignation to fate – or death –, for it is the ultimate fate of all humanity. The author then immediately links the urging feeling of death to war, specifically World War I. Yeats portrays a soldier in a typical war situation, fighting for the “good” of the country he belongs to and love, but neither does he love his country nor does he feel emotionally connected to it, for the country referred to was Great Britain, the colonizers of Ireland at that time. According to Yeats, “Those that I fight I do not hate, those that I guard I do not love”. This exposes the hypocrisy of war, and the lack of noble purpose in wa...

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...nment up in the clouds, the airman perceived his life, from beginning to end and how pointless life would be if it was not embedded in the clouds; the airman balanced both the benefits and drawbacks of life outside his impulsive home, the clouds, and realized that life will be a waste of breath, and thus not worth living. The poem consists of sixteen lines, and each four lines represent a different idea, yet all synchronized with the heartbeat pattern from the very beginning. This is the balance, the balance of beats, the balance of devoting an equal amount of heartbeats, which he almost ran out of, to what he believes in, and what he enjoys most, which is flying free and diminishing all the boundaries. The last line is the death he was prophesying, in which the heartbeat stops and his reality collapses upon him, releasing him from the chains of life.