Rupert Brooke – The Soldier

1. The speaking voice is a soldier and he uses a first person narrator.
2. The speaking voice isn’t afraid of death; Indeed he thinks that his dead body (evoke by the word ‘dust’) will enrich the soil, and that his heart will continue to ‘pulse in the eternal mind’.
3. Wherever he will die, the speaking voice will lie ‘in a corner of a foreign field that is for ever England’.
4. The speaking voice’s dead body will enrich the ‘rich earth’ with its ‘richer dust’ that England itself had bore.
5. The speaking voice evokes a positive idea of war using three different tricks. First of all, the speaking voice underlines that the English soldiers’ bodies will enrich the soil. Secondly, he says that the war is not a waste of human lives since the soldiers’ hearts will not die with the bodies. Thirdly, he conveys the idea of death as a way to reward England for its gifts.
6. I think the addressees of the sonnet can be both common English people (they hasn’t seen the war with their eyes and so the speaking voice is presenting it) both other English soldiers (the speaking voice is supporting them).

3. The rhyme scheme is: ABABCDCD EFGEFG. The sonnet is a Petrarchan sonnet.

4. In order to present death, the speaking voice uses the image of dust; this choice underlines the material aspect of death, indeed while the body dies and enriches the English soil, the heart continues to ‘pulse in the eternal mind’.

5. From the point of view of the English landscape, the speaking voice brings to surface a positive view of England referring to its ‘sights and sound’ (last stanza). On the other hand, in the whole sonnet, the speaking voice refers to England from a more intimate point of view; indeed he focuses his attention both on his physical condition (he will die for his homeland and his grave will be in England) and spiritual condition (his heart will live at peace under an English heaven).

6. In the second stanza, the speaking voice highlights some qualities of England: its landscapes (‘her sight and sounds’), its dreams and happy days, and, last but not least, its inhabitants’  ‘laughter’ and ‘gentleness’. All this qualities convey a positive view of England.

7. The tone of the sonnet is glorious: the speaking voice presents England and the war as positive and happy aspects. The war seems to be necessary and gratifying, since it frees the soldiers’ hearts from ‘all evil’ and gives the soldiers the possibility to reward England for its gifts.