Romello Lovinsky
COL Miller
ERH-205WX-02
April 6, 2018
Sassoon WWI Poem Analysis
Sassoon “Attack”:
- Seems to me that this is written from the perspective of a god.
- This poem describes the advancement of an army over the trenches as tanks and a firefight await them.
- “While time ticks blank”: this is a thoughtful way to say that the soldiers are unable to pay attention to time because of the amount of work and stress they are juggling.
“Bristling fire”: The meaning of bristling is something that is aggressive and tense and when put into the context of war only amplifies the situation the soldiers were dealing with.
Sassoon “Counter-Attack”:
- Comes from the perspective of a soldier in the same situation as the soldier he is speaking about.
- This poem begins by describing the uninhabitable conditions of the trenches and then begins to focus on the situation of one soldier in particular who is told by an officer to begin the counter-attack, from there the situation becomes dire and eventually the soldier is shot and bleeds to death.
- “Bulged, clotted heads”: This use of language forces the reader to visualize the shape that the soldiers are actually in. Their heads being swollen and smattered with dried blood.
“Sick for escape”: Sick for escape, symbolizes to me a soldier who wants to leave the situation so bad that his body is overwhelmed, weak, and all hope is lost from his mind.
Sassoon “Rear-Guard”:
- Comes from a third person perspective, someone that is not in the situation and only talking about the situation
- This poem describes the situation of a lost soldier who wants help getting through a makeshift base to get back to sunlight, the soldier encounters a person he believes might help but the person turns out to be dead and makes his way alone until he finds the sign of sun.
- “Agony dying hard ten days before”: The man that he thought would help turns out to have been dead for a long time. This shows how desperate the soldier was for assistance.
“Shapes too vague to know”: This shows that the soldier was in unfamiliar territory and there were things around him that he could not recognize.