Why does sam mcgee want to be cremated

Service decided to move on, and he left the Yukon. In , after working for a year as a correspondent for the Toronto Star , which sent him off to cover the Balkan Wars, Service settled in France. He married a Parisian girl, Germaine, and they had a daughter, Iris.

He continued to write poetry and novels, some of which were made into silent movies. Service worked as a stretcher bearer and ambulance driver in the First World War. After the war, he returned to Paris, wintered in Nice, and continued to write, mostly suspense thrillers. He hobnobbed with some of the great writers of his generation: H.

Ballads of a Bohemian was published in He was in his 60s when the Second World War broke out and he moved his family to the safety of California, though he did his part for the war effort, reciting his poetry—he was always a fine dramatic reader—to soldiers in U. Army camps.

After the war, Service returned to Paris, though he continued to travel, wintering in Monte Carlo and Monaco, where he lived on and off from until his death in There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil [1] for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge [2] of Lake Lebarge [3] I cremated Sam McGee.

Now Sam McGee was from Tennessee, where the cotton blooms and blows. On a Christmas Day we were mushing our way over the Dawson trail. He crouched on the sleigh, and he raved all day of his home in Tennessee; And before nightfall a corpse was all that was left of Sam McGee. Now a promise made is a debt unpaid, and the trail has its own stern code. In the days to come, though my lips were dumb, in my heart how I cursed that load. In the long, long night, by the lone firelight, while the huskies, round in a ring, Howled out their woes to the homeless snows— O God!

Some planks I tore from the cabin floor, and I lit the boiler fire; Some coal I found that was lying around, and I heaped the fuel higher; The flames just soared, and the furnace roared—such a blaze you seldom see; And I burrowed a hole in the glowing coal, and I stuffed in Sam McGee. There are strange things done in the midnight sun By the men who moil for gold; The Arctic trails have their secret tales That would make your blood run cold; The Northern Lights have seen queer sights, But the queerest they ever did see Was that night on the marge of Lake Lebarge I cremated Sam McGee.

Until the last verse, it tells a grisly, almost Gothic story of two friends mushing their way along the Dawson Trail, moiling for gold. The main—and title—character is sick and, convinced he is dying, asks his friend to cremate him.

A native of Tennessee, Sam simply cannot survive in such a harsh and forbidding climate. He dies, and his friend is determined to honour his last request. An old boat, the Alice May , is shipwrecked on the shore of Lake Lebarge, and here the narrator will build a fire and cremate his friend.

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