Night and Darkness (Symbol)
The bleakness of war is symbolized through the dark scene of dead bodies washing ashore. The bodies of the soldiers “sway and wander” during the night, symbolizing how mankind has moved away from its natural state through the artificial violence of warfare. Similarly, during nighttime the sailors are trapped “in the waters far under”—this haunting image symbolizes the tragic side and human costs of warfare. The poem’s narrative action begins in the morning, when the sailors have become washed ashore, illustrating the final, enduring impacts of the violence of warfare. The poem is positioned at the movement from nighttime (the darkness of warfare) to the morning (a period of grieving and reckoning with loss).
Ghostly Pencil (Symbol)
The quickly-fading inscriptions created by the “ghostly pencil” symbolize the anonymity and dehumanization produced by war. Like the deceased sailors themselves, the pencil is “ghostly” and removed from the human realm, contributing to the elegiac nature of the poem. However, the unknown person’s attempt at memorializing the sailors by writing “unknown seaman” with the ghostly pencil is, the poem implies, futile. The rain is already washing away the inscriptions, turning the purple ink to a faded blue. The impermanence of pencil markings on the beach symbolizes how nature renders them the forgotten dead. Similarly, the writing of the pencil “wavers and fades,” further pointing to the inability of words to capture the depths of war’s devastation. The symbol of the ghostly pencil is an example of “meta-commentary”—the pencil is a symbol for the poem itself, which attempts to memorialize the concept of individual sailors but also demonstrates how war renders these sailors’ sacrifices unknown and useless.
Water (Symbol)
Water is a recurring symbol in the poem that represents the ultimately fleeting nature of life and the smallness of humanity when contrasted with the unchanging natural world. The poem begins with the dead sailors submerged in “waters far under,” using the water to represent how the sailors have lost their lives and their connection to humanity. Instead, the sailors have become lost (they “sway and wander”) and obscured within the vastness of the ocean waters. Even once they are ashore and have been memorialized with driftwood crosses, the sailors’ memory and identity is still eroded by water. The water washes away the inscriptions written on the crosses, robbing the sailors of their memorials. This again demonstrates how the vastness of nature dwarfs humanity’s petty disputes, such as military conflicts.
Beach Sand (Symbol)
The sand symbolizes the disintegration of individual soldiers' identities into the wartime unit. Beach sand is the entity that offers the resting ground for the dead seamen washing ashore. The sailors look identical, covered in their sandy graves; they have lost their identities and, regardless of whether they were enemies or allies, "the sand joins them together." The anonymous person attempts to cover the sailors' bodies with this sand, but loose, fine sand is ephemeral and can be washed out with the tides. The sand thus becomes a symbolic backdrop for the anonymous sailors' senseless deaths. Like identical grains of sand, the sailors have become unknown deceased bodies.
Landfall (Symbol)
The reference to “landfall” in Line 17 symbolizes the ultimate outcome of warfare—death. The sailors sought “landfall” as part of their military mission. Their goal was to arrive at the Gulf of Arabs and commence battle in service of the broader war. However, Slessor turns this goal into a dark and ironic image. The sailors have indeed made landfall, but they are deceased. In fact, the beach that was the goal of their mission is now their final resting place. As used in Line 17, “landfall” refers not to the sailors’ literal arrival on the beach, but their passage into the afterlife. The sailors are “enlisted on the other front,” going to fight another metaphorical battle as they pass into death. These sailors went “in search” of a destination, but are ultimately robbed of their lives in the process, demonstrating the harmful consequences of war.
