Biography
Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967) was born into a wealthy Anglo-Jewish family where his early life was comfortable and leisured, consumed by sports and country pursuits. However, his poetic abilities were present even during this time in his life. Young Siegfried loved books and literature and said his only desire in life was to be a poet. Prior to the outbreak of war he published several small verse collections privately, the most accomplished of which was a parody of Masefield called 'The Daffodil Murderer'. (poetry criticism vol.12)
Siegfried Sassoon was a light-hearted, gentle, privileged man with a love of nature, who enlisted on the first day of WWI. At first he remained optimistic about his service, but everything changed when he experienced the gruesome warfare of the Somme offensive of 1916.
His conducts won him the Military Cross, but for this essentially innocent man the misery of the trenches was excruciating and effected his writing entirely. Those events led him to denounce the continuation of the war as insanity in his poem; A Soldier's Declaration which was printed in The Times newspaper. (poets of world war II) This poet made graphic writing a reality. However today we have a viewer rating system for Hollywood films. In Sassoon's day there was public discrimination. Sassoon writes as he does because he won't sugar coat war. To the public war is just another political topic on agreeing to disagree. To Sassoon this war was wrong and that the public must know the fate of their children.
Due to the uncanny nature of his writings Sassoon was in trouble with his military superiors. In the high command for the British military they knew about Sassoon's writings and where not vary approving. Sassoon nearly avo...
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...e poem, a dead soldier in the afterworld where he is confronted by men he killed in battle. throughout Sassoon's writing, understand his own growing sense of guilt over men he himself killed in war. along with men he kills in the poem, men who have died because of the war are all there. the soldier realizes that all of these men are victims of a war known to kill everything he loves. being dead the soldier gains compassion towards the other men. although Sassoon hated the enemy for the death of his brother and fellow soldiers, he is welcome in the eyes of all the dead.
Works Cited
benets readers encyclopedia. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.ebsechost.com/sassoon. poetry criticism vol.12. poetry foundation. (n.d.). Retrieved from poetryfoundation.org/bio/siegfried-sassoon. poets of world war II. www.bbc.co.uk/sassoon_siegfried. (n.d.). Retrieved from www.bbc.co.uk.
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...espicable” Germans. Siegfried Sassoon He was a British poet who spoke out against this message while at war in 1917, through the poem Glory of Women;
Regeneration revolves around Siegfried Sassoon and his bold, public declaration against the continuation of the war for political means. His main point was that the war had turned from a defensive front into an aggressive front, and that this change is what is keeping the war from ending. His first sentence states, “I am making this statement as an act of willful defiance of military authority”. Regardless of the validity of his declaration, this direct challenge to the military obviously couldn’t just be swept under the rug. Sassoon’s goal is to be court martialed to gain a sort of pseudo-martyr status to bring attention to his declaration. As Graves tells Dr. Rivers, this was a very real possibility before Sassoon was admitted to Cambridge. Afterwards though, his declaration is dismissed as the ravings of a mad man once it reaches Parliament. Rivers understands and even somewhat agrees with Sassoon’s point of view but disagrees with his methods.
Siegfried Sassoon on the other hand in his poem ‘hero’ seeks to reveal the facade and sad irony of the traditional image of the ‘war-hero’. Sassoon joined the army himself motivated by patriotism, but after his first-hand experiences he expressed his views on the ‘gritty realism’ of war through his writing. One of his most applauded pieces of work is his poem ‘the hero’ in which he touches upon a matter close to his heart; the wide gap between the public perception of the soldier fighting for his country and the stark reality of life in the trenches.
One must look at this poem and imagine what is like to live thru this experience of becoming so tired of expecting to die everyday on the battlefield, that one starts to welcome it in order to escape the anticipation. The effects of living day in and day out in such a manner creates a person who either has lost the fear of death or has become so frighten of how they once lived the compensate for it later by living a guarded life. The one who loses the fear for death ends up with this way of living in which they only feel alive when faced with death. The person in this poem is one who has lost their fear of death, and now thrives off coming close to it he expresses it when he states “Here is the adrenaline rush you crave, that inexorable flight, that insane puncture” (LL.6-7). What happens to this persona when he leaves the battlefield? He pushes the limit trying to come close to death to feel alive; until they push