They-Siegfried Sassoon
- Created by: Ayo
- Created on: 25-04-18 09:19
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- 'They' by Siegfried Sassoon
- sassoon
- greatest of the English poets to have survived the war
- born into a wealthy family
- went to Marlborough then Cambridge
- invalidated in 1917
- met notable pacifists
- convinced he had to make a statement on the conduct of war
- was sent to Craiglockhart where he met Wilfred Owen
- returned to the Front in 1918 and died in 1967
- features
- comprised of 2 stanzas
- equal length
- six lines of iambic pentameter
- ABABCC rhyme scheme
- rhyming couplets at the end of each verse give a sense of finality
- 1st stanza
- uses caesura and pauses
- semicolons and colons
- stilted effect suggests insincerity
- 2nd stanza
- strong rhythm
- more natural and confident response from the men
- call and response structure
- contrasts the moral improvement to soldiers promised by a Bishop with the damage and moral degradation they receive
- 'They' are the idealised British soldiers of whom the Bishop speaks and are unlike the real soldiers who go to war
- comprised of 2 stanzas
- Bishop's stanza
- "The Bishop tells us"
- represents the figure of religious authority in the poem
- Church of England
- speaks confidently on a situation which he has no real knowledge of
- embodies a brand of religious cant and hypocrisy that was deeply unpopular amongst many men at the front
- "When the boys come back/They will not be the same"
- the meaning of the poem turns on this observation
- war changes men
- easy familiarity, patronising tone, referring to them as boys
- alliteration creates plosive sounds
- "for they'll have fought in/ a just cause"
- alliteration is employed again to give a rhythmic force to the Bishop's statements
- just cause reinforces sense of right and wrong which is exemplified in this poem
- deals with popular platitudes
- war is just
- war is right
- "their blood has bought"
- explicit comparison to Christ
- bought man eternal life by dying for their sins
- see 'Redeemer'
- "New right to breed an honourable race"
- pseudo-scientific language
- popular around turn of century
- Social Darwinism in 'They' denotes their right to breed a new race through their sacrifice
- elitist attitude
- Rupert Brooke's The Dead and Peace
- "They have challenged death and dared him face to death
- personification of death reinforces religous rehetoric
- just as Christ overcame death so have these "boys"
- personification of death reinforces religous rehetoric
- "The Bishop tells us"
- the "boys'" stanza
- "We're none of us the same"
- anguished agreement echoes the first line
- subverts the Bishop's prediction
- "For George lost both his legs"
- colloquial tone includes omission of words "of"
- portrays the men as they really are
- language is not romanticised
- grim litany of injuries follow
- spells out the true consequences of war
- colloquial tone includes omission of words "of"
- boys are named rather than idealised and generalised
- George
- "Poor Jim"
- And Bert
- "And Bert's gone syphilitic"
- sexually transmitted disease
- soldiers on leave commonly visited prostitutes
- brothels were graded for soldiers
- red for privates
- blue for officers
- irony between breeding and sex
- "that hasn't found some change"
- irony illustrates Sassoon's satirical point
- a massive change has occurred
- unlike the one suggested by the Bishop
- irony illustrates Sassoon's satirical point
- "the ways of God are strange"
- Bishop interrupts the men
- resorts to idiotic cliche
- cyclical- ends the poem with the same speaker introduced
- Bishop interrupts the men
- "We're none of us the same"
- connections
- ideas of home
- 'The Pavement'
- 'If We Return'
- Christ illusions
- 'The Redeemer'
- 'The Conscript'
- ideas of home
- sassoon
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