February 02

Siegfried Sassoon 's two poems were very interesting.  They both made you imagine a tragic scene that Sassoon is making slightly comical.  In Blighters, Sassoon is wishing that a tank would come down the aisle of the theater that a group of soldiers was in and make them stop their inappropriate jokes about those who had died.  He makes is slightly comical by saying that the tank would come in "Lurching to rag-time tunes, or 'Home, sweet Home," (6).  In The General, the General is actually making the scene slightly comical.  He's all cheery and telling soldiers good morning while they march off to possibly die.  This is nothing to be cheery about and yet the general is being so.  I really didn't get the last like of the poem though.  "But he did for them both by his plan of attack." (7)  I'm thinking that it's irony.  Maybe it is referring to the General having done a "favor" for these boys by sending them off to a good morning at the front lines of the war.  Either way, his poems show the attitude that several soldiers shared, a disdain for the things happening around them but the grit to continue on.