Question

Write a summary of the poem A Question?

Answer 1

A voice said, Look me in the stars

And tell me truly, men of earth,

If all the soul-and-body scars

Were not too much to pay for birth.

No need to do a verse-by-verse analysis — this is the entire poem. And despite its small size, it says a lot. At its face value, the poem can be read and understood fairly easily. How might one weigh the tragedies of life against its potential and its opportunities? If the human soul originates in a place where there is no pain — God, Heaven, or whatever it is you believe in, if you do believe in those concepts — then how can the silence of nonexistence compare to the pains to life? It’s a highly philosophical and very abstract question.

Who the voice in the stars in is unidentified; were the “m” in “me” capitalized, we could safely assume the voice is God, but it seems likely this is intentionally kept ambiguous. Still, to assume it is God or a God-like figure would make sense as a concept, but the point of the poem is, as the title suggests, the question itself. Are all the soul-and-body scars too much to pay for the life that deals them? And, in a much darker image, what if the answer to the question is “no?”

Answer 2

what is the question