WWI POETS:

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

“Does it Matter?”

INDEX:

ﻣ Introduction

ﻣ Poem: “Does it Matter?”

ﻣ Analysis of the poem:

1. Title

2. Themes

3. Structure

4. Style:

a. Communicative structure

b. Cohesion

c. Lexis and Semantics

d. Rhythm and rhyme

ﻣ Personal interpretation

ﻣ Conclusion

ﻣ Bibliography

INTRODUCTION:

In this paper I am going to analyze a poem called Does it Matter?, the 14^th of Siegfried Sassoon’s Counter-Attack and Other Poems. The poem was written in 1918, at the end of the First World War (1914-1918) and it belongs to the group of his anti-war texts that caused a lot of controversy at that time. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon)

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was considered not the greatest, but the most important of the War Poets, because his poems talk about problems of that time, as the war and its consequences in both people (such as in the poem I’m going to analyze) an in the country.

He wrote about this because he was a middle-class man who left his comfortable life to enlist in the military; but he suffered a riding accident when the war has not started yet. So, he wrote about his livings in the front and about his livings after the war, where everybody was poor, ill and shocked. These were the most important and terrible consequences of the war. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon)

Through the poem we can see how Sassoon attacks directly the sensitive inner part of the people, while he is telling us that what comes after the war in suffering. He describes, using rhetorical questions, how the soldiers live when they come back home after a war, having lost some parts of their bodies, and becoming alcoholics trying to forget the war and their suffering after it.

Poem:

Does it Matter? (1918)

Does it matter?—losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?—losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

ANALYSIS OF THE POEM:

1. Title:

Sassoon called this poem Does it matter?, which name tries to resume the sense of the poem, in which the author make some questions using an ironic humour. He repeats the question in the beginning of each stanza.

2. Theme:

The main theme the author has used to write this poem is the question of the title. He uses this question with which he asks soldiers (the soldiers that could come back home from the 1^st World War), if they matter losing their legs, their sight, or the nightmares that provoke their alcoholism.

3. Structure:

Does it matter? is a poem divided into three stanzas, and where each stanza has five iambic verses.

Each stanza begins with the rhetorical question Does it matter?( Do they matter? in the third stanza).

In the first stanza he explains how people treated these soldiers, he says that this people will be kind with them, and will help them giving them food (muffins and eggs, l.5), because as the soldiers have lost a leg they couldn’t leave to hunt.

In the second stanza Sassoon says that if somebody has lost the sight, the only thing the soldier can and has to do is to sit and remember better times.

Finally, in the third stanza he says that it don’t matter if the soldier become an alcoholic trying to forget the war and its consequences; because, people will always remember him as an honourable soldier fighting for his country.

4. Style:

a. Communicative structure:

The poem has a 2^nd person structure, because as we can see in this example in the line 3:

And you need not show that you mind

The speaker, that in this case is the author, is talking with somebody. Somebody, who are the soldiers that would read the poem.

About the temporal structure of the verbs, as we can see, the poem is full of present simple verbs, as for example: does it...? (l.1, 6), need (l.3), come in (l.4), is (l.7), sit (l.9).

But there are some more tenses referring to the future time, using the future simple tense, for example in cases as: will...be (l.2, 8), won’t say (l. 13), ‘ll know (l.14), and will worry (l.15).

I only have found only one verb that refers to the past time, which is written in present perfect: you’ve fought (l.14).

b. Cohesion:

This poem consists of three rhetorical questions (each one at the beginning of each stanza) and three long sentences (each one belongs to one of the stanzas).

Most of the verses begin with a coordinating connector, especially and which appears in lines 3, 8, 10, 13, and 15. That is because all the three sentences are coordinated.

There are some more rhetorical devices, not only the rhetorical questions, which furthermore are repeated in lines 1, 6 and 11; but, the are three cataphoras related to these questions:

Does it matter?—losing your legs?...

Does it matter?—losing your sight?...

Do they matter?—those dreams from the pit?...

There are also more repetitions, as for example the connector and, as I have said before. But, there is also a phrase that is repeated twice and talks about people and society and referred to what they think about the soldiers. Some examples could be that which appears in lines 2 and 8:

people will always be kind

c. Lexis and semantics:

This poem has some lexical fields: one related to parts of the body: legs (l.1), face (l.10); and one related to food and drinks: gobble (l.5), muffins and eggs (l.5) and drink (l.12).

d. Rhythm and rhyme:

The poem Does it matter? has a rhythm, whose rhyme has the following diagram: ABBCA DBBCD EFFGE.

PERSONAL INTERPRETATION:

While I was reading the poem the thing I saw was most clear and that I thought could provoke a bad impression of the author was the way he talks directly to the soldiers. He gives them an advice explaining that he only thing they could do after coming back home would be living without illusion, without nothing to do, because of the obstacles and deficiencies they had in their bodies (they say in the poem examples of loosing a leg, the sight, etc).

But, the most important part of the poem I think it is the third (third stanza) where he protests against that people that does not think in these poor soldiers. He reminds that they would be seen as honourable fighters, but they will never forget what they suffered in the front.

In my opinion, Sassoon has written a very good poem, with which he explains directly and clearly his position against the war; in which he tells us that those soldiers went to the front to fight against the enemies, but they also went to the hell to meet with sufferings and loneliness.

CONCLUSION:

In conclusion, I have to say that I have chosen this poem because I like its implied meaning, how Sassoon uses his dry wit and his ingenious irony to talk about these disastrous and difficult problems. I think he used this irony to criticize the people that don’t care those that fought for their country, and the ones who dead there.

As I said before, Sassoon was considered the most important poet his period, of the War Poets, because of the topics he wrote, talking about the war and its consequences. That was one thing because he was both praised by one group of people that loved his poetry, and hated by a group that thought he was a ridiculous and bad poet, who the only thing he did was to make fun of criticising other people.

In order to sum up, Sassoon wrote this poem in order to say what the soldiers suffer during the WWI, but he centred his poem mostly to the life that they have when they come back home, after having lost parts of their bodies, becoming drinkers, what they need to forget the frightening actions of the war.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

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