Reading module 7

 

WWI Poetry

 

Siegfried Sassoon

 

 

           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.

Survivors

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

 

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