Alfred Sasoon

’s Poetry Essay, Research Paper

Sassoon’s bitterness against the war is made clear through his poetry, which is filled with his resentment against war, the futility of it and the high price that had to be paid.In the poem ‘A working party’ Sassoon’s feelings towards the futility of war and the waste of life that war brings about is made clear through his use of his language and the way he makes the reader feel as if they know the man in the poem. In this and many other poems, Sassoon uses irony and heavy sarcasm to make his true feelings known. In ‘The Kiss’, the entire poem has a very sarcastic tone, and the poem could actually be read as a pro-war poem, but it actually shows Sassoon’s hatred for the war and how bitter he was about it. He calls his bullets and bayonet “brother lead and sister steel’, saying ‘in these I trust’. This is a perfect example of how Sassoon used sarcasm, because at face value, the poem seems psychopathic, as if it was written by a man that actually enjoyed killing and the harsh conditions of the war, when in actual fact it is a poem that is against the war.In ‘A working Party’, Sassoon specifically starts the poem off slowly, describing the men slowly making their way down the trenches, slipping into the mud and squeezing past other soldiers returning from the front line. Then, he ironically rushes the main character’s death in the last two lines, after the man is thinking how slow time passes. The man’s sudden death shocks the reader and shows how suddenly life can be taken away. It also makes the death of the character seem insignificant and unimportant, and Sassoon probably did this because he felt that not enough attention was paid to the men that lost their lives fighting for their country, like his brother.In ‘The General’ Sassoon uses a more direct way to show how he feels about the Generals who gave the orders, from well behind the front-line. I think that Sassoon was also bitter about the officers who gave orders although they knew nothing about what it was like in the trenches, and I think that S

assoon probably blamed them for much of the pointless deaths that occurred. Sassoon’s resentment of the General comes through two lines of the poem. “And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine” which is the fourth line, but does not hold any real impact until you read the last line of the poem – “But he did for them both by his plan of attack”. This last line shows that the soldiers were lead to believe that it was the General’s staff that were to blame for the poorly organised attack, but Sassoon knew that it was the General himself who was to blame, and deeply resented him for both his poor plan of attack and the way he blamed it on his staff.Sassoon’s feelings towards the officers are best described in the poem ‘Base Details’. In this poem, Sassoon shows his resentment towards the officers by describing them drinking in the best hotels, and reading the names of those who died, saying ‘poor young chap … I used to know his father well’ and saying ‘yes, we’ve lost heavily in this last scrap’. The poem is finished with the lines “and when the war is done and youth stone dead,I’d toddle safely home and die – in bed”This poem truly shows the bitterness and resentment Sassoon felt towards the officers. He felt that they didn’t really care about those who died, because they were safe themselves and had no idea of what was going on at the front line – calling the battle that was fought a ’scrap’, like it was nothing more than a small fight. In the last two lines of the poem, Sassoon’s feelings are clearer than ever, the way he says that they’ll ‘toddle home and then die in bed shows that he thought that the officers were safe and living comfortably while the soldiers, who were actually fighting the war, were living in shocking conditions, where they would die at any moment.Sassoon uses many different ways to convey his feelings, and particularly his bitterness and resentment towards the war and the officers, but in all his poems, his true meanings are clear and he writes in such a way that shows us clearly what he thinks and feels about the war.