WORLD WAR 1 POEM : THE SURVIVORS BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON

NO doubt they'll soon get well; the shock and strain

  Have caused their stammering, disconnected talk.

Of course they're 'longing to go out again,'--

  These boys with old, scared faces, learning to walk.

They'll soon forget their haunted nights; their cowed

  Subjection to the ghosts of friends who died,--

Their dreams that drip with murder; and they'll be proud

  Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride...

Men who went out to battle, grim and glad;

Children, with eyes that hate you, broken and mad

 

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  In his poem ‘Survivors’, Siegfried Sassoon gives the readers a satirical and paradoxical take on war and its effect on the soldiers who partake in it. This particular poem was written by Sassoon when he was spending his time in the Craiglockhart hospital where he was forced into convalescence due to his strong portrayal of anti- war emotions. On arriving at the hospital he was diagnosed with neurasthenia and had it not been for the work of his psychologist Dr. Rivers, Sassoon would have paved a tragic path to his self destruction. (Anaida D'souza)

         1) 'No doubt they'll soon get well'
The opening line gives the reader a sense of misleading hope. The throw- away feeling emphasised by the assured 'No doubt' calls to mind the sinister complacency of "Does It Matter?"

          2) 'stammering, disconnected talk'
One of the symptons of shell-shock or 'neurasthenia' (as it was then termed) is a stammer, and a failure to string sentences together coherently. The conditions of some of the patients at Craglockhart are described powerfully in 'Regeneration' the opening book to Pat Barker's WWI trilogy.

          3)  'Of course they're 'longing to go out again,''
Again the disassociated, unfeeling voice make its presence felt. The flippant remark, suggesting that all soldiers were willing to return to the front, is typical of the attitude Sassoon perceived in the non-combatants at home.

         4) 'These boys with old, scared faces'
Sassoon contrasts the youth and innocence of the soldiers with the ageing process of the war. Yet, although these men are made old before their time, they are also reduced to infants having to re-learn such basic processes as how to walk 

          5) 'They'll soon forget...of friends who died'
On Sassoon's return to England in April, 1917, after receiving an injury earlier that year, his anti-war sentiments reached new heights. Angered by the attitude he perceived in the people who remained in England, and troubled by visions and nightmares in which he saw corpses littering the streets, he was moved to publish his famous declaration  against the war, which ultimately led to his spell at Craiglockhart.

           6)  '- and they'll be proud/Of glorious war that shatter'd all their pride'
Again the poet presents us with a sense of hope, immediately reversed by a harsh reminder of brutal reality. The survivors, once they have managed to forget the nightmares and visions of their dead comrades, will then be able to reflect on the 'glorious war' with pride; but this, in turn, will remind them of their time spent overcoming the horror, when they had no self-esteem having been reduced to helpless children. 

            7) 'with eyes that hate you'
Sassoon ends the poem in an accusatory manner, no doubt directed at the supporters of the War, the people who can so easily push soldiers back to the front without ever knowing the horrors of trench warfare.

References:

*  http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/ww1lit/education/tutorials/intro/sassoon
*  http://theourownword.blogspot.com/2013/09/survivors-critical-analysis.html