Suicide in the Trenches (1917) - Siegfried Sassoon

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The poet, Siegfried Sassoon, was born on the 8th of September 1886 at Weirleigh. Sassoon was enlisted as a cavalry trooper in the Sussex Yeomanry of the First World War. The poetry that Sassoon has written reflects on the lack of sympathy he havetowards war. The poem he had written in 1917, “Suicide in the Trenches,” is about a young innocent boy who goes to war, but he can no longer stand the conditions and finally, he had committed suicide, hence the title, “Suicide in the Trenches.”Sassoon has experienced the wars’ condition, and this poem reflects the time he once had at the battlefield. The subject matter of this poem is the difficulties young soldiers face but in the end, they only receive sarcastic cheers from the crowd and they clearly don’t know the trenches they had lived in. The mood of the poem is very negative towards the war because it talks about how the war takes away the innocence of the young soldier. In the beginning of the poem, it started out to be carefree and innocent when the boy was still enjoying life until later on, he realizes the hardship he had to face in the trenches. The mood gradually becomes gloomy and dark and the surroundings were just too terrible for a simple boy to tolerate. “Slept soundly through the lonesome dark, and whistled early with the lark.” It describes the place where he was, to be unbearable and a terrible condition for a boy to be in. The poet wants the mood to be this way because he is trying to portray the negativity of war to the audience. The tone of this poem near the end is in a shameful tone. “You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye who cheer when soldier lads march by,” Sassoon is ashamed of the crowd who are shallow and are only cheering for the young soldiers to go to war and know that not all will return, they do not understand the hardship that the young soldiers have to go through and he is ashamed
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