Repression of War Experience

The poem has no apparent rhythm or rhyme scheme, or any regularity of the stanzas - it appears to be an invective of thoughts which build up to madness, even admitting this at the endof the poem, in which you can see glimpses of conflict between his own feelings about the war and the propaganda that was pumped into recruits at the time that sends him into a kind of frenzy. The structure perhaps reflects the way in which some soldiers were driven to madness through these conflicts - their own attitudes of indignation at the injustice and complete insanity of war crushed and squashed  by the general consensus that 'war is glorious' and 'you're not a man if you don't fight', a way of thinking that Sassoon was well known for having.

  Sassoon portrays the insanity of war in a variety of ways. One technique is through analogy - the moths are described as 'silly beggars' to 'scorch their wings with glory, liquid flame', a distinct parallel to soldiers who are attracted to the fame and glory of war, only to be 'scorched' when it's too late. The war was hyped up to be a big glorious parade, but the very image of glory is shattered as soon as the soldiers realise what war really is: a tragic, futile bloodbath which they have no means to escape.


As we proceed further through the poem we see Sassoon after the war in his home And he can't even enjoy the 'jolly company' of books, he can't ever escape from the horror of the war experience even through literature. The madness seems to return again through the way Sassoon describes the books - 'dressed in dim black, and black, and white, and green/and every kind of colour. Which will you read?' It's almost as if he's talking to his inner child, the child that was so pure before war corrupted it...and now he can never enjoy the carefree pleasure of a book. He can only 'sit and gnaw your nails', again, the war experience never leaving him, the constant nervousness and terror even when he's at home, 'summering safe'. Every little thing reminds him of the war, the moth again, the garden where he believes the ghosts are. Sassoon seems to feel some sort of resentment towards the people who died in the war. The ghosts he describes didn't have the luxury of a quick bullet to the head, instead, like him, they had to suffer 'slow, natural deaths'. It is almost as if Sassoon wishes he had died in war, rather than carrying the burden of an 'ugly soul' - the fact that he had committed so many 'nasty sins' throughout the war and seen so much suffering remains with him as he continues to live his life. Although it's not really much of a life, his life right now is really a 'slow natural death' as he can't live properly anymore. He can't take any pleasure in life, he seems to be merely dying slowly as the days go by.

And in the last stanza of the poem there is still the echo of the guns in his mind, 'they never cease'. He can still hear them many years after, tormenting him so much to the extent that he 'wants to go out/And screech at them to stop'. The final sibilance of 'stark, staring mad' really shows the extent to which this soldier has been pushed - he will never be the same man again as the horror of war continues to vex him.