The Soldier Analysis

What we've got here, gang, is a sonnet. And that means a few things as far as form and meter are concerned. Let's start with the overall form of the poem, shall we? We shall. So check it out: like...

The speaker of "The Soldier," is the… soldier. Need we say more? Oh. We do? Well, then. There are a few things to note about this guy, since he's pretty revealing in the way he goes about this po...

We can sum up the setting of this poem in one word for you, gang. Two syllables. Ready? Here they come: England. That's right: England from the speaker's past, England in a foreign field, heck—ev...

This poem deals with a kind of immortality, really. In his speculation about entering into "English heaven," the speaker alternately comforts the reader (in case they were going to grieve for his d...

The Soldier. It's not "a soldier," but "the soldier," as in "the soldier, par excellence," or "the ideal soldier." That, at any rate, is what Brooke's title seems to be telling us his poem is about...

Rupert Brooke is often criticized for not being realistic about war. To put it another way, his poetry—and the war sonnets in particular, of which "The Soldier" is one of the most famous—is ide...

"The Soldier" isn't too difficult of a poem, if we do say so ourselves. There aren't any of those super-crazy, old-school words that sometimes make poems difficult. At times, though, it can be kind...

Just as the poem predicts, Brooke died in the war—from an infected mosquito bite. He died on April 23, the traditional birthday of Shakespeare. (Source.) A young Winston Churchill, who gave Brook...

"The Soldier" imagines a soldier dying for his country on the battlefield, and then going to a peaceful, heavenly afterlife. This is a serious, sometimes somber, poem in which sex would just be out...