wood that has material at one end that is set on fire and that people carry to give light. In this poem, the word torch refers to the spirit or will. The third sentence is
“be yours to hold it high”. This sentence emphasizes the previous sentence that the torch or the spirit had to be kept and seize in order to encourage the soldier.
The fourth sentence “If ye break faith with us who die, we shall not sleep, though poppies grow” can be interpreted as if the soldiers can not finished the task
given, then we, as the former soldiers who had died, would never rest in peace. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary 1564, the word ‘ye’ means
you, used when talking to more than one person. Break faith in this sentence is a promise to continue the fight against the enemy. The word ‘sleep’ in this sentence
is not literally to take a rest with eyes closed, but it has deeper meaning which is pleasant death. This sentence underlines the main duty of the battle which is gain
the victory. From the whole discussion of the whole sentence, this poem can be
categorized as a patriotism poem. In this poem we are encourage to keep our faith and fight against the enemy. This poem also teaches us to sacrifice, even though it
cost our life.
2. John McCrae’s View on War as seen in “In Flanders Fields”
This poem is one of the most famous poems during the Great War. John McCrae wrote this poem when he was battling in Flanders, Belgium in 1915. He
was forty-one when he joined the recruitment for Canadian to the Battle in Ypres. For nearly two weeks, he had attended to the horrible injuries suffered by soldiers
in the continuing battle. While shells exploded around them, McCrae and his staff cared for hundreds of wounded men each day. He describes this condition in a
letter as “Hell all the times”. On the second miserable day of May, one death particularly touched John
McCrae. A close friend, Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, was killed early that morning when an enemy shell exploded at his feet. Reports concerning the hours after
Helmer’s burial differ. One states that John McCrae sat on the back of an ambulance, writing
sight of the new grave. Another says that John McCrae wrote off and on while bandaging the wounded. What he was writing, however, proved more important
than where he wrote it. Helmer’s death inspired John McCrae to write “In Flanders Fields”, a poem that to this day relays the images of war, loss, love, and
renewal. The battle in Flanders became the main point of John McCrae shifting
paradigm in portray the war. John McCrae was a brave soldier who has the immense patriotism spirit. He already experienced many battle during the Great
War. He stated in a letter that every man ought to go to the war. John McCrae started his military career as the Canadian army at eighteen
as a gunner in the Queen’s Own Rifles division. And later on, he sailed from Halifax, Nova Scotia, to South Africa when the Boer War was blazing. There he
saw firsthand the cost of battle, though still he believed that a man must fight evil wherever he encountered it.
After he saw the casualties in the battle in Flanders and his lost for his friend, he felt that he no longer excited on war. “I am tired of it”, he wrote to a
friend. But with his poem “In Flanders Fields”, he never give up upon his faith that a renewal or a new hope will come up to compensate all of suffer during war.
From this poem, we can see John McCrae deepest sorrow when he lost his best friend. And his feeling is a portrayal of the human feeling when they lost
their family, their love, and their right. Yet he still stands to fight and never betray his faith and his promise as a soldier.
B. John McCrae’s “The Warrior”
