Essay Questions

What is Thomas Gray’s ideological message in “The Fatal Sisters: An Ode?”

Thomas Gray accentuates the rifeness of the patent mortality. To illustrate, Thomas Gray writes, “Fate demands a nobler head;/Soon a king shall bite the ground./Long his loss shall Erin weep,/ Ne'er again his likeness see;/ Long her strains in sorrow steep,/ Strains of immortality.” Although the king is nobility, he is not pardoned from impermanence. Mortality is unanimous; thus, the “Strains of mortality” cannot be scrapped.

Identify the dominant fragments of adversity that make it burdensome for humanity-“Hymn to Adversity”

Thomas Gray writes, “With thund'ring voice, and threat'ning mien,/With screaming Horror's funeral cry,/Despair, and fell Disease, and ghastly Poverty.” Adversity is multidimensional for it is attributed to bereavement, unhappiness, ailments and paucity. Accordingly, adversity is a malign actuality that cuts across races, nations, and social classes. An individual could deal with manifold fragments of adversity instantaneously.

How does Thomas Gray foreground the permanence of death? [Epitaph On A Child]

Thomas Gray asserts, “A fairer flower will never bloom again.” The ‘fairer flower’ denotes a young child who will never propagate (‘bloom again’) to mellowness owing to his/her precipitate death. Accordingly, death destabilizes auspicious thriving.