Themes in Argument with God

In this blog post, we are going to look into the themes in “Argument with God” by Henry Barlow.

Some of the themes in “Argument with God” are the themes of suffering, divine silence, fragility of faith, human hypocrisy and contradiction, and flawed sense of justice.

Theme of Suffering

One of the discernible themes in “Argument with God” is the raw portrayal of human suffering. The speaker is a parent watching helplessly as his child clings to life in a hospital. The poem opens with the haunting image:

"My child was struggling for life in hospital,
And I, worried tense and tired,
Sat in silent prayer;"

This simple yet emotionally heavy lines introduce two parallel layers of suffering: the physical torment endured by the child, and the emotional and spiritual anguish experienced by the parent.

The speaker’s suffering is not only rooted in fear for the child’s life, but also in the mental exhaustion that comes from prolonged uncertainty and helplessness.

The description “worried tense and tired” reflects fatigue and emotional burnout — a point where words fail, and all that remains is silence and silent appeal.

The use of the phrase “silent prayer” highlights the solitude of the speaker’s desperation. Prayer, in this context, becomes less about words and more about internal pleading — a form of communication with the divine that is wordless but intense.

This spiritual desperation eventually turns into what the poet calls “violent silence”, which suggests that beneath the speaker’s quiet exterior rages a storm of unanswered questions, fear, and perhaps even suppressed anger.

The suffering is existential — it’s not just about the fear of losing a loved one, but about trying to find meaning in a world where such suffering is allowed to exist.

It’s the kind of suffering that forces a person to confront the very foundations of their faith and understanding of justice.

Theme of Divine Silence

One of the salient themes in “Argument with God” is divine silence.

If the speaker’s suffering is loud and consuming, God’s response — or lack thereof — is marked by a chilling stillness. Lines 9-11:

"God was silent!
Not a word from him,
Not a word."

mark a devastating turning point in the poem. They capture the core of what theologians often refer to as the “problem of divine silence” — the unsettling idea that in moments of deepest human need, God may remain mute.

For the speaker, this silence is not neutral; it is deeply wounding. It brings no comfort, no clarity, and no response to the speaker’s suffering. Instead, it amplifies the emotional chaos and creates a vacuum where meaning and reassurance ought to be.

The repetition of “Not a word” reinforces the depth of abandonment the speaker feels. It’s as if the silence is not merely the absence of sound, but an active, almost cruel withholding of response.

This silence tests the limits of faith and pushes the speaker to consider whether his pleas have any weight, and whether his child’s suffering is even noticed.

In trying to make sense of this silence, the speaker cycles through different emotional responses — guilt (perhaps God is angry), repentance (promising to be a better person), love (reminding God of how deeply he loves his child), and finally justice (appealing to God’s fairness).

Yet none of these emotional or spiritual strategies elicit a divine answer. The father is left to wrestle not only with his child’s illness but with a God who remains disturbingly passive.

This silence introduces a philosophical dilemma: if God exists, and if He is just, then why is He silent in the face of suffering?

The poem does not attempt to answer this directly. Instead, Barlow allows the silence to stand.

Fragility of Faith

Fragility of faith is one of the deductible themes in “Argument with God”. It is clear as a crystal that the speaker’s relationship with the divine is not static. It undergoes various phases of bargaining.

The speaker tries to initiate a dialogue with God through a variety of appeals — each one grounded in a different kind of faith logic: guilt, repentance, love, and eventually justice.

The plea:

"God, I pleaded,
Please God,
I am not a good man,
But I’ll try to be..."

is a form of spiritual negotiation — a moral transaction in which the speaker offers his reformation in exchange for his child’s recovery. It shows how the speaker attempts to reframe his position before God. He acknowledges his faults but makes an earnest promise of change, as if righteousness can be bartered for mercy.

This desperate bargain stems from a deep-seated human impulse: when faced with situations beyond our control, especially involving life and death, we seek some form of agency, even if it means altering our identity or behaviour in hopes of divine favour.

It reflects the core human tendency to impose order on chaos, to believe that suffering must have a cause, and therefore can be reversed through moral adjustment.

The bargaining does not stop with confession. The speaker appeals to empathy and love:

"You know how I love him don’t you?
Don’t you, don’t you, DON’T YOU?"

The repetition here is almost frantic — an emotional outpouring that borders on panic. This is not the voice of someone calmly accepting divine will, but of someone desperately clinging to any thread that might move God’s heart. Yet still, there is no response.

The final appeal to justice — “Be fair, be just” — reveals a belief in a moral order, where right and wrong should lead to predictable consequences. The speaker tries to reposition himself not as a sinner begging for mercy, but as a petitioner asking for what is fair. In doing so, he shifts the basis of the appeal from grace to principle, hoping that justice might succeed where love and guilt have failed.

Theme of Human Hypocrisy and Contradiction

The climax of the poem — the killing of the cockroach — is one of the most striking and morally provocative moments in African poetry. As the speaker pleads violently for the life of his child, he notices a pregnant cockroach struggling to give birth:

"Then,
I saw on the wall,
A cockroach pregnant with egg,
In the pains of labour,
Bringing forth new life."

This moment mirrors the child’s own battle for life — the cockroach, too, is in pain, in labour, creating new life. But the speaker’s reaction is swift and brutal:

"I snatched a newspaper,
And hit the cockroach.
It fell on its back,
Struggling for life,
And I crushed it,
With the heel of my shoe."

What makes this act chilling is not just the violence, but the contrast — the simultaneity of prayer and destruction. While pleading with God to spare one life, the speaker extinguishes another, as if that life holds no value.

The irony is biting: the very qualities the speaker begs from God — compassion, mercy, and justice — are not extended by the speaker himself.

This moment unmasks the hypocrisy and moral contradiction at the core of the human experience. We demand a kind, responsive God — yet we ourselves often act with indifference or cruelty when the power to save is in our own hands.

The speaker, in essence, becomes a reflection of the very divine silence and perceived apathy he earlier condemns. He kills while praying for life — a paradox that forces readers to interrogate not only the justice of God but the justice of man.

Barlow uses this imagery to expose how easily we can become selective in our compassion. It is easier to empathise with what is close and dear to us — in this case, a beloved child — than with the unknown or the inconvenient — a cockroach in labour.

But life, the poem suggests, has a universal fragility, and our failure to honour that exposes the blind spots in our moral compass.

Flawed Sense of Justice

The speaker’s flawed perception of justice is one of themes in “Argument with God” that one cannot easily ignore.

Towards the end of the poem, the speaker moves from emotional pleas and personal bargaining to a more structured moral appeal — he invokes divine justice as the final authority that cannot be ignored:

"God, I called, 
Though you are silent,
I am sure you hear me.
Be fair, be just,
Let him live strong and happy."

The speaker no longer begs for mercy; he now makes a legalistic appeal. He assumes that justice — unlike mercy — is bound by universal principles, and that God, as an all-knowing and just being, must act accordingly.

This appeal rests on a belief that the universe, or at least its divine force, is structured by moral consistency: if the speaker has not done anything to deserve such suffering, then justice should protect him from it.

But this confidence in justice is immediately undermined by the poem’s most ironic and unsettling moment — the killing of the cockroach.

"I snatched a newspaper,
And hit the cockroach.
It fell on its back,
Struggling for life,
And I crushed it,
With the heel of my shoe."

Herein lies the poem’s central irony: the speaker, who pleads for fairness and the sanctity of life, fails to embody the very justice he demands.

The cockroach, depicted in starkly human terms — “pregnant with egg,” “in the pains of labour,” “bringing forth new life” — is not just any insect. It is a symbolic mirror of the speaker’s own child, undergoing its own fragile, painful struggle to live.

By extinguishing the cockroach’s life, he unknowingly mirrors the very injustice he finds unbearable in God’s silence.

He becomes, in that moment, the arbiter of life and death, executing judgment without hesitation or empathy — and without awareness of the parallel he’s creating.

The image of crushing a life while praying violently for another to be spared is not just ironic; it is deeply uncomfortable, even tragic. It exposes a painful double standard in the speaker’s moral reasoning.

This irony does not necessarily paint the speaker as evil or cruel — rather, it lays bare a universal human flaw: our instinctive self-centeredness when dealing with questions of justice.

We tend to see justice as something we deserve, but not always something we are responsible for upholding ourselves, especially when the “other” is insignificant in our eyes.

The cockroach, in this reading, is not only a symbol of another life form but a test of the speaker’s moral consistency — a test he fails.

Thus, the poem closes with an implicit question: What does it mean to be just? And can we hold God to a standard we ourselves do not meet?

Related:

• Argument with God by Henry Barlow
• Content Analysis of “Argument with God”

Join Our Social Media Channels:

• WhatsApp: Literature PADI
• Telegram: Literature PADI
• YouTube: @literaturepadi
• Facebook: Literature PADI