In "We are Seven", the narrator is speaking with a child. The young girl and the narriator are discussing how many children are in her family. The little girl tells the narrator that there are seven children in her family; among the seven children she includes her brother and sister that "in the churchyard lie." .
The child makes the adult view of the situation as incorrect. The child does not recognize death as a detachment or separation, nor does she see it as a loss; she rejects the logic of the adult who counts only five children. The little girl insists on her count of seven children. The adult in this poem tries to tell the girl that her brother and sister are gone, but the little girl insists that they are very much there and that there are seven children, not five. .
Her brother and sister are in the churchyard, they aren't gone. The little girl knows exactly where her siblings lie. Yes they are dead, but their bodies are in the churchyard. In a way she is correct, they aren't gone. How does one explain to a child that where the bodies of her brother and sister are, is not necessarily where her brother and sister really are? .
If the child knows where the bodies are, and since we know that the bodies are there, how can we say that they are gone? There are seven children, not five. The little girl is looking at the deaths of her brother and sister as if they had gone on a vacation, or off on a trip, rather than away from our world. .
One can certainly understand the point of the little girl, because although the two are dead, they are still very much alive in the mind and memories of the little girl. Her brother and sister are not gone, they are waiting for her in Heaven; she will see them again. Both the child's and the adult's views are correct, and make sense; one just has a deeper understanding of the concept of life, and the concept of death.
