1.
INTRODUCTION
In this paper on the World War I poets, I’m going to
talk about Siegfried Sassoon who wrote during this period because he is a key
figure in the study of the poetry of the Great War.
Siegfried Sassoon was perhaps the most innocent of the
war poets. John Hildebidle called him the "accidental hero." He was
born into a wealthy Jewish family in 1886 and he lived a pastoral life doing
fox-hunting, playing cricket, golfing and writing romantic verses.
The poem that I have chosen in order to analyse it is
Survivors (1917) because I think that it reflects the things that I would like
to show: Sassoon’s reactions to the reality of the war. He produces
autobiographical poems expressing anti- war themes.
(cf. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon)
2.
THE POEM
As I have said before I’m going to analyze Survivors
of Siegfried Sassoon which was written in 1917 and describes the horrors of war
with a sense of disillusionment and the physical and psychological injuries
among the soldiers.
In his early war poetry, Sassoon’s poems are characterised by an intense
patriotism but, after the death of his brother Hamo and his own injury in April
1917, he tried to demonstrate the cruelty of the war. However, it is in his
Counter-Attack Poems, written when he was admitted in the
(cf.http://165.29.91.7/classes/humanities/britlit/97-98wwipoets/sassoon.htm)
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.
(cf.http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/sassoon/#title)
1.
ANALYSIS OF THE POEM
1.1
THE TITLE
The title, as we can see, is referring to the people about Sassoon is
going to talk. It’s about all the people who survive a war and then, they have
a lot of after- effects.
1.2
THEMES
I have to say that the theme that the author deals with is the war, all the
horrors that the soldiers of all wars suffer without any justification. He is
talking all the time about these sufferings. Another factor that is present in
this poem is the discontentment with the politic system.
1.3
STRUCTURE
I don’t divide this text into parts according to his content because the
whole poem is describing what the horrors of the war are and the consequences
and after- effects on the soldiers. As the author of the poem, who didn’t
divide the poem into stanzas, I don’t do it.
1.4
STYLE
1.4.1
COMMUNICATIVE STRUCTURE
The text is written in 3rd person plural because he is all
the time describing the after- effects on the soldiers, as I have said before.
He refers to them saying “they” as for example in lines 1, 3, 5 and 7; “their”
in lines 2, 5 and 8; and finally, he refers to them writing “men” (line 9) and
“children” (line 10).
Although the poem is written in 3rd person, we can find in
the last verse that he is not referring to the soldiers because he changes to 2nd
person saying “you” and I think that it is probably because he wants to show us
his disappointment with the political conduct during the war.
By analysing the verbal forms, I notice that he uses mainly the past
tenses and the future ones.
With these tenses, he tries to call our attention on what happened
during the war and how its consequences and their after-effects will be. We can
observe examples of these tenses in the 1st line when he says “no
doubt they’ll soon get well” and “men who went out to battle, grim and glad” in
line 9.
1.4.2
COHESION
We can observe in the poem the absence of coordination connectors. We can
find only three times the connector “and” in line
On the other hand, I would like to pay attention a bit on rhetorical
devices, although there aren’t a lot of them. The main rhetorical device in the
poem is the irony. The author uses it in order to emphasize more the problems
that a war leaves to their victims. There are a lot of examples of this irony.
We can see it in “no doubt they’ll soon get well” (line 1), “they’ll soon
forget their haunted nights” (line 5), “and they’ll be proud” (line 7)… But, I
think all people that read this commentary will agree with me, that writing all
these ironies, Sassoon is saying completely the contrary.
In my opinion, there are also metaphors as for example, “their dreams that
drip with murder” (line 7) and personifications like “of glorious war that
shatter’d all their pride” (line 8) and “with eyes that hate you” (line 10).
1.4.3
LEXIS AND SEMANTICS
I can find three lexical fields. For instance, there are lexical fields of
ILLNESSES “shock” and “strain” (line 1) and “stammering” (line 2), of SPIRITS
“ghosts” (line 6) and “haunted” (line 5) and finally, of WAR “murder” (line 7),
“died” (line 6), “war” (line 8) and “battle” (line 9).
1.4.4
RHYTHM AND RHYME
As we can observe, this poem is perfectly rhymed. The metrical rhythm is
ABABCDCDEE. “Strain” and “again”, “talk” and “walk”, “cowed” and “proud”,
“died” and “pride”, and “glad” and “mad” rhyme.
4. PERSONAL
INTERPRETATION
The
poem is based on his own experience as a soldier and is about the cruel effects
of war on the surviving soldiers. The survivors have to overcome all the psychological
and physical barriers after the war. They have to face up to a lot of
difficulties as grievous bodily harms, hard memories, etc.
As
I have said before, Sassoon used to write with a kind of irony and we can
observe an example of it in the 1st line when he says ‘No doubt
they’ll soon get well…’ and in the 3rd line ‘longing to go out
again’ because Sassoon here wants to demonstrate that the soldiers will always
have psychological injuries and they never get well and not the contrary. They
are clearly ironies.
In
the 2nd line, he mentions a common illness of war which is
shellshock and one of its symptoms is ‘stammering, disconnected talk’, the
inability of producing coherent sentences. This way, he is making emphasis for
saying how hard is the life of the people who survive the cruelty of a war.
In
the next line, we can understand that with ‘these boys with old, scared faces,
learning to walk’ and with the first word of the last verse ‘children’ he is
saying to us that all the soldiers are very young and they become old men
before their time and finally they are reduced to children because of some
injuries that don’t permit them walk and they have to learn it again.
(cf.http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/sassoon/#title)
In the 6th
line ‘subjection to the ghosts of friends who died’ and in the 7th
‘their dreams that drip with murder…’ he is saying that those soldiers who are
suffering will never forget their friends and the way they died. They
will be marked all their life watching the images of their friends dying
because of the war.
From
my point of view, the author finishes the poem expressing his discontentment
against the politic system and as we can read all over the text, he is all the
time expressing his anti-war sentiments too. Apart from my opinion, I find
others’ opinions similar to mine. There are some people who think that the poem
ends with an accusatory manner directed to the supporters of War, the people
who can so easily push soldiers back to the front without ever knowing the
horrors of trench warfare.
(cf. http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/sassoon/#title)
The Great War inspired writers of all
generations and classes, and among combatants, to write poems and other kind of
texts in the form of personal memoirs. As the war progressed and the poets saw
more and more of the horrors of war, they each chose different ways of
expressing themselves.
In order to sum up, I have to say that Sassoon
with Survivors poem wanted to express the horrors and sufferings that
the soldiers had to live and his disappointment with the political conduct
during the war.
6. BIBLIOGRAPHY
Home: <www.uv.es> 22/03/07)
-http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/sassoon/#title
Home: <www.oucs.ox.ac.uk>
22/03/07)
- http://www.hcu.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/jtap/board/config.pl?noframes;read=4023
Home: <www.hcu.ox.ac.uk>
22/03/07)
-http://165.29.91.7/classes/humanities/britlit/97-98/wwipoets/sassoon.htm
Home :< www.ipoets.com>
22/03/07)
-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Siegfried_Sassoon
Home: <www.wikipedia.org>
22/03/07)