A Comparison between “Base Details” and “Leaving for the Front”
A Comparison between “Base Details” and “Leaving for the Front”
The two poems, “Base Details” by Siegfried Sassoon and “Leaving for the Front” by Alfred Lichtenstein, are two great pieces of literature written in the First World War. However the two, are fairly contrasting works of poetry, since Base Details is a very satirical poem for the reason that it is ridicules the Majors in the First World War and because Lichtenstein’s poem describes the unfeigned feelings of a soldier going to the war. The features that are the most contrasting are the content of the poems and the uses of imagery in these pieces. Nevertheless the poems also have common attributes like their rhythms.
Sassoon’s poem is a parody of highly ranked officers, majors and generals in the army. It creates a sardonic picture of how comfortable they lives were and how they were responsible for killing young soldiers by sending them to the front, but they themselves were never in danger as they did not have to fight. It depicts the majors as not caring about the lives of single soldiers. The only life they worried about was their own because they wanted to be able to go home safely and to die in bed. This should symbolise how worthless a soldier’s life was. “Leaving for the Front” on the other hand talks about a young soldier departing from home to fight for his country. The soldier tries to make the farewell less hurtful for his girl and his mother by saying that he is “glad to leave” which is rather ironical because he knows that he is going to die. The meaning that this poem should imply is how likely it is for you to die in this war and how there was not much heroism. This suggests that the meanings of the two pieces are somewhat similar because Alfred Lichtenstein seems to know how valueless his own life is in this war by saying, “A nice mass-grave is all that I shall get”, where the mass-grave creates the impression of that he is nothing special and only one of the many victims. “Base Details” also suggests that one life is nothing too important for a major. Both pieces of poetry use forms of irony, thus in “Base Details” it is a satirical one. Another point which both have in common is that Lichtenstein and the highly ranked soldiers know where and how they are probably going to die. Thus, the ways in which the people will die are very different. In “Leaving for the Front” the soldier does not have any wrong thoughts about the war and is aware that he is going to fall during the war, opposing to this are the majors who know that they will calmly die in bed since they do not get themselves into danger. The ways in which the poems are told are contrasting as well. In “Leaving for the Front” Lichtenstein portrays his own situation as a normal soldier who was sent to the front but Sassoon talks in his poem out of the perspective of one of the majors,“ I’d say-‘I used to know his father well;’”. Therefore Sassoon has not actually experienced all the things he is talking about but is only assuming some parts by describing stereotypical behaviour of majors he has heard about.
