'We're
none of us the same!' the boys reply.
'For George lost both his legs; and Bill's stone blind;
'Poor Jim's shot through the lungs and like to die;
'And Bert's gone syphilitic: you'll not find
'A chap who's served that hasn't found some change.
' And the Bishop said: 'The ways of God are strange!
The
Old Huntsman and Other Poems.
1918.
<(URL:http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/sassoon/they.html)>
In
this poem I am going to analyse the vision of war that its author, Siegfried
Sassoon had. This poem reflects the war effects and consequences that the
war was. This poem is very strong emotionally because it explains the disasters
that war provokes above all in soldiers. Sassoon’s poem is composed by
two stanzas with 6 verses each one.
Sassoon participated in World War I (British Army) and the war affected
him directly. He was wounded several times and his brother was killed during
the war. He was several times decorated and his actions during the battles
gave him the nick-name of “Mad-Jack” among other soldiers. After an attack
of trench fever (or enteritis), he was sent home and he started to write
some satirical war poems. He went back to the front, but after a serious
wound, he came back home and during his convalescence, he started to make
a strong campaign against the war with some friends (Robert Graves, Wilfred
Owen…).Their books of War poems were very famous, enigmatic and personal
(most of the poets participated directly in the army). Sassoon survived
the war and he continued publishing, specially writing his autobiography
and Memoirs. His most famous work concerning the
“war poems” is “The Old Huntsman and Other poems” (1918).
Most of his war poems are epigrammatic: “short poems with a witty turn
of thought or a wittily condensed expression in prose”. (http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/) I
have chosen this poem because the author knows how to represent the sorrow
and pain that they suffered in the First World War. In this poem Sassoon
writes from the perspective of soldiers. He uses the soldiers sorrow to
represent the impotency and the obligation that they are submitted to their
Bishop’s orders in flavour or against their will. As
I have said before, this poem is composed by two stanzas. This characteristic
is also present in others war Sassoon’s poems for example “To my brother”,
“Survivors”, “Two hundred years after” etc. All these poems are short and
shocking; they are formed by just one, two, or three short stanzas and
the rhythm is maintained along all the poems. I think that these features
in the poems make them more impressive and easy to remember. Sassoon’s
poem shows an anti-military feeling presented by a strong irony. This poem
opens with a dispassionate tone, very nonchalant, but it toys with irony
and finally hits with the realities of war. These features are increased
along the poem because we can appreciate that Sassoon makes a comparison
between the opposition that exists between the supposed good motivations
of the war “just causes” (line 3), “honourable race” (line 5) etc; and
the real consequences that are exposed when the soldiers come back to the
war in the coming back “lost his legs” (line 8), “shot through the lungs
and like to die” (line 9), “gone syphilitic” (line 10) etc. But in the
poem there is a figure which is represented like an ironical figure, the
Bishop, who in final sentence he tries to justify the meaning of the not
so positive consequences of the war to the soldiers (line 12). In
my opinion in this poem as we can observe, the poet shows a duality between
the horrendous results of the war and the concepts of glory, honour, courage
etc that are usually involved with the actions, reasons or death during
the war. From my point of view, Sassoon mixes extraordinarily the dramatic
perspective and the satirical perspective along his poems to show the real
ridiculous motivations and consequences of the war, features that I find
more interesting than maybe those poems written by authors who only use
the dramatic perspective. BIBLIOGRAPHY Counter-Attack:
Biography of Siegfried Sassoon, First World War Literature,
Counter-Attack: Glossary of Literary terms, First World War Literature
Ed. Michelle Fry,
<(http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/)>
Ed. Michelle Fry,
<(http://www.sassoonery.demon.co.uk/litterms.htm#Epigram)>