Hello friends today we are discuss this question, the question is -Discuss ‘Asleep in the Valley’ as an anti-war poem.
The theme of the poem ‘Asleep in the Valley’ is the futility and meaninglessness of war. Rimbaud, being himself a soldier had witnessed the horror of war, and in this poem he has expressed strong anti-war sentiment by revealing the pity of war. The poem presents before us a picture of a young soldier who is resting in the small, green valley amongst the flowers and the humming insects. With one hand on his chest, the soldier lies open-mouthed. There is a gentle childlike smile on his lips. This serene picture suddenly turns into a brutal one, when we find the ‘two red holes’ in his side. The bullet marks at the side of his body sets the soldier in contrast with the charming pastoral landscape. The beauty of Nature is destroyed by the cruel violence of warfare. The young soldier’s life came to an end before it was fully bloomed. The recurrent image of the sun is perhaps the reminder of its incapability to revive the dead soldier with its warmth. The valley signifies the transformation of the landscape into a valley of death. Though Rimbaud does not explicitly lend his voice in the protest against war in the poem with all the symbols and images used, he tries to show that death is the inevitability of war. The fourteen line poem is a perfect lyric which actually presents war as an organised butchery of young innocent lives.