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A simple history of the Christmas Truce
This poem is concerned with the soldier's reality and their dreams - these images are from the 1914 Christmas Truce - when German and English soldiers played football for a couple of hours in the middle of the war. Lets see how it connects to the poem.
This stanza is about contrast: see how the first two lines deal with action, duty and sacrifice - the second with completely contrasting things
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
Dreamers is also a sonnet - while we are analyzing it think about what type it is.
Like in 'Suicide in the trenches', Sassoon uses, 'and' effectively to give lists of increasingly mundane things that people at home might not miss.
Dreamers
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
C
The soldiers live already in the land of the dead, they can expect no profit or benefit from the future.
Dreamers
BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON
Soldiers are citizens of death's grey land,
Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.
In the great hour of destiny they stand,
Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.
Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win
Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.
Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin
They think of firelit homes, clean beds and wives.
I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,
And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,
Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,
And mocked by hopeless longing to regain
Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,
And going to the office in the train.
There is some irony here as young men often want to be part of an important piece of history - but these men are concerned with mundane, unimportant things, fights and disagreements.
A payout or profit to be share (often in the future)
A long lasting disagreement
Chewed
Whipped
Laughed at or made fun of.
Alliteration and matching consonance
Female Rhyme (two rhyming syllables)
The soldiers are assailed attacked, gnawed, lashed and mocked...
Repetition - from the first quatrain
This final line is a switch from the battle field to home - setting the scene for the end the poem for the sestet.
A
Again - it starts in Shakespearean quatrains. With a normal rhyming pattern. Strong though due to the female rhyme.
B
A
B
D
C
D
Sassoon uses enjambment really effectively - the first two lines have clear repeated punctuation, giving the reader time to pause and focus, but the next two are unpunctuated, almost rushed this is helped by the internal less longing rhyme... and then followed by very metered simple sturctures: A and B and C etc...
Alliteration
E
This is an uncommon rhyming pattern for the sestet of a Petrarchan sonnet - it is simple and forces the reader on...
F
E
F
E
F
Alliteration
Dividend
Feud
Gnawed
Lashed
Mocked
Spats
However we could look at this as a Shakespearean form the EFEF is the 3rd Quatrain and the final couplet we'd expect is just a continuation of that.
small disagreement or
shoe for going out....