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English Language

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Goethe Universität Frankfurt am Main

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2013

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Birgit K. ©
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Assignment

Analysis of “An Irish Airman Forsees his Death”

by William Butler Yeats


The poem “An Irish Airman Forsees his Death” written by William Butler Yeats in 1918 treats of an Irish airman who is going to fight for the British during World War I. Firstly, the lyric I says that he will die in the war and that he neither has feelings for those he fights against, nor for those he fights for.  Then he declares that his country is Kiltartan Cross and that the outcome of the war won‘t  impact his people.

He also says that his only motivation to fight is “A lonely impulse of delight” (l. 11). In the end, he weighs his life against death and concludes that his death is in balance with his life.

The poem is a ballad which is clarified by its structure: it is organized in one stanza consisting of four quatrains. Every quatrain has an alternate rhyme. Because of this constant form, the poem gets a very clear structure. The metre is a iambic tetrameter and the cadenza is throughout masculine.

In the first quatrain, the lyric I clarifies that he does not believe in the war and that he is insensible to it. The absurdness and his alienation is expressed by the second line (“Somewere among the clouds above;”, l. 2).

The author uses a parallelism in the third and fourth line to support this alienation. Contrary wise, the lyric I represents his belonging to the Kiltartan Cross and its people by an anaphora in the fifth and sixth line (“My country is Kiltartan Cross, My countrymen Kiltartan‘s poor,”, l. 5-6).

By saying that the outgoing of the war won‘t impact his people and using an enjambement to express (l. 7-8), he even more emphasizes the distance between his people and the nation he fights for which is Great Britain. During World War I, the British recruited many Irish who did not feel any patriotism for England or for Great Britain.

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To constitute the lack of an sensible and comprehensible reason for fighting, the author uses another anaphora. In line eleven, he states his reason, “A lonely impulse of delight” (l. 11). This description raises the his fun to fight to an heroic and glorious “delight” (l. 11) which could also be seen in an ironic and sacastic way,  and draws a strong contrast to the indifference in the rest of the poem.

The author highlights this break in the atmosphere with an enjambement in line eleven to twelve. In the last quatrain, the lyric I tries to equilibrate his life with his upcoming death. By reminding of his past life, he concludes that it all was a “waste of breath” (l. 14).

Due to this dissipated life, he opines that his life is in balance with his death. For him, this is a justification for his acceptance of his death. The author shows the balance with a chiasm of the words (“the years; waste of breathe waste of breathe; the years”, l. 14-15) which is crossed by an polyptoton with the words “balanced” (l. 13) and “balance” (l. 16).

The poem ends abruptly with a cesura which divides the first part, emblematising the life, from the last two words: “this death” (l. 16). This represents the ultimateness of the acceptance of the death and the ultimateness of the death itself.

The clear structure is inversely to the clear rational weighing up of the lyric I.  The poem is written in the tone of a brave soldier. This tone creates an determined atmosphere which supports the text.


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