19 pages • 38 minutes read
John McCraeIn Flanders Fields
Fiction | Poem | Adult | Published in 1915A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Historical Context: World War I and the Second Battle of Ypres (1915)
The First World War broke out on July 28th, 1914, and endured for four long years until a truce was finally declared on November 11th, 1918—a date that would later become an annual commemorative event known as Armistice Day, or Remembrance Day, in English-speaking countries. The war was fought between two sets of allies: the “Triple Entente” (France, Russia, Britain and its Commonwealth) and the “Triple Alliance” (Germany, Italy, and the Austro-Hungarian Empire), all of which were major European powers with vast territories and resources at their disposal.
While there had of course been countless armed conflicts before throughout history, this conflict became known as the First World War due to its truly global scale and its staggering death count: estimates of the total military and civilian death count often exceed 10 million, with tens of millions more injured, missing in action, or otherwise affected by the conflict. The war also saw major developments in military technology, such as the use of chemical weapons—especially the infamous “mustard gas,” that could blind and suffocate soldiers caught on the battlefield without a gas mask—and aerial bombardment. The war is also famous for its “trench warfare,” in which opposing forces spent much of their time living and fighting from a long series of deep ditches (or trenches) that usually left the soldiers exposed to the elements and living in deeply unhygienic conditions.
John McCrae served in the Canadian military as both Lieutenant-Colonel and army medic throughout World War I. “In Flanders Fields” was inspired by the Second Battle of Ypres, which lasted from April 22nd until May 25th, 1915 (See: Further Reading & Resources). As the battle’s name suggests, it took place in the Belgian town of Ypres, resulting in tens of thousands of casualties. One of the fallen was Lieutenant Alexis Helmer, a close friend of McCrae’s, who was killed at the beginning of May. Helmer was only 22 years old at the time of his death. McCrae visited Helmer’s gravesite shortly thereafter and was inspired by the sight of the poppies growing on the graves. It is widely believed that McCrae wrote “In Flanders Fields” on May 3rd, 1915, although he continued to revise the poem for several months before it appeared in print. The poem’s significance has since expanded beyond commemorating the dead of the Second Battle of Ypres alone; it has become one of the most famous works of World War I, turning the red poppy into a symbol of remembrance for all those who lost their lives during both of the World Wars.
Literary Context: The Poetry of World War I
War has always been one of the major themes in world poetry, but the poetry of World War I has become famous as one of the important bodies of work on the theme in the English-speaking world. Many of the young men who served in the armies were literate and educated, creating a situation in which autobiographical, first-person accounts of the conflict proliferated more easily than during the conflicts of earlier centuries. Due to the increased rates of literacy amongst the general populace during the 19th and into the 20th century, the readership for poetry, stories, and memoirs from the battlefield was likewise significant.
The attitude towards the conflict displayed by soldier-writers in their work could vary dramatically, especially as World War I wore on. In the early, heady years of the conflict, the taste both on and off the battlefield leaned heavily towards poetry that was sentimental and heroic in tone. Poems such as Rupert Brooke’s “The Soldier” (See: Further Reading & Resources) and McCrae’s own “In Flanders Fields” celebrated military exploits and presented the sacrifices made as both justified and worthwhile. A popular anthology, The Muse in Arms, appeared in 1917, featuring poetry written at the front that tended to lean pro-war in tone and themes.
As the years went on, however, the mood began to change as the casualties mounted and a definitive victory continued to prove elusive for either side. Soldier-poets such as Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen—who both served as officers at the front—began to exhibit a more critical and even angry approach to the war, denouncing the scale of loss and damage in a conflict many now regarded as futile. After the war’s end, literature that exposed the horrors of the conflict became increasingly popular and critically-acclaimed, with works such as Owen’s 1920 Poems collection, Robert Graves’s memoir Good-Bye to All That (1929), and Ernest Hemingway’s early novels The Sun Also Rises (1926) and A Farewell to Arms (1929) all helping to create the image of a “Lost Generation” left either obliterated or permanently traumatized by the conflict. In spite of this general shift of popular perception of the conflict, McCrae’s “In Flanders Fields” has endured as one of the most famous and widely-anthologized poems from World War I, serving as both a commemoration of those who died and as a testimony of the beliefs and ideals of many soldiers like McCrae.
