Mysticism behind the Incarnation of Christ in Human Salvation with Special Reference to Hopkins’s The Wreck of the Deuschland

Abstract

Gerard Manley Hopkins is one of the distinguished poets of Victorian Age. He was born in 1844 and lived for forty-five years. His brief span of life filled with “a great measure of heroic dedication” The austere life of Hopkins created in him the desire to become a Jesuit priest in the Roman catholic Church. The longest poem The Wreck of the Deutschland, which many critics considered to be the best of Hopkins poems. More specifically, it is about the crucial and tragic hours between the dark night of the wreck and the early hours of the next morning which ultimately took the lives of five exiled Francisean nuns from Germany. This paper discusses that God did not destroy the nuns in the storm but elevated them to Heaven in the extremity of suffering. Amid the tumult and horror the voice of a chief. Tall nun was heard calling on “O Christ, Christ, come quickly.” Surely five-the number of Christ’s wounds is the symbol of sacrifice and the heavenly reward. Her cry came from the hearts of all suffering humanity. The deliverance of man comes only from Christ, who succeeded by failure and His passion holds the promise of heaven. This paper presents that the poem is a spiritual commentary on the physical wreck of the Deutschland. The incident is narrated and the episode of the drowning of the nuns by the strorm is highlighted from the point of view of the spiritual salvation which comes to the whole world through Christ. God controls all aspects of human destiny. God deals out good and bad experiences to human beings; in dealing out both, He is always moved by infinite mercy. This is sometimes difficult to accept, since so many of the bad experiences are tragic and overwhelming but God has His purposes in everything He does. Part of the God’s purpose in ordaining human suffering is to drive the evil from rebellious human being by ordeals. The main objective of this research is to describe and analyze the Mysticism behind the Incarnation of Christ in human salvation with special reference to Hopkins’ The Wreck of the Deutschland. Deseriptive and analytical methods will be used in this research data collected from text, books journals, magazines and articles written by renowned scholars and critics. This research will be helpful to expand students’ skills in arguments and enormously enlighten their knowledge in research field.