How would you personaly interpret In Flanders Fields?

Question

A war poem the text is below:

In Flanders Fields
by John McCrae, May 1915

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.


Please Help

Answer 1

During WW1 poppies flowered all over the land where the fighting had been taking place - as they do in any recently disturbed soil. For that reason, we British still wear poppies in our buttonholes in November to remember the dead. The crosses are figurative, marking the places where millions of men died. The lark is a symbol that however awful man is to man, nature still rules. The second stanza makes it clear that the dead who fell in battle are talking - they point out that until they were killed they were just men like any other men and they shared all the emotions the living still feel. They ask the living to continue the fight and they pass on a metaphorical torch, saying that they can not rest easy in their graves if the living do not continue the battle. I don't like this last stanza, as it does encourage young men to go on and kill other young men, merely because they are the foe. The cause is thought to be a noble one - hence the reference to the torch which is being handed on. Perhaps the best way to have kept faith with the dead would to have been to arrange an honourable peace in order that others did not have to die and the world be spared a century of conflict. The poem was written in 1915 when perhaps a few were still all 'gung ho' about the war. Read the poems of Wilfred Owen (who was killed in the last days of the fighting) to get a different perspective

Answer 2

Thank you for listing the poem. I was born in the Flanders and lived there during the second war. There is a museum , a fabulous one in Ypres Belgium which shows us what is was like in vivid details.
Outside there is a memorial to the British soldiers lost there and every night, without exception there are buses coming to the site and the British people return with wreaths made of poppies. They are young and old and they probably no longer know relatives or friends who left their lives in Belgium but they still come to honor them and taps is being plaid at 8 pm. Poppies still grow in Flander fields but under them is the earth and therein are all the memories. The sounds of guns, the cries for help, the smell of death. It is all still there but the Belgians , the old ones such as I, remember the liberation and the heroes in 2 wars. I do hope that these heroes do sleep while the poppies grow.

Answer 3

1 - Just a statement of grief over the futility of WWI - the horrendous death, the massacres... He wrote this after his friend was obliterated by an artillery shell - in twenty minutes at his graveside.

2 - a challenge to subsequent generations to continue to fight for freedom from tyrants, not to be complacent so that their sacrifice would not be in vain