Suicide In The Trenches

Páginas: 5 (1030 palabras) Publicado: 22 de noviembre de 2012
“Suicide in the Trenches”
by Siegfried Sassoon


During war, the word death was heard almost every single day, sadly, it existed the common association of suicide to those serving in the line. Those hard days, where soldiers found themselves in the desperate position of reaching the highest point of psychological inconvenience, are effectively described in the poem entitled “Suicide in thetrenches”, which was written by Siegfried Sassoon.
It is essential to highlight that this poem efficiently conveys the senses of loss, war, and suicide by the outstanding combination of literary devices.
Firstly, the aural imagery displayed throughout the poem is quite notable. Primary, we find alliteration, which is accomplished by the constant repetition of the letter s, ‘simple soldier’,‘slept soundly’, which can be related to the whistling of the soldier, or maybe to the sound of suicide. In addition, there are expressions that imply the image of sound. In the first stanza, we found the verb “whistled” which has a positive connotation, something cheerful, happy, which is the idea that this stanza wants to express. With the complete opposite, in the last stanza, there is an ironicexpression that also involves the sense of noise, “who cheer when soldier lads march by” these clearly explains the author’s disapproval with the hypocrisy of the people who supported war; with this phrase, we can imagine the sound of the public yelling and cheering those poor soldiers, and the frightened steps they made during the march. Right from the aural imagery, we sense the transparent contrastbetween the first and last stanzas.
The tone also plays quite a significant role in this poem. To begin with, the author writes this poem with a sour, bitter, and angry tone, which clearly reflects what the poetic voice felt about war, and those dreadful times, were suicide was something frequent. Nevertheless, the reader can also sense an ironic tone, which reproduces that in the past duringwar, people thought one way and acted the opposite.
Regarding structure, it is superficially observed how this poem is divided into three stanzas, with four verses each. However, what really helps conveying the theme of the poem is the rhyme. “Suicide in the Trenches”, has a clear rhyme scheme throughout the hole poem (AABB), which can be related to the past, because in the history, it was almostobligatory for a poem to have a comprehensible rhyme, so we can associate this poem to past, which is commonly related to war.
This poem, which is narrated in first person, has a clear, unambiguous theme. It treats about the poetic voice’s discontent with war, how difficult those times were, how much soldiers suffer, and mainly, the hypocrisy of people cheering up for the militia, when they wereactually cheering death.
In the poem, the boy, the principal character of this poem, started happily and enthusiastically, but ends up killing himself. With this statement, we clearly perceive how war makes an abrupt, almost terminal, change in a soldier’s life. This young man, started cheerfully but with “empty joy”, which evidently manifests that he was naïve and wasn’t informed about themortal horrors and desperation that was lived at war. He had the complex and hard ambition of becoming a terrific, great soldier; the problems was, that the didn’t think of all the friends, partners, companions, all the battles he would lose, and worst of all, the loss of his faith and hope, which will end up with his life.
War times. Probably the most difficult era humans had to live. SiegfriedSassoon describes very efficiently how unbelievably hard war was. “In winter trenches, cowed and glum, with crumps and lice…” The atmosphere of the trenches made the soldiers totally depressed, frightened, it was so dirty and chaotic, that the presences of atrocious bugs like those parasites were usual.
“…Lack of rum” The alcohol was absolutely vital to those in war. It was used to forget the...
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