Louis MacNeice, a renowned Irish Poet, was born in 1907, and is described as one of the

brightest and talented poets of the twentieth century.

During the Second World War, MacNeice, as well as others of the time, were concerned
about the growing threats of the Communist and Fascist regimes of the World.

Prayer before Birth, written in 1944, amid the 1944 London Blitz, is unique in that the
speaker is an unborn child still in his mother’s womb. The child, not yet corrupted by the
world, has an awareness of what awaits him on the other side. As a result of this
awareness, the child prays to a higher power. In the end, the child chooses death over
corruption, and thus the serious and grave tone of the poem is emphasized.

He then goes on to criticize and to a certain extent threaten the communist and Fascist
leaders of the world when he says ”Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
Come near me”. Here he calls Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin a beast, a devil that thinks he
can do whatever he wants.

MacNeice ends the poem in one long sentence, asking God to give him “strength against
those who would freeze my humanity….would make me a cog in a machine”. Here he
refers to Hitler and it summarizes his fears towards Fascism – that is, what would happen
to him if Britain looses the war. The final line is by far the shortest, and this bluntness
adds a certain shock value to the entire stanza. The fetus asks that if God cannot give him
the strength to beat Hitler, then “otherwise kill me.” His fear of communism is such that
he would rather have the speaker of the poem, the fetus, aborted than to be brought into
this terrible world to suffer and withstand such incredible pain.

It is easy to see that MacNeice seems quite paranoid in the way he looked at the world,
but this is understandable considering the circumstances - he was deeply affected by the
political events of the 1930's and by the Second World War and perhaps that’s why he
chose to write this poem in such a grim fashion, so much so that he would rater die than
live under Fascist rule. Perhaps he displays an attitude held by many British people that
they would rather die than live under Hitler and his Fascism. We think that if we were to
be placed in their shoes, then we would all agree with that view.

Doom and despair dehumanize man

The monosyllabic diction adds cold harshness to the sensitive nature of the words and is
as shocking as it is direct. This helps to create a sense of extreme desperation where it
appears that the fetus does not want to come out into the world outside the womb.
Moreover, the details of this world are described in powerful and graphic nature with
increasingly unpleasant imagery that builds up in force as the stanzas continue, with each
adding more and more unpleasant details and contrasts.
The idea that people are often corrupted and manipulated into wrong doing is present
throughout the poem especially in stanzas 4 &5.

One of the most important messages that MacNeice tries to convey is that people try to
limit ones freedom and MacNeice draws our attention to this in stanza 2, “I fear that the
human race with tall walls wall me’, where it suggests that creativity and freedom of
speech is being confined, which is of utmost importance to MacNeice as a poet. The level
of exaggeration here is modest and this was most certainly brought out by WWII, as
Fascism and Communism seemed to be on the rise all over world.

In the fourth and fifth stanzas, he points out to us that we are often manipulated and
corrupted by others in power into wrong doing, when “old men lecture me, bureaucrats
hector me” to commit “murder by the means of my hand, my death when they live me”.
He then starts saying how all kinds of people are out to get him. This another occasion in
the poem where it seems that MacNeice is becoming more and more paranoic.