MM
Women's Thoughts on War
Siegfried Sasson's poem, "Glory of Women" is ironic in a sense because as you read the title, you think it will be a prideful and honorable view on the war and it clearly is not as you begin to read. It criticizes how women act, view, and serve the war effort. It has fourteen lines, so you also get a sense that it will have a loving side to it, but again as you read, it has nothing to do with love. He uses sarcasm as he makes the reader think it is a sonnet. His poem also has two quatrains (octet) and a sestet, which creates some sort of irony since it is a sonnet. The themes are bitter/romantic/dangerous with lots of irony.
In the octet he focuses on women's admiration for their soldier sweethearts, while in the last half, the sestet, he focuses on his bitterness over the fact that their admiration is conditional and doesn't have anything to do with defeated soldiers. It compares how the women show their love more for their soldiers when they come home, rather than when they're fighting. The second half explains his views are wrong because women don't care if they are defeated or not, they still love them conditionally.
The women in this poem see the war as romantic and full of danger when, in reality, it is full of "trampling corpses," "horror," and "blood." (Sasson's perspective) The poem has a shift in line 8 whenever it switches from romance to horror. The reader notices this shift because the diction in the beginning is happy: "believe," "delight," "thrilled," "heroes," while in the rest of the poem it is condescending: "trampling the terrible corpses," "blind with blood," "fire," "trodden in the mud."
Sasson uses literary devices to describe his view on "Glory of Women" such as allusion, alliteration, and imagery. In line 4, he uses "chivalry" to create the allusion of the British instead of German, with chivalry meaning the Arthurian legend. Lines 6 and 8 he uses alliteration, "by tales of dirt and danger" and "mourn our laurelled memories" to show the experience that being in the war is worth it because of all the memories; even though there will be some tough times. Lastly, he uses imagery in the last three lines by illustrating that not just British women do not face the struggle of war; the German women sit at home knitting socks for their men while they too die horribly in the war.
Overall, women exaggerate the fact of what they do in their life, while men are out there dying in the mud. Sasson shows his true perspective of "Women's Glory" in those last three lines by describing how women only show glory when their men are home and like to focus more on themselves when they are out there fighting.
Women's Thoughts on War
Siegfried Sasson's poem, "Glory of Women" is ironic in a sense because as you read the title, you think it will be a prideful and honorable view on the war and it clearly is not as you begin to read. It criticizes how women act, view, and serve the war effort. It has fourteen lines, so you also get a sense that it will have a loving side to it, but again as you read, it has nothing to do with love. He uses sarcasm as he makes the reader think it is a sonnet. His poem also has two quatrains (octet) and a sestet, which creates some sort of irony since it is a sonnet. The themes are bitter/romantic/dangerous with lots of irony.
In the octet he focuses on women's admiration for their soldier sweethearts, while in the last half, the sestet, he focuses on his bitterness over the fact that their admiration is conditional and doesn't have anything to do with defeated soldiers. It compares how the women show their love more for their soldiers when they come home, rather than when they're fighting. The second half explains his views are wrong because women don't care if they are defeated or not, they still love them conditionally.
The women in this poem see the war as romantic and full of danger when, in reality, it is full of "trampling corpses," "horror," and "blood." (Sasson's perspective) The poem has a shift in line 8 whenever it switches from romance to horror. The reader notices this shift because the diction in the beginning is happy: "believe," "delight," "thrilled," "heroes," while in the rest of the poem it is condescending: "trampling the terrible corpses," "blind with blood," "fire," "trodden in the mud."
Sasson uses literary devices to describe his view on "Glory of Women" such as allusion, alliteration, and imagery. In line 4, he uses "chivalry" to create the allusion of the British instead of German, with chivalry meaning the Arthurian legend. Lines 6 and 8 he uses alliteration, "by tales of dirt and danger" and "mourn our laurelled memories" to show the experience that being in the war is worth it because of all the memories; even though there will be some tough times. Lastly, he uses imagery in the last three lines by illustrating that not just British women do not face the struggle of war; the German women sit at home knitting socks for their men while they too die horribly in the war.
Overall, women exaggerate the fact of what they do in their life, while men are out there dying in the mud. Sasson shows his true perspective of "Women's Glory" in those last three lines by describing how women only show glory when their men are home and like to focus more on themselves when they are out there fighting.