Dh Lawrence 'the Ship of Death' Analysis

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In a circular motion, the poem ends with rebirth in the final two stanzas. The semantic field of nature is continued; however, in the last two stanzas nature is associated with life and optimism, rather than death.

Wait, wait! Even so, a flush of yellow

and strangely, O chilled wan soul, a flush of rose. (94-5)

The use of exclamatory mood suggests that, with rebirth, a sense of energy and vigour is restored, while the colour imagery in the ‘flush of yellow’ can be associated with happiness, enlightenment and springtime. The adjectives- ‘chilled’, ‘wan’- used to describe the ‘soul’, the implied audience of this exclamation, connote weakness and fragility.

In the last stanza, the speaker then describes a ‘body, like a worn sea-shell’ (97) emerging from the ‘flood’ (97). This simile contains beautiful and delicate imagery, while the metaphor describing the body as the ‘home’ (99) of the soul reintroduces the concept that, like ‘the ship of death’, the body is merely a vessel to transport the soul through life.

In conclusion, Lawrence explores three stages of death by anthropomorphising an abstract concept, the soul, to illustrate the transition between each stage. Comparisons are made between events in the natural world and events in death to emphasise the paradoxical nature of life, in that it is fragile and powerful, beautiful and vulgar. Lawrence urges the reader to accept the inevitability of death and prepare themselves for the end by building their own ship of death. Essentially, the poem mirrors the process of reincarnation. Lawrence’s revelation that, the vessel in which the soul travels is merely temporary endeavours to instil hope in the reader, and perhaps even himself, that there is life after death.

Word Count: 880

Bibliography

Lawrence, D. H., ‘The Ship of Death’, in The Norton Anthology of Poetry, ed. Margaret Ferguson and others, 5th edn (London: W. W. Norton & Company, 2005) 1291-95

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