Siegfried Sassoon: A Simple Soldier Boy

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Siegfried Sassoon was born in Matfield, Kent in 1886. His father was Jewish and his mother was Catholic. He was the second of three sons. His parents divorced when he was 4 years old. He lived with his mother with his father occasionally coming to visit. His mother was deeply upset by the divorce and would lock herself in her room in these visits. When he was 9 years old, his father died of tuberculosis. He was devastated by this. He was educated at the New Beacon Prepatory School, Kent Marlborough College in Wilshire and at Clare College, Cambridge where he studied law and history. But he dropped out of college and never earned his degree. Several days before the United Kingdom declared war, Sassoon joined the British Army. He broke his arm in a riding accident and was out action before he could leave England. At this time, his brother Hamo was killed in Gallipolli. This hit Siegfried hard. In November 1915 he was sent to the 1st Battalion in France. It was here that he meet Robert Graves and became good friends with him. The horrors of war changed his views on what constituted poetry. He witnessed his friend Tommy die by getting hit in the throat by bullet. After this happened, Sassoon was intent on getting revenge on the Germans. He was sent home from France after getting “trench fever” and wrote much of his poetry. He was later sent home again after a shoulder injury. The first paragraph paints an image of a happy, carefree boy. Note the word “boy” here. It shows that the person the narrator tells us about is child, if not in body, but in mind. The second line is perhaps the most important of the first verse. It portrays this characters a childlike optimist who doesn’t get upset by much. The 3rd and 4th lines are also tell us much about the character and his seemingly unending optimism. On the other hand, “endless joy” could imply something more. His joy
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