Suicide in the Trenches Literary Elements

The unidentified speaker objects to the First World War, showing the devastating impact it has on soldiers and criticizing those who blindly support the war. Third and second-person perspectives are used in the poem.

The poem is composed of three quatrains, uses an AABB rhyme scheme, and is written in iambic tetrameter.

Metaphors
-"You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye" (Line 9): The phrase "kindling eye" is the metaphorical fire of patriotism.
-"The hell where youth and laughter go" (Line 12): The horrors of the battlefield are compared to hell.

Alliteration
-"I knew a simple soldier boy" (Line 1): The /s/ repeats.
-"Slept soundly" (Line 3): The /s/ repeats.
-"lice and lack of rum," (Line 6): The /l/ repeats.

-Ironically, the "smug-faced crowds" cheer the soldiers on even though the men are often traumatized by their experiences (Lines 9-10).
-It is not an enemy's bullet that kills the young soldier in the poem, but rather a bullet from his own gun.

War poetry

This poem is set during the First World War. The first stanza takes place in the boy's idyllic countryside existence, the second stanza takes place in the trenches, and the third stanza takes place back on the home front.

Sad, Critical, Bitter

The protagonist is the young soldier, who represents those who enlisted in the military but were quickly disillusioned. The antagonist is the "smug-faced crowds" that blindly support the war without understanding its true costs.

The major conflict of the poem is the impact that warfare has on regular people who are influenced or pressured to enlist in the military.

The climax of the poem is when the young soldier takes his own life.

There is no clear foreshadowing of the soldier's suicide, which is what makes it so shocking. However, the speaker does foreshadow the damaging attitude towards war from the British public with the line "No one spoke of him again" (Line 8).

Sassoon argues that the British public understated the devastating impact of war.

Sassoon alludes to the First World War in this poem, depicting the impact of war on the soldiers.

While "trenches" literally refers to dug-out lines of defense in the poem, the word can also be considered a metonym for the difficult life on the battlefield during the First World War.

N/A

N/A

N/A