Death
Very few poets enjoy such a reputation and fame based almost solely on a single world. If Gray had not written “Elegy in a Country Churchyard” there is a good possibility his name would not be found in literature textbooks across the world. But he did write that poem and it did seal his reputation. More than that, however, it is also quite representative of the theme that dominates those others poems. Being the poet he was, Gray chose quite wisely when he chose to title his most famous poem an elegy. Much of his verse can effectively be described as elegiac. And why not? Things might well have turned out quite differently if Gray’s eleven siblings had survived infancy into adulthood alongside him. Perhaps, in fact, he might have been too busy helping to raise them to write so much poetry with “Ode” in the title. His very first poem was titled “Ode on Spring” and its completion coincided with news of the death of his closest friend. That Gray’s poetry is obsessed with death seems almost a mandate; anything else seems illogical.
The Quality of Mortality
Perhaps it is too simplistic to attribute to Thomas Gray an obsession with death as a theme of his poetry. For within his odes and elegies can always be found a questioning toward the very concept of mortality and what it really means to say one exists. In many poems that are framed as a thematic analysis of the effects of loss and grief, Gray at some point or at some level seeks to find a meaning for mortality. “Hymn to Adversity” is the strongest and most complete and precise example of this search for a meaning as the poem reminds the reader that everybody is subject to adversity in life, but that those who learn from that adversity increase the quality of whatever mortal time frame they have left.
Isolation and Alienation
Over the course of two short years, Thomas Gray declined the offer of a position as secretary to Earl of Bristol and the offer to be named England’s Poet Laureate. He was intensely private man who established deep and often lifelong friendships with a very selected few, but was not a man who sought out the company of crowds. Surrounded by so much death and loss, many turn to others to fill that absence. Gray belonged to the company of men who sought solace aside from social discourse interaction and that sense of his isolation and alienation from others is manifested throughout much of his poetry as recurring them. His most famous poem can be interpreted as a search for identity on one’s own ground and apart from the perspective of how others view you and that sense of self is a dominant one that serves as the fuel that powers the engine of exploration of what it means to be alienated and what are the real consequences of isolation.
Class Conflict
Thomas Gray is often looked at as writing poems that speak for the common man. The rejection of the offer to serve as secretary to an Earl speaks to a lifelong disenchantment with England's aristocracy and his most famous poem is also often interpreted as a shout-out for the common man against the trappings of England's class system.
