Repression of War Experience by Siegfried Sassoon

The poem “Repression of War Experience,” by Siegfried Sassoon is a testament to the mental and emotional hardships faced by veterans of the First World War, and indeed- all wars. In this poem, Sassoon uses the narrative voice of a traumatized soldier who attempts to forget the horrors of the battlefield by taking comfort in everyday activities such as reading (‘Books: what a jolly company they are’) and distracting himself by focusing on familiar aspects of nature (the moth, a rain storm, and the garden outside his home).

Unfortunately, none of these things bring him comfort and despite his distractions the narrator is still a highly disturbed and bitter man, alone and disconnected from the world, driven “stark, staring mad” by his experiences. Sassoon’s poem is both a startling view on the post-war reality faced by traumatized veterans, and a condemnation of the public for not providing more help and counseling for those returning from the Great War.

Mental Cases, by Wilfred Owen

            “Mental Cases” by Wilfred Owen presents a dark and tormented vision of the effect the traumas of World War I had on the soldiers that fought its battles.

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Owen uses a constant barrage of harsh adjectives to describe the inhabitants of a military hospital, “men whose minds the Dead have ravished.” It is an accusation against the rest of the world for allowing the war to happen, as Owen describes the broken patients “snatching after us who smote them” and “pawing us who dealt them war and madness.

” According to Owen’s narrative voice, war is a senseless abomination of “carnage incomparable” and everyone that doesn’t take direct action to stop it actively plays a part in its propagation.

Dead Man’s Dump, by Isaac Rosenberg

Isaac Rosenberg’s “Dead Man’s Dump” is an account of the horrors of combat in No Man’s Land. His poem is rife with constant motion and chaos, coupled with descriptions of the rank death and decay of the battlefield- where rudimentary tanks can be seen crushing the bodies of dead soldiers, and bodies are left to rot in the sun. Rosenberg seeks to give the dead soldiers a personal voice, describing the tragedy of young soldiers that have barely tasted life meeting vicious ends that “drained the wild honey of their youth,” while another “choked soul stretched weak hands to reach the living.” The poet wishes to use his verse to bring the horrors of the battlefield itself to those sitting comfortably at home, disconnected from the conflict and yet entirely responsible for its tragedies.

Works Cited

Wilfred Owen: Collected Letters, ed. Harold Owen and John Bell (OUP, 1967)

The Great War and Modern Memory, Paul Fussel (OUP, 1977)

Poems of the First World War: 'Never Such Innocence', ed. Martin Stephen (Everyman, 1995)

Siegfried Sassoon Diaries 1915-1918, ed. R Hart- Davis (Faber and Faber, 1983)

The War Poets, Robert Giddings (Bloomsbury, 1990)

God Made Blind: The Life and Work of Isaac Rosenberg, ed. Adrian Barlow (Cambridge

            University Press, 1995)

“Poetry and the Pity of War”, Randle Manwaring; Contemporary Review, Vol. 273, November

            1998