Housman

An Analysis of Housman’s “Is my team plowing” Thesis: In Housman's "Is My Team Plowing", the lyrical speaker discusses how life goes on after death. Housman uses quotation marks and play on words to convey the guilt that that the living feels for moving on after a loved one dies. Main Topics: I. Format of the poem (a) Housman uses the questions and answers of the speaker to show that life continues normally after …

…also feel guilty to enjoy such pleasures of life while their friend misses life. (b) The poem is most likely untitled, and so the first line of the poem was used to name the poem. III. Literary devices (a) Housman uses the play on words to show that the speaker is not only lying (sleeping) with his dead companion’s wife, but also lying to him by using the word, “lie” with a double denotation.