Conscientious Objector

In “Conscientious Objector,” death is anthropomorphized, or described as if it was a human. There is one moment where death could be seen as an animal, or animal-like: When the speaker says, “With his hoof on my breast” (Line 7), the pronoun “his” can refer to both the horse that death rides and death itself. The he/him pronouns throughout the poem refer to the character of Death, whose name is capitalized. In the previous sentence, the possessive pronoun “his” in “his whip” (Line 6) clearly refers to a human, or human-like, figure who rides and whips the horse. Additionally, horses can be referred to using he/him pronouns, and the gender of the horse that death rides is not revealed before this point in the poem.

However, the rest of the poem clearly characterizes death as human. Death rides a horse and is described as a businessman. Millay describes death as having “business” (Line 3), and twice repeats the word “business”—in front of two separate locations—when it is only grammatically necessary to once include the word. Millay’s characterization of death as a businessman is developed with the diction “pay-roll” (Line 8).