And death shall have no dominion: Themes

Death as the Source of Life’s Value and Meaning

One of the key themes in Thomas’s poem revolves around the idea that life is made valuable and meaningful through death. This claim may seem paradoxical, given that the poem’s speaker explicitly—and repeatedly—asserts that “death shall have no dominion” (lines 1, 9, 10, 18, 19, and 27). Yet if death shall have no dominion over life, it isn’t because there is no such thing as death. Indeed, throughout the poem the speaker refers directly to “dead men” (line 2). Death shall have no dominion over life because it is through death that life gets its meaning. When understood from this vantage, it becomes possible to think of death not as the end of life, but as its beginning. As contradictory as that interpretation may sound, it makes sense from a logical point of view. If life derives its value and meaning from its brevity, and if death is the “source” of life’s brevity, then in a paradoxical way, death vitalizes life.

Life as Part of a Broader Dominion of Existence

One of the challenges of Thomas’s poem resides in the confusing way the speaker at once refuses death while simultaneously referencing the dead. In the opening stanza, for instance, the speaker conjures a vision of the naked skeletons of “dead men,” floating in a celestial void among a constellation of stars (lines 2–5):

Dead men naked they shall be one
With the man in the wind and the west moon;
When their bones are picked clean and the clean bones gone,
They shall have stars at elbow and foot.

When examined carefully, however, this passage offers a key to understanding the seeming contradiction of the speaker’s simultaneous acknowledgement and refusal of death. The speaker insists that, though no longer among the living, “dead men . . . shall be one / With the man in the wind and the west moon.” It may not be immediately evident what this means, but what is clear is the speaker’s claim that the dead men are still part of something greater than themselves: the cosmos. Even death cannot break this bond of unity with the universe at large. In this way, the speaker implies that, if death shall have no dominion over life, it’s because life belongs to the vast domain of existence. This domain may involve the living and dying of individual beings, but as a unified whole, existence persists indefinitely.

The Strength of the Human Spirit

Another reason that death shall have no dominion relates to the strength of the human spirit. The speaker introduces this theme most prominently in the second stanza, where they offer paradoxical images of tortured men whose bodies, though broken, nonetheless refuse to break (lines 13–17):

Twisting on racks when sinews give way,
Strapped to a wheel, yet they shall not break;
Faith in their hands shall snap in two,
And the unicorn evils run them through;
Split all ends up they shan't crack.

The term paradox refers to statement that initially seems logically inconsistent or absurd, yet which may be interpreted in a way that does make logical sense. Paradox arises in this passage through the “sinews [that] give way” yet simultaneously “shall not break,” and through the way “all ends” are “split . . . up” and yet “shan’t crack.” How can the victims of torture both be broken and not broken at the same time? The likely answer is that, even though their bodies may break down, the victims’ spirits remain resilient. Demonstrating such a refusal to yield, the speaker doesn’t simply affirm, once more, that “death shall have no dominion.” They also demonstrate the unbreakable strength of the human spirit.