The Absurdity of War
Siegfried Sassoon is best known for his compassionate and furious poems about World War I. It was these poems that brought him into the limelight. Unlike many sentimental and jingoistic war poets, Sassoon highlighted the terror and brutality of warfare. He criticized politicians, clergymen, citizens, generals, and even soldiers for blindly supporting the propaganda-fueled war effort. In his poems, he describes the human costs of war (terror, suffering, and death) as well as the ways in which the environment is impacted (seen in poems such as "Attack"). In the poem “Does It Matter?” the speaker repeatedly asks the titular question in the context of sacrifices made by soldiers. The final line—"no one will worry a bit"—is meant to be a comfort, but it ironically reveals the lack of true care for the soldiers' wellbeing.
Death
Death is an important theme in Sassoon’s war poems. The brutality of warfare and the millions of wasted lives are major concerns in these works, written mostly between 1916 and 1920. Details such as rotting corpses, suicide, and the high-speed violence of war technology give readers a sense of what the front lines were really like. In poems such as "The Death-Bed," death is personified as an impersonal figure who departs with a wounded soldier when it is his time to go. In other poems, death is challenged in a boastful way in the attempt to construct the ideal figure of the war hero. An example of this is the poem "They," where a Bishop recounts a narrative of how soldiers "challenged Death and dared him face to face."
Betrayal
After experiencing the horrors of war firsthand, Sassoon's patriotic pride turned into a bitter feeling of betrayal. This belief that leaders of the war effort (military officials, propaganda writers, etc.) betrayed ordinary soldiers is apparent in his poems. Sassoon's poem "On Passing the New Menin Gate" exemplifies this feeling. The Menin Gate is a war memorial at Ypres commemorating the British soldiers whose bodies were never found. According to Sassoon, the death of these soldiers was foul rather than heroic as often claimed. The monument uses their deaths to glorify the British government and British history. But from the start, these soldiers were betrayed; they were "conscripted," or forced into joining the army.
Criticizing Propaganda
During World War I, propaganda was used by both sides to bolster the war effort, encourage men to enlist and women to support the men, slander the enemy, and silence dissent. Sassoon's anti-war sentiment, as expressed through his poetry and in his letter "A Soldier's Declaration," can be read as a challenge to this propaganda. Ironically, Sassoon himself exhibited the traits of an honorable and fearless hero. He was nicknamed "Mad Jack" for his near-suicidal exploits, and he received the Military Cross for bringing back a wounded soldier. However, a great deal of his poems describe the terror experienced by soldiers, and certain behaviors that would not be considered honorable (suicide, for example). These diverse portrayals of soldiers in Sassoon's poems are far more accurate than the character of a soldier as construed by propaganda.
Nature
In his early Georgian poems, Sassoon wrote constantly about the beauty of the English landscape, particularly the countryside. He drew from his love for fox-hunting, a passion that was even greater at the time than writing. Classical imagery can be found in these works: dryads, satyrs, and the like. Though these poems are considered by many critics to be insubstantial, the rich imagery of nature served as a foundation on which the poet further developed his writing skills.
Even during the years of the war, Sassoon exhibited a love for nature. His ability to notice the beauty of his surroundings despite the brutality he experienced in battle is remarkable. Nature becomes a dreamlike haven of safety in certain poems such as "The Death-Bed," where a dying soldier falls into an opium-fueled stupor, and imagines himself drifting through beautiful scenery while a summer rain gently falls outside the ward. But the war disrupts this idyll: the soldier succumbs to his wounds and guns thud in the distance, signaling danger. Beautiful landscapes become scarred and menacing as a result of war (read "Attack").
After the war, Sassoon would return to writing about nature in a peaceful and loving manner, such as in the poem "October Trees."
Music
Music was a prominent influence on Sassoon's writing. In his book The Weald of Youth, Sassoon states that his "early verse was vague poetic feeling set to remembered music" (111). Sassoon rarely strayed into the realm of free verse, preferring regular cadences, but his war poems did employ irregularities (such as harsh-sounding words and irregular rhyme schemes) that made the poet's musicality sound somewhat discordant. Music appears as a subject in various war poems, including "Song-Books of the War," "Everyone Sang," and "The Redeemer." In "Secret Music," music is a source of joy and comfort: "Proud-surging melodies of joy" sound louder than the "roar of guns." It should come as no surprise that soldiers themselves would engage in music and song, as these provided a release from the stress of warfare, a form of recreational bonding, and a distraction from boredom and bloodshed.
Faith
Though Sassoon did not convert to Catholicism until later in life, there are still spiritual and religious references in poems throughout the course of his career. For example, in the sonnet "Morning Glory," Mary lifts her tiny son so that he may behold the courtesy of kneeling shepherds. In the war poem "Attack," the final line is a plea to Jesus to stop the brutal insanity of the war. God and Jesus take on more pronounced roles in poems such as "Mystic as Soldier" and "Christ and the Soldier" where the speaker turns to these figures for guidance and comfort.
In his later years, Sassoon turned to the church. He officially converted in 1957, but his poetry had already begun to reflect his spirituality. He has called the poems in Sequences (published shortly before his conversion) "half-agnostic performances" that speak as though he had never heard of the Son of God. A few years later, in a letter to Felicitas Corrigan, Sassoon wrote, "I like to think that such a transformation, at nearly 71, is evidence of the agelessness of the human spirit."
