The tone of the poem quickly changes to anger. We are shown this through persona’s word choice when he describes the sun rising for a new day as “remorseless amber”. This connotes that the Elder believes God is remorseless and does not care about his actions. The persona doubts God and begins to question God directly, “Have we done ill, I ask?” This shows the persona does not understand what we, as humans, have done to deserve such a tragedy.
Moreover, when Crichton Smith uses the metaphor “cold, splayed insect bodies” to describe the men floating in the water, we are led to believe the persona thinks God does not care for us as individuals. The clever dehumanisation of these men is effective because it is the comparison of men to insects. The persona believes that God thinks we are all so insignificant, killing a man is no different to killing a fly. The persona’s obvious disgust at God’s indifference allows the reader to feel pathos for the Elder, who has doubts in his faith, and therefore doubts his own way of life, and gradually loses his faith in God.
The persona then shows us his feelings towards God before and after the catastrophic event. “I have seen your church solid, this is not.” This suggests the Elder used to view God as dependable and strong but his religion is now unreliable and he is confused and angered by this. The persona also adds, “I have known you God, not as he playful one but the black thunderer from the hills. “ This deepens our understanding of the persona’s emotions because his once selfless, loving God is now vengeful and a traitor in his eyes, which is the antithesis of his previous belief.
The climax of the poem, when the persona loses all faith in God is shown through the subtle word choice of “I kneel from you”. It is effective because “kneel” has connotations of praying so for the persona to kneel away from God he is completely rejecting his beliefs and faith in God as a result of God’s indifference to us as individuals. The Elder believes God is remorseless and feels no sympathy towards our losses.
Crichton Smith effectively conveyed the main theme loss of faith through the portrayal of the Elder’s experience of discovering the bodies of 200 men. He cleverly used the techniques of imagery and word choice to convey the main incident.