John Clares Multi-faceted Poem Death: Labour, Tyranny and Karma

Helmi Dana Bagti Airan (120222415460)

This paper will be discussing one of John Clares poems entitled Death. We are going
to take a closer look at the poem and raise few questions about it. In spite of the fact that the
title of the poem concerns much about the spiritual process, we are trying not to see it from that
view, because most of the people would consider it religious upon seeing the title, but rather,
we will be discerning the social reality which is embodied within each line in each stanza of
the poem. I strongly assume that the author attempted to give his readers a picture of the
existing reality where social hierarchy remained dominant amongst the society. There was
likely to be such a power abuse imposed by a higher-rank class on to daily life, which
eventually gave rise to the whole society.
Id like to start off by giving a brief description of the writers life as I believe it will be
much a help to describe either intended or unintended meaning of the poem. He is an English
poet born in 1793. His literary works are mostly dominated by stories of life. He was a son of
a casual farm labourer. He was not from a very well-off family. Upon the enactment of acts of
enclosure came into force, everything just changed the way he saw the world. People who were
so much reliant upon the farming had to see their lives being deprived. He recorded and put all
of the occasions into poems which he vividly composed and through which, readers are able to
see inside or maybe guess what is on his mind.
Death in fact tells us about what happened in the past which is by Clares accounts.
Something he wanted his readers to see is that whatever human beings do, regardless how
aspiring they are, will eventually lead to one final end which he called death. When all
mankind is obsessed with that goal, or at least by doing what s/he should not do, he was asking
what the point of it is. We can check this out from the first to the fourth line of the first stanza
of the poem:
Why should mans high aspiring mind
Burn in him with so proud a breath,
When all his haughty views can find
In this world yields to death?

It simply indicates that the writer slightly had a go at what was happening at that time
and on which people had a burning desire to thrive. Yet, the author feels that it is not worth an
effort because what we do will yield to death. It seems to me that it is full of hopelessness, yet
we have to go further by taking a look at the rest of the poem, and perhaps we can find a piece
of information for an assistance.
When we are making an attempt to see the poem in details, there is always more than
one understanding about it. Cilliers (2005) does not think that there is agreement upon criteria
which can count as meaningful knowledge. Thus it also applies to our understanding about this
particular poem, but I want to touch on the reality on which this poem is built.
The second thing that crossed my mind, and thus can best exemplify an alternative
meaning of the poem is that the writer is likely to be cynical about high-ranked classes who he
witnessed and believed to have allegedly imposed power upon daily life, especially that of
people around him. As mentioned earlier that the background of the writer which comes from
a labour class, this probably makes sense. Most of the authors literary works are about the
same issue, which is tyranny and their power abuse.
Referring to the first meaning, however, I am mostly interested in the third alternative
meaning which I am going to unveil. This is about action-reaction in scientific sense. Why I
mention this theory which is mostly used in different areas, such as science, is because the
author, and can be best exemplified by the title of the poem itself, condemns those so-called
high-rank class for power abuse and those who commit such a crime would eventually end up
dying.
Interestingly, the author does not distinctly reveal the meaning, but instead, he gets
more actors involved in the poem regardless their backgrounds.

The fair, the brave, the vain, the wise,

The rich, the poor, the great, and small,
Are each but worms anatomies
To strew his quiet hall
Herein there lies binary oppositions: the rich the poor, the great the small, etc. It
seems to me that when the author puts these elements into one unity, we can have the authors
depiction of the social hierarchy on the one hand, and him being cynical about the dictatorship
on the other hand. This multi-layered meaning of the poem composed by Clare signals that the

author not only wants to show the existing truth, but trying to go against it by promoting
condemnation that he believed to be rampant.
Common belief would say that this poem is thoroughly about spiritual process and all
the mankind will come back to Him regardless who they are. I approve of the latter, but this,
again, is not completely about that.
The next thing I have to stress out is that the author also slightly talks about labour. I
have already mentioned that the authors background is that he is from a labour family whose
father was a farm labourer. I can just make an assumption that there is tendency for the author
to include labour force by virtue of the realities he was faced with. In the past there is such a
big gap which categorises people and makes one person different from another judging by
where you came from.
It is staggeringly different from what happens today, just as what Rubery (2011) states
that the present social model is to decommodify labour which results in people not going to
work and also to grant equal rights to humanity. I can hardly say and confirm that we no longer
deal with such rights discrimination in our society, but at least it is way more improving that
in the past decades where rights abuse remained rampant uncontrollably.
It is quite clear that the author explicitly includes labour in the Death poem because
there is inequality and people on the throne, he believed, had committed petty crime against
humanity by severely abusing power for the sake of their benefit. It is best exemplified by the
following line:
Theres nought can bribe his honest will
He stops the richest tyrants breath
And lays his mischief still

To the best of my knowledge, a number of farm labourers increased significantly in the

past because people, especially those of the high-rank class, employed low-paid farmers to
fulfil the demand for the growing food consumption which notoriously had them cut down
trees to grow some plants, such as rice, wheat, etc. This led to the society grouping in which
farmers and their families had to be considered low-class, although they had some plots of land,
whereas the king and his/her servants lived in a glamorous life classified as the number one
class and could beat anyone who s/he might not like. One might say that this is a common
depiction of the king or emperor, but we cannot be hundred percent sure that this is an absolute

truth because not every king in the world abused their power. We are still able to listen to a
story about a king who lived happily with his people, yet what we see in this is the contrary.
I will revisit the previous statement which states that the author condemns the highrank class for their power abuse. To the best of my knowledge and after reading the poem
thoroughly, I find that there is link between those aspects I mentioned before. Again it is
action-reaction theory I decided to use to give a brief depiction of the whole story of the poem.
The intention of the author to use death may symbolise the punishment and to give such a
horrific impression of the consequences any tyrants have to pay for every action people dislike.
Such impression will give the guilty party a feeling of embarrassment with no pretence.
Compared to what is happening today, we can see that the poem is still somewhat relevant in
some senses. People who have done something bad to others, or may have put poor people at
a distinct disadvantage are unlikely to care what society has been holding on to, i.e. belief
system and norms. They tend to take everything for their benefit although it has to be stealing
others rights.
Clare implicitly describes these people as blood-purchased thrones because they take
humans rights away without having so much concern about others life. There is nothing more
disgusting than seizing the humans rights. This is what Clare tries to say.
The question that I ask here, and probably every reader may have, is why the author has
to use death as a symbol of punishment for tyrants who abuse their power. This is of a great
significance and likely to be a demanding answer that we will get. Due to the fact that the
author lived about two centuries ago or probably more, the superstitious issues had been of
interest and it is not surprising because most of other notable literary works were written in the
same theme.
Death was the main weapon which ubiquitously appeared in some genres from the old
medieval century, especially the literary works whose writers are mostly European. The black
theme and turning the spotlight on the issues of daily life, including the kingdom, are some
things we mostly find from this age. By using death to give such a causal-chain impression,
and in this case we call it as karma because it is action-reaction theory that I revisited, the
object of the poem who is the target can be put against it the reality that the author and other
people would believe and agree on.
In spite of death being described as the central point of this poem, I am personally
certain that there is an alternative meaning and to find the meaning, we have to look back on
the authors life background which proves to be the framework of most of his literary works.

As a matter of fact, we can disentangle the less-talked about point from the poem; one of which
is the farm labour.
Action-reaction theory or in a merely religious view, karma is everything which can
happen because we have had it happen just the way it does. It can be described in the sense that
people who in the past did something either bad or good, or people who used to make a mess
will have to pay for or gain the result of what they have done. There are still a lot of beliefs in
the world that give so much concern to this issue because karma (or action-reaction in a more
scientific sense) gives a kind of rule to the way of human beings live in the world and it can be
a life cycle because society believe that what you see today may differ from what you will see
tomorrow. It indicates, for example, that a ruler who governs the society may be dethroned
tomorrow, yet it is still unforeseen though.
Meanwhile those who do good deeds may redeem their kindness and that is the
principal of the karma. In Clares poem Death, we can consider it a multi-faceted poem as a
result of the meaning, both the intended and unintended, that it creates within. Thus I can sum
up by saying that the Death is not merely about the spiritual aspect which common people
would assume after reading thoroughly, but it can recount the past events which might have
been experienced by the author himself and some of the meanings that we have already
discussed touch upon the labourer, tyranny and action-reaction or in a religious perspective,
karma.

References

Cilliers, P. (2005). Complexity, deconstruction and relativism. Theory, Culture & Society,
22(5), 255-267. doi:10.1177/0263276405058052

Rubery, J. (2011). Reconstruction amid deconstruction: or why we need more of the social in
European social models. Work, Employment and Society, 25(4), 658-674.
doi:10.1177/0950017011419718