82 Poetry for Students

An important aspect of Service’s style is the

generous use of dialogue. In “The Cremation of Sam

McGee,” many of the important parts of the story

are carried along by the spoken words of its two

characters, the unnamed narrator and Sam McGee.

And at one important moment even McGee’s corpse

seems to speak. In other verses, like “The Shooting

of Dan McGrew,” several speakers are active in

telling the tale. The use of speakers in this way de-

scends from the practice of Edgar Allan Poe, espe-

cially in his poem, The Raven.Poe uses both spo-

ken word and the thoughts of his narrator to tell the

story. The other speaker is, of course, the Raven.

Service has also been strongly compared to Rud-

yard Kipling and is sometimes called “The Cana-

dian Kipling.” Service adopted similar rhythmic and

rhyming approaches as well as the occasional use

of the italicized stanzas that are found in the poetry

of Kipling. Both poets were very conscious of the

language they used, often incorporating slang and

jargon in their poetry.

Service’s verse (he did not call his ballads “po-

ems”) is in the style and tradition of oral folk lore.

In this tradition the poet tells the story using sim-

ple language in catchy meter and rhyme scheme.

Despite the use of plain language, his characters

and their stories mythologize the adventure and

masculine vigor of life during the Klondike gold

rush. The narrator has given his word to Sam and

then endures severe hardships in order to keep his

word. The characters achieve, in the hands of Ser-

vice, a stature that belies their humble origins and

surroundings. They become icons of the north

woodsman who lived by a special code of honor

and duty to keep one’s word.

Service’s verses are marked by their playful

rhythms and unusual rhyme schemes. The rhyme

pattern of the present verse isabcb defeand the

meter is a lilting iambic pattern, with four and three

beats in alternating lines. An iamb is a two-sylla-

ble foot, with an accent on the second syllable; a

foot is a metrical unit consisting of two or three

syllables. The interesting aspect here is the occa-

sional inclusion of an anapest foot or two where

the story line needed the extra syllables. An anapest

foot is a three syllable foot with two unaccented

and one accented syllables. The first line is a good

example of this. “There are strange” (the anapest

foot) “things done” (the iambic foot) “in the mid-

night sun” (a second set of an anapest foot followed

by an iambic foot).

An obvious reflection of Service’s youth in the

Yukon is much reliance on images of the north

county, including the northern lights (the Aurora

Borealis), sparkling stars, scowling heavens, and

the sky seen through the smoke of a fire. But most

of the feel of the north is revealed through the con-

stant references to the cold—the cold that “stabbed

like a driven nail,” the cold that froze their lashes

shut, and the cold that froze the grinning, departed

Sam McGee on the way to the Lake.

But in contrast to this biting cold, the poem

also reflects on Sam’s home state, Tennessee, and

the warmth that Sam remembers there. Also there

is reference to that hottest of all places, Hell, where

Sam said he would “sooner live” than in the cold

northern parts of Canada. The last scenes, as the

narrator builds a huge fire into which he puts Sam

McGee’s frozen corpse, combine cold and hot: “It

was icy cold, but the hot sweat rolled / down my

cheeks.”

A tale of travel in the north woods would not

be complete without mention of the dogs that pull

the sleds. In this verse Service makes several ref-

erences to the huskies, who lie in circles to keep

themselves warm during the long, cold and windy

nights. The dogs howling is reminiscent of wolves

at night. Despite their fatigue, they are pushed on-

ward to help the narrator fulfill the promise made

to Sam to cremate his remains.

Service makes use of a pun on the word

“grisly” (calling to mind the grizzly bear) as he de-

scribes the narrator’s wait in the snow while the

The Cremation of Sam McGee

What

Do I Read

Next?

• Jack London’s short story “To Build a Fire” doc-
  uments the darker side of what can happen to
  someone who doesn’t follow the advice of the
  more experienced “sourdough.” Also, London’s
  Call of the Wildoffers another view on life
  mushing in the Yukon


• The story of a youth shipwrecked on an iceberg
  in the Arctic in 1757 with only a polar bear cub
  for a companion comes to life when Arthur Roth
  details seventeen-year-old Allan’s seemingly
  hopeless struggle for survival in The Iceberg
  Hermit.