Analysis Of I Have A Rendezvous With Death By Alan Seeger

World War I was a war of the future. Armies on both sides used newly developed chemical agents and automatic weapons, leading to great devastation. This war was the culmination of the two centuries of rapid scientific and technological development preceding it, fought during a cultural period of opulence and extravagance. Thus, it may come as a surprise to find a poet like Alan Seeger. Modernity dissatisfied Seeger; he doubted it was conducive to a meaningful life or to medieval values he held in high esteem. Despite this, Alan Seeger wrote poetry romanticizing World War I to cope with his disillusionment with modernity, masking devastation with themes of duty, sacrifice, and commitment through the use of juxtaposed imagery as well as pensive and sanguine tones. Some of the best examples of this …show more content…
When reading closely into Seeger’s work, one finds that, especially in “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” Seeger expresses a theme of utmost dedication to his perceived duty. In “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” Seeger concludes with the lines, “And I to my pledged word am true, / I shall not fail that rendezvous.” This line overtly states that Seeger feels that, despite the highly unromantic and modern nature of the War that ran contrary to Seeger’s ideals, he would continue to fight until his death. He knows he is probably going to die, but he continues to fight anyway. Furthermore, according to Dick Friedman of Harvard Magazine, about a year before his death, Seeger wrote, “The tears for those who take part in [battle and] … do not return should be sweetened by the sense that their death was the death beyond all others they would have chosen for themselves, that they went into it smiling and without regret.” This confirms Seeger’s commitment to the War; he goes so far as to say for himself and his fellow soldiers that death in the War was a commitment well worth it, despite the harsh modernity of the