The Cremation of Sam McGee Themes

Even when "The Cremation of Sam McGee" is being funny, it never gets very far away from the theme of death. It’s all about the reality of death, how it happens, and how you deal with the afterma...

"The Cremation of Sam McGee" is written to tell a story about two guys and a cremation, but it’s also a story about a place. We get tons of really intense descriptions of what life is like in th...

The speaker of "The Cremation of Sam McGee" shows a lot of guts in sticking to his promise. It would have been easy for him to just dump Sam’s body after he died, or at least to bury it fast and...

The theme of friendship might not jump right out at you, but we think it’s a really important current running through "The Cremation of Sam McGee." Sometimes the speaker seems frustrated by Sam,...

Even when you’re as tough as the guys in "The Cremation of Sam McGee" seem to be, it’s a pretty rough life up in the Yukon. Just getting around is a chore, and it seems like you hurt pretty mu...