Critical Analysis: An Irish Airman Predicts His DeathThere is no possibility that fate, fate will take its turn against him/her and not there is nothing that can be done to avoid it. This isn't an infamous police chase where the bad guy escapes, but more like the Death Star where no one escapes. Horrible, yes, but fate is real, and instead of trembling he must take it by the horns and make it special. The poem “An Irish Airman Foretells His Death” explains fate not only as something the Irish cannot escape, but something they see as a desire, but only if they have a sense of balance for themselves. Through irony and imagery Williams Butler Yeats suggests, it is not a question of desire that grips our actions, but a question of feeling the balance. (Yeats) Throughout the poem Yeats continues to connect everything with balance and irony. At the beginning Yeats explains the irony that the Irish aviator feels: "Those I fight I do not hate (Line 3)/Those I protect I do not love, (Line 4)" Going deeper Yeats wants the reader to feel what he feels 'aviator. How ironic, he is fighting those for reasons you wouldn't believe, as well as protecting them for reasons you wouldn't think of. In most cases, one cares for and loves those he protects, as well as hates those he fights against, but not this individual, he has different reasoning as to why he fights and protects people. Yeats's main goal for these two lines was to make the reader understand above all the irony that the character feels, as well as the emotionless attitude that the Irishman feels. (Line 6)" Yeats states that every man has a country, the fact that the Irishman is obviously Kiltar... in the center of the card... will justify his sense of balance. William Butler Yeats writes this poem for the sole purpose of balance. Throughout the poem Yeats uses both physical and imaginary balance to give the reader the full understanding of balance through his eyes. His imagery includes all the irony he uses in his lines such as “Those that I fight not hate (Line 3)/Those I protect I do not love (Line 4)", the topic of the past and the future that he writes about. at the end of his poem, and the emotional balance of the Irish airman. An example of physical balance is where Yeats used the couplet writing pattern and even wrote balance into his poem a couple of times which allows the reader to see it physically In other words Yeats wants the reader find something that allows him to be in balance when he leaves, whether it is in the past or in the future, or in death itself, balance must be found..