Literary Analysis of Survivors by Seigfried Sassoon
LITERARY ANALYSIS OF ‘SURVIVORS’ BY SIEGFRIED SASSOON Poets have the ability to combine the best of humankind with the worst. Siegfried Sassoon was one who utilized poetry to describe possibly the worst thing humans can do to one another, namely war. As a young, rich Englishman, Sassoon had the undying desire to fight for his country and chose willingly to enlist and fight in World War One. Being young and innocent, Sassoon’s reactions to the realities of war were all the more angry and violent. ... Sassoon was the only war poet who made a distinct effort to demonstrate his protest against the war by writing his Declaration against the War, in which he states “I believe that this War, on which I entered as a war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest. ... His poem ‘Survivors’ tells the sad story of how war can destroy the human soul. ... In a sense ‘Survivors’ is about those soldiers who were fatally affected by the fact that they lived and not died.