Discuss Ways in Which Edward Thomas Presents Feelings About Death in ‘Rain’

Although similar poets the World War 1 era looked at the effects of war all poets revealed different perspectives. In ‘The Solider’ by Rupert Brooke the poet looks at his own significance of his life after death by asking the reader to think of ‘forever England’, unchanged and undamaged, ‘if I [he] should die’ rather than contemplating the negative side of death unlike Thomas does so in ‘Rain’. A further contrast to make would be with Wilfred Owen’s ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ as it reveals the horror of war and the deaths of soldiers, rather than looking at his own suffering and death. Another comparison to make is with the poem ‘A Man I Killed’ by Thomas Hardy who identifies not what war does to the villages back home but what war does to the soldier. His introspection of his actions suggest his guilt and shame of killing a man who, if ‘met where any bar is’, would be a simple friend. This is complimented by the suggestion of the analogy between ‘broken reeds’ and broken men as a result of the war within the poem ‘Rain’.

Thomas further expresses his identification of death through the structure of the poem. Particularly his experimentation of spondee and iambic pentameter is used to show the continuity of the rainfall and perhaps reflects the sense of infinite damage due to the war and vulnerability for soldiers in the war, including the exposure of Thomas’ life. Further, the use of blank verse conveys Thomas’ thought process as