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Siegfried Sassoon's Repression Of War Experience

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Siegfried Sassoon’s “Repression of War Experience” is rises above other contemporary poems of its time because it brings to light the world of the shell shock or post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) of World War One and shares it with the public in a way that inspires compassion but is also damning to those who would continue for their blind praise for a war that took so many lives. Sassoon’s description of being in a convalescence home brings the reality of what he was experiencing to light for those he would accuse of being so ignorant to the reality that lurked across the English Channel. During the poem Sassoon describes the house where he is convalescing briefly. “Books; what a jolly company they are/ Standing so quiet and patient on …show more content…

He is aware that he has problems caused by his time at war and does not want to go mad but he hears the guns of the front all the time. His concentration of staying calm can never seem to outlast the guns in his head. “Those whispering guns — 0 Christ, I want to go out/ And screech at them to stop — I 'm going crazy;/
I 'm going stark, staring mad because of the guns” (Sassoon, Repression of War Experience). Sassoon conveys a hopelessness of the shell-shocked soldier that moves the reader beyond graphic depictions of the horrors of war and the toll taken on soldiers on the …show more content…

It was doubtfully his goal, as his pointed words are directed at a public that is no longer alive and could not have been completely ignorant of the plight of its soldiers during those days. Although contemporary poets of his day wrote equally moving and powerful words that describe in detail the horrors of the Great War neither Owen nor Graves bring direction to their words like Sassoon does. “A Repression of War Experience” leaves the reader following Sassoon through the hospital corridors, wishing for rain, and trying desperately to steady a shell-shocked hand. As he wonders if there are ghosts in the trees it’s the reader checking to see if they are there while, Sassoon fights the sounds of canon in his head, this is why this poem rises above its

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