We are led to believe that people are by default sympathetic in the second line. Once again, this is a purposefully naïve statement with heavily ironic undertones – the line is repeated in the second stanza as if to remind us of man’s natural hostility. Sassoon says that ‘people will always be kind’, but we know that the facts say otherwise. When veterans returned from the trenches, they were ignored and even persecuted back home – the public simply did not care to acknowledge that such atrocities existed in their deluded spheres of existence. The line loses even further credibility due to the rest of this stanza itself:
And you need not show that you mind
When the other come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.
This blatant mockery of the victim by society around him is mirrored in the poem’s own distinctive tone, which is so naïve it borders on the insolent. Notice also the form of leisure beyond the veteran’s capabilities which Sassoon chooses for the able people of the poem – hunting. Already this is a vivid reminder of death, bringing the scent of blood to where the disabled veteran sits, who cannot protest against this as, perhaps, he has lost all energy to do so. Therefore, it is not that he voluntarily chooses to ‘not mind’ this, but that he has no alternative. Sassoon also brings into focus the greed and self-indulgence of mankind as he describes how they ‘gobble’ their meal like the animals they have only recently killed. The veteran, too, spent much time killing members of his same species, but, despite being buried in tonnes of mud and filth for months, he was not the animal who chose to ignore fallen comrades. By now, our doubts over the line ‘people will always be kind’ becomes a conviction that it is a totally false assertion. Sassoon supplied the catalyst for this himself in his closing three lines.
The second stanza opens similarly to the first, but now Sassoon brings the loss of sight into his gallery of suffering. Notice firstly that ‘sight’ strongly echoes more negative nouns such as ‘fright’ or ‘plight’, words perhaps better suited to these circumstances. He follows the familiar pattern of this poem in the following lines:
There’s such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.
This second stanza separates one disability from the next, but both nevertheless refer to the same victim – this ‘you’ of the poem, this faceless casualty of war. Of course, this separation is another method of lessening the intensity of the content, such as using the euphemism ‘losing’ had a similar effect in the opening line, but it also draws our attention to each particular burden, instead of uniting them into a collage of hardships, whereby one would become indistinguishable from the next. It also leads us to question the validity of the statement in the second line – is there indeed ‘splendid work for the blind’? Examples are hard to come by, especially so long ago when equal rights were perhaps less widespread than today.
Once again, we see that same deeply sarcastic statement in the third line – Sassoon seems to remind us of mankind’s benevolence here, but we know that this can only be believed if interpreted superficially. In actual fact, Sassoon repeats the line to emphasise mankind’s natural inclination towards apathy, this time placing it alongside a new disability – blindness – to highlight a new form of prejudice. Even if interpreted superficially, the line once again loses credibility in the closing pair of lines.
The third line opens with the words ‘As you’, but does not imply anyone else aside from the veteran sitting on the terrace. This is where the previous line promoting human kindness loses credibility – this poor veteran appears to be alone, left to face his ghosts without company.
Imagery also becomes an important factor in this poem here, where we’re invited to envision a battered war veteran sitting on his terrace, caught in a moment of deep nostalgia. Sassoon is careful not to expand on this – he writes that the man is ‘remembering’ but restricts his words, leaving the content of these memories up to the reader’s imagination. Essentially, however, here we are as blind as the veteran to his past.
The closing line of this stanza contains many interesting points. It appears to liken the disabled veteran to a flower, turning towards the light. Like all flowers, however, he is extremely vulnerable and defenceless against the storm of social exclusion. Furthering the flower comparison, without light all flowers will eventually wither away and die, and the irony here is that, as John Milton put it in his “Sonnet XIX”, the veteran’s ‘light is spent’ (indeed, ‘Ere half my days in this dark world and wide’) already, and therefore, even though he turns his face to the light, it is a light he cannot appreciate from a sun he will never glimpse again. Notice also how ‘light’ here could also symbolise the shells and explosions witnessed from the trenches this veteran now sits and remembers.
Do they matter – those dreams from the pit?...
Here, in the third and final stanza, Sassoon now brings plural afflictions into the poem’s scope. Dreams - which are, of course, nightmares – become the final stages in the veteran’s increasingly harsh catalogue of misfortunes. He increases the number of syllables (nine as opposed to the eight used in the opening lines of the previous stanzas), and picks out something which is of no ‘matter’ – dreams are, indeed, of no material and exist in the mind. Sassoon has reached the pinnacle of ways in which this man can suffer, however – disabilities of the mind are perhaps the worst one can imagine.
You can drink and forget and be glad
And people won’t say that you’re mad
We begin to see here how the greater the multitude of afflictions, the greater the remedy required to banish them. The veteran resorts to consuming alcohol in order to ‘forget and be glad’, but this goes against the earlier stanza where he was advised to ‘sit on the terrace and remember’. The naïve speaker is beginning to utter ambiguities, his advice is deeply flawed, and then by the very mention of the word ‘mad’ in the following line, Sassoon automatically implies the possibility of it.
Madness is dismissed as the veteran has fought for his country, but what the speaker is saying is that the veteran is not mad for fighting for his country, for picking up a weapon and defending his homeland in the first – but is he mad because of it? Once again, these are question which creep out between the lines, questions the reader must deduce for her or himself. Also, one must wonder on which word in the third line the emphasis falls – it would appear to lie on the word ‘say’ (‘And people won’t say that you’re mad’), indicating that although society does not openly condemn these men, the conviction remains so silently in their minds.
In the closing line, the overwhelming tone of resignation finally reaches its disturbing climax:
‘And no one will worry a bit’
Throughout this poem we have been led to believe that the subject of it has returned from the war and now sits idly in some lonesome house enduring his pains. With this line, however, a newer, darker possibility comes into mind – what if, in fact, the soldier is still on the battlefield or in the trenches, his legs blown away, his sight lost, his head filled with demons? What if this soldier lies dying on the filthy ground and is justifying death to himself, listing his reason for simply letting go and escaping all the pain? Finally, it would appear, the solider is succumbing to the drowsy seduction of death. The very nature of this is Shakespearian – “To be or not to be?” asked Hamlet, and here the soldier asks the same fundamental question at the beginning of each stanza – does it matter? The poem is turned on its head and, just maybe, the soldier complies with Hamlet’s statements: “To die, to sleep / No more”.
How, then, does this fit in with the rest of the poem? Well, it soon becomes clear to me that the form of Utopia the narrator describes in the three stanzas is hard to visualise even today, and we must remember that the poem is set during a major and bloody war. This form of Utopia, then, can exist only beyond reality – in a paradise found after death. It would appear, then, that this is a goodbye note from a dying soldier, seeking comfort as he withers away amidst the fighting in thoughts of the “undiscovered country”, and finally exhaling his last breath, taking his afflictions away with him to a place where ‘people will always be kind’.
Lee Durbin, 13M
