Article

Death: The Beginning or The End

From the very early we learned and we have as certain that to be alive, besides human being has a natural cycle of life to travel, that (s)he has a certain time to inhabit this planet or be the human born, to live and to die, considering that some people are going earlier and others are going more lately. And it is in this last cycle – the death – that appear some questions: Where will we go? Is death the beginning of a new life, a transformation or is the end of everything? For the most of the people, it symbolizes a moment, a terrifying and mysterious phenomenon, provoking pain and fear that are basic feelings in this relationship with death.
There are cases that the pain of loss becomes so big and unbearable that is difficult to retake the life in a natural way. But the duration of that pain, its intensity and resolution will depend on as the human being tried or tries the life in all its physical, emotional, economical and social aspects. As says a popular dictation: “ fears more the death who more feared the life”.
We live in a materialistic, capitalist and individualist society that lives an incessant “race” in search of the eternal youth, once the idea of being young is seen as a metaphor of a long and healthy life.
In William Wordsworth’s poem “We Are Seven” it is interesting the vision of death. It is a poem whose main conviction is that God is present in the world and He permeates everything that exists and the objective of the human is to reach the union with the divine. The theme of the poem is the natural cycle of life: to be born, to live and to die, as well as the conscience and understanding of continuity of the existence through death.
It is a poem that appears two voices: a voice acted by a person that is not identified and another voice that belongs to a child. She is an 8-year-old child and she has a big family. She lives with the mother and the brothers in seven. From these seven, two are already dead (line21) and she considers them, in a certain way, alive, because they are part of her day-by-day, and she knows that in some way they continue existing. When serving of seasoning, food for plants and microorganisms, its mortal remains will be part of other living creatures, in different form and expression that they will give continuities to the cycle of the life, because in accordance to the Pantheism, all the beings and all the God existence, are conceived as a whole.
Little Maid, when questioned, remains firm in the certainly of that her brothers are living creatures, because, exactly deceased, they continue present in her life: in the accomplishment of daily activities, a simple supper, the tricks, that is exactly, under other aspects, the brothers continue closer to her; the death was not the reason to modify her daily routine of a child.
“We Are Seven” is a poem that speaks about death, of a form that celebrates the life, because until the death it is used as resource for the continuation of the existence, of the life in its varied forms and expressions. In Wordsworth’s poem, it has life in the fiction and action of a child, in the living colors of the tombs, in the trees, the forests etc:

A simple child
That lightly draws its breath
And feels its life in every limb.
(Verse 1 to 3)


[…]
Two of us in the church - yard lie
Beneath the church – yard tree.
(Verse 31 and 32)

[…]
“Their graves are green, they may be seen.”
(Verse 37)

The innocent little Maid maintains a friendly relationship and companionship with her dead brothers:

[…]
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.
(Verse 43 and 44)

With this, of course, all those actions and attitudes of little Maid of playing, of visiting and of eating with her dead brothers, demonstrate that they are part of her day, of her life and of the life of her family.
She doesn’t care if the time is good (sunny) or bad (snowy), what matter is to maintain the contact, to cultivate the friendship and to maintain a daily conviviality in a natural. Death, in this case, separated the physical body of the spiritual body, but it didn’t affect the love, the relationship and the friendship among her and her brothers: (Mainly because their body became elements of the nature)

“My stockings there I often knit,
My kerchief there I hem;
And there upon the ground I sit,
And sing a song to them.”
(Verse 41 to 44)

“Two of us in the church-yard lie,
My sister and my brother;
And in the church-yard cottage, I
Dwell near them with my mother.”
(Verse 21 to 24)

The Little Maid has freedom and space to play, as well as they try to be always in contact with nature. For the unknown voice, the brothers of little Maid are dead and they must be forgotten; therefore, already, they are not part of this world. It is not so reasonable that they are remembered and cited as if, still, were living creatures:

“But they are dead; those two are dead!
Their spirits are in heaven!”
“Twas throwing words away; for still.”
(Verse 65 to 67)

The stranger’s voice, in elapsing of the poem, tries to question her, to bring her the reason, his reason, that death is the end, that they left and they are in heaven (verse 62).

“You run about, my little Maid
Your limbs they are alive
If two are in the church- yard laid
Then ye are only five.”
(Verse 34 to 36)

At the beginning of the poem, the voice of the poem questions, what could know, this simple child, of rustic and woodland air, with eyes very fair, about death? And she demonstrated knowledge of death and she speaks calmly and calmly regarding that, without the smallest embarrassment, once she believes in death as continuation and transformation of life. She believes that her brothers are alive: “ Their graves are green, they maybe seen” (verse 37). Their mortal remains are there, buried, serving as fertilizer for trees, grams etc. In a certain way, under other aspects, besides her memory, they are alive. And when she says that they can be seen, we can have two interpretations: can be seen the graves that represent their death, the proof of the fact in itself, and it can be seen her dead brothers, representing life and its mutation cycle and transformation. And this concept of death, as continuity, is in accordance with Pantheism that defends that the unit is divine, a time that this until (God and all the beings) is conceived as a whole. The brothers of little Maid are part of this all, and as such continues belonging to her family. She looks for to emphasize this well, when answering several the same questions carried through for the unknown voice:

[…]
How many may you be?
How many? Seven in all”…
(Verse 14 e 15)


[…]
She answered, seven are we…
(Verse 18)

[…]
O Master! We are seven.
(Verse 64)

The presence of nature, in this poem, is very strong, once the Little Maid and her family live in harmony with the cycles of the nature, in an integrated way. In this case, their mortal remains serve as fertilizer, food for plants and trees contributing to the survival of the ecosystem, they end up being part of the nature; as Lavoisier said: In nature, nothing is lot, but is transformed. When doing some outdoors thing, the Little Maid is seeking integration and communion with the perfection – the nature:

“And often after sun-set, Sir,
When it is light and fair,
I take my little porringer,
And eat my supper there.”
(Verse 45 to 48)

[...]
“And when the ground was white with snow,
And I could run and slide,
(Verse 57 and 58)

It is a poem that detaches for the poet’s simplicity, the use of simple images associated to wisdom. In the case of this poem, the author used a child’s image to represent the condition of the human knowledge in what refers to death. The girl is described in an innocent way, pure as an angelical being:

Her hair was thick with many a curl
That clustered round her head.
(Verse 7 and 8)

Her eyes were fair, and very fair
(Verse 11)

Even with the whole innocence, characteristic of a child, the Little Maid knows about God and she has the perception of the nature and of the universe as divinity. She clearly sees well the continuation of the existence of her sister and her brother.

“The first that died was sister Jane,
In bed she moaning lay
Till God released her of her pain;
And then she went way.”

(Verse 49 to 52)

“We Are Seven” is an interesting poem. In it, we can find visions and opposite opinions about death, a theme that frequently sends us to the pain and loss, but we do have recanted at the poem , in figure by one eerie , embodying the reason , the fancy as of death as the end.

Trabalho de Pós Graduação - Literatura Inglesa e Norte Americana.
UFT - Universidade Federal do Tocantins.




REFERENCES:

WORDSWORTH, William. “We are Seven”. In: The Norton Anthology of English Literature.