Miss. K. Thompson looks at how the theme of naivety is expressed in a range of poems from the ‘Conflict’ section of ‘Moon on the Tides’.
Historically, war has always had the capacity to shock and surprise both the naïve and the knowledgeable. Generation after generation have shown their innocence and inexperience in their approach to war, whether they are soldiers, civilians or those orchestrating the war. While many examples of literature and propaganda have fuelled this ignorance, poetry has often been the driving force behind the realisation of shocking home truths about the nature of war.
Nearly all of the conflict poems in ‘Moon on the Tides’ look at naivety in some way whether they are retrospective or written as if providing a contemporary commentary.
‘Mametz Wood’ provides an example of retrospective thoughts on war. Sheers highlights the naivety of the soldiers interned in ‘Mametz Wood’ through his introduction of them as ‘the wasted young’. The use of ‘wasted’ here portrays the senseless loss of life and hints at some blame on the part of the soldiers themselves to have wasted their lives. This idea is further developed when Sheers writes, ‘they were told to walk, not run’. The concept of obeying orders blindly in the face of war reiterates the naivety and foolishness of the soldiers and war itself. While sympathetic to the ‘twenty men buried in one long grave’, there is also a distinct sense that Sheers is critical at their ignorance and lack of self-preservation.
The naivety shown in ‘Mametz Wood’ is portrayed alongside the idea that the soldiers were youthful in their behaviour when faced with death. Sheers depicts the ‘broken mosaic of bone linked arm-in-arm’, an image of corpses united in their fear and holding each other like children.
The concepts of naivety and youth are inextricably linked; the belief being that as we grow, we gain knowledge and the ignorance of childhood is lost. An idea that poets pick up on repeatedly when regarding war is that the soldiers fighting have not lost their naivety – are not really more than children at all.
‘At the Border, 1979’, while not about soldiers in particular, is deliberately written from the viewpoint of a child to convey this idea of the naivety of youth. In this poem, Hardi’s five-year-old self identifies the beauty of youth in her simplistic view of the world that enables her to see beyond the conflict. This view is epitomised by the line:
‘the autumn soil continued on the other side
with the same colour, the same texture.
It rained on both sides of the chain.’
Hardi conveys the futility of war with this line. Her use of pathetic fallacy (‘it rained on both sides’) shows the truth of the battle over land that she depicts; ultimately there is no difference between the two sides of the chain. This presentation of naivety is the antithesis of how it is normally employed by poets, it shows that the uncomplicated view of a child can teach soldiers and perpetrators of war an important lesson – that fighting is futile when there is no real difference between what you do possess and what you don’t.
Conversely, the soldiers depicted in ‘The Charge of the Light Brigade’ by Tennyson are naively wading into battle in the hope of gaining ground. Similarly to ‘Mametz Wood’, the soldiers’ naivety is shown through their compliance in following orders: ‘theirs not to make reply, theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die.’ While the history around this battle does absolve the soldiers of blame to an extent (they were betrayed by a senior officer who knew they would be ambushed), it is clear from the language Tennyson uses here that he feels some disdain for the ignorance of the ‘six hundred’. His implication that the outcome was clear from the outset is hinted at when he writes, ‘boldly they rode and well, into the jaws of death, into the mouth of hell.’ These morbid descriptions of stepping into the ‘mouth’ of a beast to be devoured imply to the reader that the soldiers are not prepared for what awaits them; the use of imagery relating to the mouth incites the idea that they will literally be consumed.
Another image of youthful naivety is conveyed in ‘Poppies’. ‘Poppies’ is the only poem in the collection to be written from the point of view of a soldier’s mother. Weir presents a mother who sees her son as a youthful and exuberant child rather than a capable soldier; he becomes ‘intoxicated’ with the prospect of war. This view of the son is obviously biased and skewed by a maternal viewpoint which is, arguably, also naïve. Weir depicts the mother ‘round[ing] up as many white cat hairs as [she] could’, highlighting the idea that she views her son’s appearance as the main focus going into a war; the smart and structured concept of army life is her only frame of reference. Equally, Weir may be presenting a mother who is the opposite of naïve – who is doing whatever she can to distract herself from the reality of what her child is going into.
In comparison to this glimpse of a civilian response to war, Owen, through ‘Futility’ conveys the naivety and blind optimism of those serving at the Front.
‘Move him into the sun –
Gently its touch awoke him once,’
Owen’s opening lines portray the hope of soldiers wanting to revive a soldier killed by exposure. While these lines present some optimism that the heat of the sun will be enough to restore life, the nostalgic tone of ‘its touch awoke him once’ also conveys the idea that perhaps the soldiers are not even really considering the situation fully, their minds are elsewhere, remembering ‘fields half-sown’.
When presented with their fallen comrade, the soldiers shown in ‘Futility’ turn to ‘the kind old sun’ for support, highlighting a childlike response that reflects their need for a sort of father figure for support. They create their own care-giver through the personification of the sun, almost returning to a time when humanity worshipped it as a God; a time when humanity itself was as its most naïve.
Arguably, E.E. Cummings’ anti-war poem ‘next to of course god america i’ is the most critical of the naivety of war and soldiers. Its faux-patriotism which leads into a more obvious indictment of the futility of war is not punctuated, perhaps to convey the speed at which the speaker changes his mind or, when considering the voice of Cummings himself, to show the manic nature of American jingoistic patriotism.
Cummings inclusion of ‘oh say can you see by the dawn’s early’ from the American national anthem is designed to epitomise the naivety of going to war. He is drawing attention to one of the key tools of manipulation employed by the military – the concept of patriotism and the beauty of dying for your country. This beauty he goes on to condemn when he writes:
‘why talk of beauty what could be more beaut-
iful than these heroic happy dead
who rushed like lions to the roaring slaughter
they did not stop to think they died instead’
The enjambment of ‘beautiful’ implies the speaker doubts himself or is too harrowed to even say the word in relation to this means of death – your reading of the word depends on your reading of the speaker. Regardless of which reading you adhere to, it is undeniable that by the time he gets to ‘they did not stop to think they died instead’ he is appalled at the prospect.
The naivety of dying for your country is indisputably bound up with the concepts of duty and patriotism. In many of the poems, the naïve figures are shown to be children or childlike in their views although in some cases this is a result of serving in the war and the impact it has had. In the face of death and fear, returning to a youthful or hopeful state can often seem like a form of protection from reality.
Miss. K. Thompson teaches at Emerson Park Academy.
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