Siegfried Sassoon wrote several poems referred to the Great War. He
experienced the reality of the war first-hand, since he enlisted at the beginning
of the war, because of this ‘his poetry reflects the evolution of his attitudes
towards war, beginning with a vision of combat as an exploit reflecting glory
and nobility, and ending with muddy, bloody realism’ (Glbtq literature Sassoon,
Siegfried,
Glbtq, inc, 2005, http://www.glbtq.com/literature/sassoon_s.html)
In October 1917 Sassoon wrote ‘Survivors’, a
poem that I am going to analyse below. It is an ironic poem which talks about the
soldiers that survived the war. It reflects how much they suffered physically
and mentally.
No
doubt they’ll soon get well; the shock and strain
Have caused their
stammering, disconnected talk.
Of course they're
‘longing to go out again’,—
These boys with
old, scared faces, learning to walk.
They’ll soon
forget their haunted nights; their cowed,—
Subjection to the
ghosts of friends who died, —
Their dreams that
drip with murder; and they’ll be proud
Of glorious war
that shatter’d all their pride…
Men who went out
to battle, grim and glad;
Children, with
eyes that hate you, broken and mad
Craiglockhart.
October, 1917.
source: http://www.bartleby.com/136/32.html
Analysis
In line 1 Sassoon starts the poem saying ‘No doubt they’ll soon get well’.
These words make the reader feel this people will soon recover from the
consequences of the war, but if we keep reading the poem until the end, we will
notice the irony of it. With the use of ‘no doubt’ we are supposed to believe
they will surely get well, but we know it will be not that easy.
‘The shock and
strain have caused their stammering, disconnected talk’ (Lines 1-2). What the
soldiers experienced in the war made them feel in a state of shock. One of the
consequences of this was the stammering talk. People who suffered it could not
speak clearly and coherently; their talk was disconnected.
In line 3 Sassoon,
by writing ‘they’re longing to go out again’
he is saying that the soldiers are willing to go back to the battlefield. I
find it kind of ironic, because he uses the word ‘longing’, which makes the
reader feel the soldiers are really hoping to return to the front, but we do
know they are not happy about going back at all. Who would wish to revive a
violent and horrible experience?
There is a contrast in line 4 between ‘boys’ and
‘old’. At the beginning of the war they felt like honourable men going to war,
but after their horrible experience they do not feel like that anymore. They
are seen as children, as ‘boys’ as he says.
Because of the physical consequences of war they had ‘scared faces’ and
some of them even had to learn how to ‘walk again’, as Sassoon writes. Lots of
soldiers suffered physical injuries during WWI.
‘They’ll
soon forget their haunted nights’ (Line 5). We feel there is hope for these
soldiers to forget about everything. All the brutality they lived those days
and nights. But Sassoon is being ironic again, since the reality is that it
will be very hard for these soldiers to forget such horrible things. The memories
of the war are still in their minds. Also the memory of their comrades-in-arms
who died, that’s why he writes in the next line ‘Subjection to the ghosts of
friends who died.
'Dreams that drip
with murder' (Line 7). This may mean that all these soldiers had a dream, which
is broken when they discover the reality of war, where a lot of people die
unfairly.
There is another contrast in lines 7-8. The soldiers
may at the beginning ‘be proud of glorious war’, but then they will go back to
harsh reality and all the horrors they have experienced during the war will
reappear in their memory. So their feeling of pride clearly disappears.
Line 9 says ‘Men who went out to battle, grim and
glad’. At the beginning they felt happy about going to war, they felt like real
men, with honour.
The last verse (line 10) starts with the word
‘Children’. Sassoon alludes to these soldiers as ‘children’. He made the same
in line 4 by calling them ‘boys’. This infant treatment he gives to the
soldiers makes the reader feel compassion for them. He writes ‘children with eyes that hate you,
broken and mad’. We see these men as broken and mad children when they come
back from war, not as the men that went to battle.
The impression we get after reading this poem is
that Siegfried Sassoon had a clear anti-war feeling. He questions the morality
of war. He experienced all the negative things about it so he tries to make us
think and reflect about its pointlessness. But the main point is how different
the soldiers felt at the beginning of the war, and once they have experienced
it.
SOURCES:
- http://www.bartleby.com/136/32.html, 32.
Survivors. Sassoon, Siegfried. 1918. Counter-Attack and Other Poems, bartlebycom@aol.com, 2006. Days of
access: 3 April, 19 April.
- http://library.marist.edu/diglib/english/englishliterature/20thc-englishpoets/sassoon_siegfried.html, Siegfried Sassoon.
- http://www.glbtq.com/literature/sassoon_s.html, glbtq >>literature>> Sassoon,
Siegfried, Glbtq, inc, 2005. Day of acces: 19 April