Question

Explain and discuss the themes in the poem.

Answer 1

The poet has artfully woven in diverse themes into the poem. He speaks of Man’s Inhumanity to Man. War represents the worst form of human behavior and its cruelty to our fellow beings.: The skull Peterkin finds, as well as those that Kaspar regularly unearths while plowing, are mute testimony to the truth of “Man’s inhumanity to man” , a phrase originated by poet Robert Burns. The poem implies that the perpetrators of war cannot or will not suppress wayward ambitions that provoke a violent response. The children—as yet uncorrected by adult thinking—readily perceive war for what it is.

The poet also hints at Kaspar’s lack of curiosity as opposed to curiosity depicted by the children. After finding the skull, Peterkin immediately asks what it is. Kaspar tells him  that it is part of the remains of a soldier who died at Blenheim. Wilhelmine then asks Kaspar to describe the war and explain its causes. Kaspar can describe what the war was like at Blenheim, but he cannot explain why the belligerents went to war. Nor does he seem curious about the causes. All that matters to him is that Austria and England won a glorious victory.

Kaspar displays a sense of complacency in the face of the horrors of war. He unquestioningly accepts the loss of innocent women and children in the Battle of Blenheim as one of the prices of the glorious victory. His complacent attitude is not unlike that of modem politicians who dismiss the deaths of innocent civilians in arenas of war by referring to them with the impersonal phrase “collateral damage.”