The A-Team

Siegfried Sassoon’s poem ‘Repression Of War Experience’ is about a soldier that tries to forget his memories of the war that are driving him mad. There is a persistent struggle shown in the lines of this poem that puts the narrator’s thoughts to show.  The narrator talks about the thoughts of war that he’s been trying to put away, but as he says they ‘come back to scare you’. In the first stanza he mentions that only the soldier who has lost control over his thoughts has become a mad soldier, but judging from his constant inner conversation he could very well fall into this category. The last line of the first stanza mentions something very interesting that stood out, which is the phrase ‘among the trees’, as it comes up in the second part as well. The narrator says that only when you’re mad you’re driven to ‘jabber among the trees’ and later on he says that only the ugly ghosts of old people are among the trees. This is interesting in itself, as he first describes a mad soldier to be driven in this mysterious place, but then he says that only old men that aren’t killed in battle are there. At these points it’s easy to detect the narrator’s fears: age and madness.

Another comparison is made in this poem that links the serenity of the narrator to rain. After he’s just talked about the mad men that have lost their stream of thought, he writes ‘Now light your pipe, look, what a steady hand. Draw a deep breath; stop thinking, count fifteen, and you’re as right as rain… Why won’t it rain?’. There are several elements in these sentences that outline the whole theme of the poem. First of all, the fear of being mad. The narrator calms himself down by talking calmly, and using the words ‘look, what a steady hand’. Somehow the fact that he can light his pipe without shaking proves to him that he’s steady as the rain, and normal as the rain. Then something striking happens as the narrator asks ‘Why won’t it rain?’. He begins to question his serenity and his tone hints his panic. Just a few lines after he creates a vivid image by wishing that there’d be a thunderstorm with buckets full of water sluicing through the dark. The dark represents his repressed feelings and fears that he’s been told to hide because he needs the strength of a soldier even if he’s not fighting. He wants the rain, his serenity, to slice through the dark, his madness.

The last part of the poem raises the attention of the reader because it conveys a whole other mood than the other parts. In this part the narrator expresses the wish that he wants the guns to stop shooting in the distance. His diction is quite loving, as he describes the gunshots to be ‘soft’ and the guns to be ‘whispering’. He’s physically away from the war, but the thoughts, the gunshots, are haunting him down which has as an effect that he gets crazy. In his last lines he says that he’s going crazy and start, staring mad because of the guns. He’s finally admitted to himself that he’s got a problem that he can’t ignore. He blames the war, but he praises the soldier that dies in battle. He’s obviously got a psychological issue repressed by the feelings of fear. His personality can be linked to the stereotypical type of the ‘Lost Generation’, as he doesn’t know where he belongs and he doesn’t see the purpose in life, other than to die in war and get it over with before you become old and ugly.