Question

When the speaker starts thinking about his own death, why does he imagine what a random villager will say about him (95-116)? Why doesn't he tell us about his own life in his own words?

Answer 1

Answer:

The speaker  in the poem "Elergy written in a country church yard", starts thinking about his own death because he was looking at graves in the church yard and thought about those buried there, and the kinds of life the dead people led. The speaker reminded the readers that death is inevitable.

Explanation:

In the Elergy written in country church yard by Thomas gray, in the poem, the speaker imagines that the people buried in the church yard are poor farmers, He walked through the church yard and examined graves of the villagers, He was concerned that when someone dies, people forgets about him or her and feels that people buried in the court yard have been forgotten and did not want such to happen to him when he dies.

The speaker starts to imagine what a random villager will say about him when he dies and a stranger passes his graveyard just as he did at church yard and the thought freaked him out. He imagines what the villager will say about him, then he finally believed that the villager will resolve to point out the epitaph engraved on his tombstone to the stranger to read for himself. therefore he resolved to write his own epitaph at the end of the poem.

The main theme in the poem is the inevitability of death.