Conscientious Objector

Millay draws upon traditional symbolism of death, characterizes death as human, and associates untimely death with war. Death as a figure on horseback appears in many different works of art and literature. For instance, the Bible includes death riding a pale horse; he is one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse in the book of Revelations. Pre-Christian Irish mythology includes the Dullahan—the headless horseman—as an embodiment of the god Crom. Millay turns these looming supernatural figures into a man who has to take his horse “out of the stall” with a “clatter on the barn-floor” (Line 2). This evacuates some of the mystique of death, casting him as a more humanlike figure.

Death maintains some of his imposing presence in Millay’s poem. He is a threatening figure: He whips the speaker and places a hoof on their breast. Still, a human could perform these violent acts. Millay’s characterization of death is unlike the horseman who carries his own head or the horseman as a skeletal, inhuman figure. She uses language associated with war to characterize death as a war criminal. Death seeks locations, maps, spies, passwords, and plans. The combination of humanizing death, such as describing him as someone who could use a “leg up” (Line 5) to mount his horse, and describing him with martial, or war-related, diction illuminates war as a human endeavor to increase untimely death.