What is the message in this siegfried sassoon WWI poem?
Siegfried Sassoon is one of Britain’s greatest war poets and his stuff – written on the front line – is always anti-war. In this case, he is saying that the women back home are hopelessly naeive about the true horrors of war. Contrast the shining eyes and the bright hope with the reality, where men break and bleed and die. War is not the heroic struggle they imagine it to be. The main key is here: “O German mother dreaming by the fire, While you are knitting socks to send your son His face is trodden deeper in the mud.” Note the image of the proud Mother, knitting socks her dead son will never get to wear. It contrasts her fond imaginings with the brutality of the reality.
