DREAMERS BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON
Siegfried
Sassoon tries to reflect through the poem the misfortune and the horror around
the soldiers, while they are fighting for their country. They bear all this
cruelty due to the huge national feeling.
“Sassoon enlisted
in the military at the age of 28 just before the draft and was eventually
assigned to the Royal Welch Fusiliers” (War and other poems).Then, the
author tells the readers these situations as if they were very common. It is a
familiar situation for him. He had already suffered it and he can confirm it.
The poet makes a
reference to the time: “Drawing no dividend from time’s
tomorrows” (verse 2). He refers especially to the future.
In this case it is impossible to speak about the future because it is
uncertain. The soldier’s life is unstable. They cannot think about what
will happen after war. For them, the most important thing is the present and
how they can overcome the problems, the difficulties…In the poems of this
period the future has no sense, because nobody expected to survive due to the
numerous dangers around them. All depend on destiny “In the great hour of
destiny they stand” (verse 3). You cannot do anything to avoid it.
Soldiers had to risk their lives without thinking about the consequences.
I think
that due to this, soldiers must have a religion. They must think that there is
a God who can protect their lives. An example of this was Siegfried Sassoon
himself that “Towards the end of his long life, he was converted to Roman
Catholicism, and was admitted to the faith at Downside Abbey”
(Unconquerable Idealism).
This poem
helps to value more the common things as “firelit
homes, clean beds, and wives” (verse 8). People normally don’t
appreciate these common things. The dreams disappear when we observe the
reality. The things that are around: guns, pain, people died…, it is not
the ideal place of the dream.
There is an opposition between the
soldiers’ dreams and the first verse where the poet assures that
“soldiers are citizens of death’s gray
land”. This sentence creates a doubt in the reader: Is there any
possibility of surviving?
We can
interpret the poem as an irony. Despite what soldiers think, they cannot leave
this hell. “Siegfried Sassoon became known as a writer of satirical
anti-war verse during World War I” (Unconquerable Idealism).
It seems
that the title of the poem “Dreamers” is a metaphor of the life of
soldiers, because they always want to be in a different place and they think
that what they are living is a dream, something false, too hard to be real.
Everybody
dreams with coming back to their homes, with their wives, that is to say, to
continue with their previous life. Their most important dream is not to die due
to the defence of their country against their enemies. For this, a lot of
people are able to identify with them.
I think that this poem
is autobiographical because the poet knows what soldiers feel “his feuds,
and jealousies, and sorrows” (verse 4). He is able to recreate all the
pain, the misery for being “in the ruined trenches” (verse 10).
Moreover, “his brother Hamo was mortally
wounded at Gallipoli. He took vengeance for his brother's death by involving
himself in brave, sometimes suicidal deeds against the Germans. He experienced
a sense of total disgust with the conflict” (War and other poems).
With this
poem, he demonstrates his opposition to the war as he declared: “I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of
defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. I have
seen the sufferings of the troops which I believe to be evil and unjust. I am
not protesting against the conduct of the war, but against the political errors
and insincerities for which the fighting men are being sacrificed” (Declaration against the war).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
- Sassoon, Siegfried. War and other poems, http://www.geocities.com/capitolhill/8103/,
visited April 3 2006
- The
Unconquerable Idealism of Siegfried Sassoon (Biography),
http://www.humanitiesweb.org/human.php?s=l&p=c&a=b&ID=72,
visited April 3 2006
- The biography of Siegfried Sassoon
– life story,
http://www.poemhunter.com/siegfried-sassoon/biography/poet-6672/,
visited April 2 2006
- Siegfried Sassoon: Declaration
against the war
http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ltg/projects/jtap/tutorials/intro/sassoon/declaration.htm,
visited April 2 2006