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Name Class Ian M The Death of a Soldier Wallace Stevens About this Text Wallace Stevens (1879-1955), an American modernist poet known for his rich vocabulary, lyricism, and precision, won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1955. He wrote this poem during World War I, in which more than 8.5 million soldiers were killed; sometimes tens of thousands died in a single battle. Vocabulary Let’s pronounce these words together as a class: Contract [k uh n- trakt ] Pomp [pomp] FIRST READ Read the poem for the gist. Then answer the question. SECOND READ Read the poem again for literal understanding. As you read, answer the questions. [1] Life contracts and death is expected, [2] As in a season of autumn. [3] The soldier falls. [4] He does not become a three-days personage, 1 [5] Imposing his separation, [6] Calling for pomp . [7] Death is absolute and without memorial, [8] As in a season of autumn, [9] When the wind stops, [10] When the wind stops and, over the heavens, [11] The clouds go, nevertheless, [12] In their direction. Lines 1-3 Think & Share: Explain the simile in these lines in your own words. Lines 4-6 Think & Share: How does the metaphor in this stanza contrast with the rest of the poem? This shows how a soldier will always fight no matter what and his objective will never be being recognized or getting recognition Lines 7-12 Turn & Talk: How do these two stanzas develop the metaphor from lines 1-3? These stanzas are talking about how war also comes with the death of the soldier, and how this is something that is basically inevitable just like the past of the time and the changes of every season After the FIRST READ: What is the main idea or “gist” of this poem? “The Death of a Soldier” from Poetry: A Magazine in Verse by Wallace Stevens (1918) is in the public domain. 1 an important or famous person

Unit 5: War Stories 1 Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. THIRD READ Read the poem again for the deeper meaning. Then answer the questions. 1. Consider the entire poem: look at the shape of each stanza on the page. What is similar about the shape of each stanza? How does the poem’s shape reinforce its meaning? All the stanzas are constantly using time as a reference and as a metaphor too, and this helps to reinforce the message of a soldier always giving his life in order to protect his country no matter if they recognize him or not 2. Consider the entire poem: Wallace Stevens was raised in the Christian religion. Christians believe that Jesus of Nazareth was killed and, three days later, came back to life. They believe that Jesus later rose in a cloud to an afterlife called heaven, where the souls of all Christians will go and live forever after their bodies die. Christians celebrate Jesus’s death and resurrection with special rituals every spring on Easter. Reread the poem with this information in mind. In what ways does Stevens create a contrast between the story of Jesus and the death of a soldier? After rereading the poem, we now can once again see that a soldier doesn’t care about fame or recognition, and that the writer was comparing the death of jesus christ who came back to life 3 days after being killed and then got recognition and ended up going to a better place where he now happily lived, to a soldier, who once is death, does not come back to life, does not get recognition for doing what he did, and the world just keeps moving forward no matter all the things they did in life. Unit 5: War Stories 2 Unless otherwise noted, this content is licensed under the CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. Name Class: Ian M

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