The tragedy of war

Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon both individually portrayed and argued on the tragedy of war
through their poems ‘Disabled’ and ‘Suicide in the Trenches’. Wilfried Owen expresses the horror of
war through melancholy and metaphorical language. Seigfried Sassoon on the other hand uses
alliteration and a sing-song technique in contrast to the darkness in the subject of war. With the
different techniques both poets have conveyed in their individual poems, the tragedy of war is
thoroughly discussed.

In the poem Disabled by Wilfred Owen, the tragedy of war is portrayed through a scenario of an
injured soldier after the World War mourning over the loss of his body parts and his old youthful life,
he unwillingly sacrificed his life because of the ‘’glorified” image of war. Wilfred juxtaposes the
injured soldier with his current state of PTSD and trauma with his content life before the war. The
injured man isolates himself from society by living in “sick institutes” and is constantly sitting outside
the window reflecting on what it seemed liked was his” past life” he left behind and leaving himself
with a body full of regrets and old memories of when he had his entire body parts connected. “Now
he is old; his back will never brace” Wilfred uses alliteration and imagery to emphasise his physical
deformation and the word “old “being used is to express how the soldier felt his youth rotting away,
being taken from him and the result of his life is to live in a hospital with no legs and being forgotten.
Wilfred Owen also symbolizes and emphasizes the loneliness the soldier felt after returning from the
war as, “he sat in a wheeled chair, waiting for dark and shivered in his ghastly suit of grey legless,
sawn short at elbow “. He uses alliteration and symbolism, the soldiers “old age “perhaps aged him
“ghastly “suggests he became almost like ghost and indicates the legless soldier inability to do
anything . Wilfred Owen presents the soldier lonely reality by the injured man watching other
people living the life that he used to have and now wishes back his life that was stolen from him.
“Voices of boys rang saddening like a human, voices of play and pleasure after day", the contrast
experience of the boys ( play and pleasure) is a contrasted with his own experience of being in a
wheelchair and not being able to experience the same “ pleasure “ again as the boys again presents
a gloomy dark and sadness picture to the injured man, and the voices of the boys having fun saddens
him as all he could do was just simply watch them. Wilfred also uses simile “saddening like a hymn,
emphasizes the depression of the man the sound of the boys experiencing joy in their lives which is
usually a cheerful noise is like a sad song being played in his ears. With this in mind Wilfred Owen
depicts the tragedy of war by contrasting the soldier’s life before and the after math of the war and
also includes the loneliness of the man physically and emotionally. Similarly, both Siegfried Sassoon
and Wilfred Owen both argued the horrors of war mentally and physically though their poems using
imagery, contrast and language techniques.

Siegfried Sassoon’s ‘Suicide in the Trenches’, which is specifically about World War One, alternatively
depicts the tragic and traumatic experiences through the use of a ‘simple soldier boy’s life pre and
post-war. In the first stanza, the tone is light and joyful representing the life of a boy before going to
war. The use of alliteration for the phrase ‘simple soldier’ emphasizes the innocence and simplicity of
the boy’s life. Following this line, he says he used to ‘grin at life in empty joy’, the irony implied
within this line is revealed to the audience later in the poem. The quote further gives the audience
an insight into his life before the war where he was blissfully ignorant to the horrors circulating it.
The second stanza then takes a dark turn, describing the dreadfulness of the trenches themselves
where the suicide takes place. The utilisation of the words ‘cowed and glum’ in the first line of the
stanza emphasises the boy’s state and the frightening and depressing reality of war which
completely juxtaposes his earlier ‘joy’ back in the first stanza. The second line, ‘With crumps and lice
and lack of rum’, displays the unpleasant conditions of war which caused the once ‘simple soldier
boy’ to end his life and ‘put a bullet through his brain’ Plosive alliteration is used through
the repetition of ‘b’ and ‘p,’ which creates an intense tone and resonates the sound of a bullet. The
bluntness with which Sassoon introduces the subject of the soldier's suicide further indicates to the
audience how unimportant these poor soldiers were to other people. They were seen as objects,
sent to war, killed, and then forgotten. Finally, in the last stanza, the poem shifts focus back to the
people at home, in the line ‘You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye, who cheer when soldier lads
march by’, the use of the second person pronoun places responsibility on the ‘smug-faced crowds’
and explains how the crowds cheer and celebrate the ‘glory’ of participating in war, unknowingly
encouraging something they shouldn’t. Sassoon argues that there is nothing to rejoice about the war
when he writes in the last lines of his poem, ‘Sneak home and pray you'll never know the hell where
youth and laughter go’. ‘Youth’ and ‘laughter’ are personified and act as a metaphor for the soldiers.
The meaning of this is that war strips men of their youth and joy, and the trenches are the place they
go to die. This last line encourages people to think about what they are truly applauding and to
consider the true terrors of fighting in war. This poem about the ‘simple soldier boy’ clearly
resonates with the tragedy and melancholy of war.

To conclude, Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Disabled’ and Siegfried Sassoon’s poem ‘Suicide in the Trenches’,
both explore the horrifying physical and psychological effects of war through the presentation of an
injured soldier described to be mourning for his life before losing his limbs to war, and the story of a
soldier who took his own life. Owen’s poem conveys the reality of living with the physical disability
of losing his limbs and suffering the disadvantages it brings upon a person. On the contrary,
Sassoon’s poem studies the result of violent conflict with many soldiers suffering from psychological
conditions such as shell shock. The war often drove soldiers to a fragile state of mind and the
shocking reality of the consequences was suicide.

Introduction by jenan

Body 1 by jenan

Body 2 by aleena

Conclusion by aleena