Journey To The Magi

In "Journey of the Magi," the terms "birth" and "death" function in many different ways. The child who is the object of the quest is literally born and, as all humans do, will eventually die. However, this particular birth and death have enormous theological implications. In both the poem and the Bible, the Magi are coming as representatives of all Gentiles to witness the Incarnation, the birth of Christ. With this birth, the son of God became man. However, as the second stanza makes clear, this birth is intrinsically interlocked with death. The son of God, made man, must die in order for the redemption to take place.

As a Gentile, the Magus is an outsider. While the birth of this Messiah had long been a part of Jewish belief, it is no established tenet for the speaker. He stands apart from the tradition, which makes acceptance of this miracle easy. Even the reader without a background in Judeo-Christian symbols recognizes images in that temperate valley that would never be familiar to the Magi. Thus, the poem is also about conversion, or personal redemption. This introduces another type of birth and death, the movement between belief systems. It is no easy thing to abandon an old religion and adopt another. Although critics debate the importance of Eliot's own conversion in the year that "Journey of the Magi" was written, the poem clearly illustrates the dilemmas of the convert. The arrival of the Magi occurred at twilight, caught between dark and dawn. The convert, too, must exist for a time caught between birth and death, not totally free from the past, not totally reborn to the future. It is easy to see why someone torn between two lives would be glad of another death.