Summary of No Men Are Foreign by James Kirkup

Hello Everyone and Welcome to Beaming Notes. Today we are going to discuss the Line by Line Summary of No Men Are Foreign by James Kirkup. Voice-Over and Narration : Anushree Sen Video Editing : Sukhamita Paul SUMMARY: Stanza 01: The poem consists of 20 lines in total. These lines are not divided into stanzas. However, they are divided into meaningful segments here for the purposes of this summary in order to make the poem easier to understand and follow. This poem is written in the first person, hence we can assume that the speaker of the poem is the poet himself. In these lines, the poet tells his readers that men are not different from each other simply on the basis that they hail from separate countries. They may fight for the army of this nation or that one, but underneath the uniform, they are all essentially similar. Your opponent army’s soldiers live and breathe just as you do. Most fights between the men of one country and another result from disputes over which piece of land belongs to which nation. However, all the land on earth is the same. Moreover, every man will have to lie in the earth at one time or the other. That is, all men have to die and all pieces of land are potential graveyards in that they can occasion a war for their occupation. Stanza 02: In these lines, the poet provides further evidence of the unity of man. He says that those who hail from countries other than our own also depend, like we do, on sun and air and water for their survival. They too have seen periods of peace and periods of war. In times of peace, they have had the assurance of a square meal every day, just like us. Again just like us, war has been a long winter to them, when food is scarce and every moment brings with the dread of an approaching famine. They look just like us and are descended from the same ancestors as we are. Stanza 03: In this stanza, the poet entreats his readers to keep in mind the fact that our opponents sleep and wake just like we do, and follow the same pattern in life as us. Every human being has an inner resource of strength that they can use to help their fellow beings. However, that resource can only be unlocked by following the path of love. Only when we love someone can we stand up for them. That is why it is absolutely necessary for every man to love his fellow beings without creating divisions amongst them. Despite the differences between various nations, there is one thing that they all have in common. The common people live the same kind of life everywhere. Therefore, you can recognize the presence of that life no matter where you travel in this wide world. Stanza 04: In this stanza, the poet protests against the efforts of military and religious groups that encourage us to wage wars against those of other persuasions. The poet believes that those groups are misguiding their followers. They are asking their followers to hate people without realizing that it is our own brothers that we must hate. This is a form of self-destruction for the poet. Any hatred that we may harbor for any member of the human race is tantamount our betrayal towards the species and our condemnation of its future. If we kill people of any other nation, we are in fact endangering the human species as a whole and its survival on earth. Want to learn more about this poem? Go to www.beamingnotes.com or click on the links below.