Elegy By Thomas Gray Analysis

Graveyard for the Hardworking
Three Messages from Elegy The poem Elegy, written by Thomas Gray, is about the working class, or better known as the lower class. Thomas Gray is a romantic poet, which means that he mainly focuses on nature and the simple life. The definition of lower class is, “the social class that has the lowest status; the working class.” In this specific poem it is relating to the people and the overall town; the town is what some may call a farming town. Such as, how people look at Wyoming. The poet of this poem is the narrator as well in the poem. The narrator is telling this while sitting in a churchyard, which is a graveyard for a certain class. The upper class were not buried in the same graveyard as the working class, …show more content…
The well-known or the upper class were recognized by a crest placed upon the top of their graves. Upper class is seen as better, so the working class was buried somewhere else, and the upper class was buried somewhere special. Gray say that perhaps a person had been born in a different place, they would definitely be different. The working class would have the potential to be brilliant if they had not been born into that particular class. Because poverty, or their common knowledge was low because of their lack of education, and that is what kept them in the lower ranking class. And if those people has been put into school they could be famous as well. It just matter where the specific person was born. The working class people could have been good in Gray’s eyes and overall the eyes of the upper class. Which means in his point of view that the people who have been given everything could eventually be seen as bad. Gray say’s in stanza fourteen, “Full many a gem of purest ray serene, the dark unfathomed caves of ocean bear; full many a flower is born to blush unseen, and waste its sweetness on the desert …show more content…
The working class were not given the same temptations, such as the upper class. Because of poverty, they did not get into distractive problems, because all they did was work. And because of that these people lived a simple life, and Gray thought they were still worth a poem. Whether working class or upper class that does not change the fact that nobody wants to die. Everyone would rather have life, even if that meant living in poverty, than having no life at all and being buried in the ground. Gray wonders what it would be like to die as a hard worker and to be buried in that graveyard. Then he wonders in the dead people are wondering why there is a strange man, which is obviously from the upper class, sitting in the cemetery. And then wonders if he was to die, would the ghost of the working class, wonder why he was no longer there. Gray imagines himself dead, then thinks of an Epitaph, which is what is said on someone’s grave. He says that he would want to be remembered like these people, and sad because he was a nobody, also that he lived a good life. In stanza twenty eight he says, “One morn I missed him on the customed hill, along the heath, and near his favorite tree; another came; nor yet beside the rill, nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was