Siegfried Sassoon and Wilfred Owen

The extremities of the weather are also touched on by Sassoon in 'Suicide in the Trenches'. He shares Owen's conception that the weather is something which adds to the depression of the soldiers. He also writes about how the infestation of insects such as lice is a great strain to the soldiers. However his argument is not centered around the weather as Owen's is, as he is more focused on the psychological and physical effects of the conditions upon the men. Sassoon reveals to us that the consistent bombing in the trenches was a factor that all soldiers had to live with. The bombing becomes psychologically harmful after a while to some of the soldiers. We see this especially in 'Exposure' when Owen writes of 'low, drooping flares' and how 'worried by silence, sentries whisper, curious nervous...' Sassoon also comments on how the soldiers are in constant anticipation of attack in 'Suicide in the Trenches'. Shown by the words "with crumps and lice and lack of rum".

The constant awareness of death is a key point of life in the trenches and the effects of this led often to psychological problems. The men in the trenches viewed numerous deaths and it was not something they could just cope with. Many of the soldiers saw friends, which they had grown up with either get blown up or gassed. This led to men going mad because the images they saw were so horrific. In 'Dulce et Decorum est', Owen tries to relate to the public how harrowing the things the soldiers saw were:

'In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,

He plunges at me guttering, choking, drowning.'

Owen knows what happened to the men during the War as, like Sassoon, he fought in the trenches. Owen conveys that not only does a soldier have to learn to cope which such horrific experiences but knows they will haunt a man's dreams until he dies. Perhaps the soldier in 'Suicide in the Trenches' had killed himself for this reason.

All the poems I am writing about show that fear was a very key aspect in the war. Soldiers did not know when the enemy would attack, or when they might be killed. This constant fear would drive any man insane but these soldiers were expected to be able to handle this though they had never had to deal with such a mental strain before. The public is shown as very ignorant in the poems so the poets often direct a lot of their fury toward them. Sassoon's anger is shown in 'Does it Matter'. He writes,

'People won't say that you're mad;

For they'll know that you've fought for your country...'

Here sarcasm and cynicism towards the public is shown. He backs up his view that the public who were so proud to send their men off to war but when they returned there was no local support which they needed.

He knows that the public is wrong in their way of handling the war and he knows it all revolves around the government who are the origin of the propaganda. We can see that Owen and Sassoon share many views and are similar in their attitude to the war. Owen also has a view near parallel to that of Sassoon's towards the public. In the final stanza of 'Dulce et Decorum est', he is very obviously trying to let the public know how wrong they are in being so proud of the fact that their men dying for their country. He is particularly severe to all the supporters of government propaganda such as Jessie Pope. The trench warfare system is labeled as 'the hell where youth and laughter go' in 'Suicide in the Trenches' by Sassoon. Here he sums up the war in a short sharp line, which is very hard hitting and in which his anger is obvious. He shows that it is a place of no return and this evil force devours all life. And also all the British youth sent will never return the same from this hell-hole.

Many of the psychological effects of the war are linked to the conditions in the trenches and its physical effects on the soldiers. Sassoon writes of this in 'Does it Matter'. The ironic tone he adopts shows that the public does not care if you lose a leg or if you go blind because of a gas attack. He writes, 'there is such splendid work for the blind', but he is being sarcastic and he knows that the British nation will treat the war veterans badly. Owen conveys the physical effects of the war in 'Dulce et Decorum est'. The simple but hard-hitting image he creates is that of a soldier dying of gas poisoning. Any of the people reading it will therefore understand the casualties in the war were staggering. Lines such as 'White eyes writhing in his face' and 'the blood come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs' create a truly nauseating image.

Ultimately, from the poems we learn that the British soldier had to survive not only the presence of the enemy but also the harshness of the weather and finally attacks upon their own sanity. All of the factors written about in 'Suicide in the Trenches', 'Exposure', 'Dulce et Decorum est' and 'Does it Matter?' show that the effects and conditions of the war are all linked together. While the bad conditions worsened psychological problems, they also caused gangrene and malnutrition, among other physical conditions. Both Sassoon and Owen write of their collective experiences in the trenches giving an insight for the reader through their two different viewpoints.

Gareth Scott

GCSE Coursework