Atrocities by Saddam Hussein - Research Paper Example

Thesis on Sassoon’s Atrocities War brings forth a collage of various experiences to the forefront of human emotional prism; fear, pain, fright, death, starvation, bone crushing fatigue and many other emptions that don’t have a name yet. Guilt, never lets go. The guilt of killing someone innocent rides the culprit like a demented demon who feeds on the living flesh of the perpetrator. Sassoon is not much angered by “atrocities” of Germans as much as he is infuriated by their intransigence.

Just like the fellow in the poem, boasting about his masculinity, how he brutally butchered the prisoners. He never wanted to, never meant to, he just ran away. Killing innocent people is too much and a normal human soul can’t do it and be OK with it. So where does that lead to the German soldiers? Either obey or runaway. Like the German soldier in the poem, showing off in a bar when he hadn’t done any of those brutalities.Run and hide was safer for German soldiers than to defy direct orders and this infuriates Sassoon more than anything.

The anger doesn’t end at what Germans did to the innocents, the general public was also intransigent (Campbell 26). Sassoon was a war soldier himself, not a drawing room poet, this observation about the German public is more meaningful than most of the war commentators.Atrocities is a short poem and has an open message, the dining and pondering that Sassoon offers at his poetry pub is for all. He is gentle at heart and loves nature (www.poetryarchive.org) however he is very critical of the war and wants the readers to question the definition of helplessness.

Sassoon himself is not innocent, his guilt is also prevalent in other poems such as Base Details, where he resents using bullets (Jones, 2005).Both poems Base Details and Atrocities can be compared and in fact are more meaningful. The latter is more resentful and apparently he despises that German soldier boasting off in the bar, but indirectly he is angered by the public as well as himself, which is rightfully pointed out in Base Details.Most readers miss the message Sassoon is shouting off in a megaphone and his repent and call to heaven is by no means confined to soldiers who simply say ‘yes sir!

’ and shoot an innocent girl. The public is also the puppet of the masters; military elite, politicians and bureaucrats. For instance he wishes that if he were a military general he would have a “puffy, petulant face” (4) and would have enjoyed his time in the best hotels (Jones, 2005). It is the soldiers in the barracks that cringe to their helmets and duck and cover when bullets are fired. But the point is they don’t have to!Defiance can be bliss too and probably much more rewarding than when “you wangled home” (11).

At least the war soldiers would not be telling lies in a bar that way with a guilty conscience. What Hitler ordered his soldiers was not the 11th commandment. The soldiers as well as the public could have defied the orders but they chose either to obey or ran away and their intransigence enrages Sassoon. Works CitedCampbell, Patrick. Siegfried Sassoon: A Study of the War Poetry. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999. Print.Jones, Sheila. Siegfried Sassoon: Base Details. Jones Classes Online, 2005. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. .

"Siegfried Sassoon - Poetry Archive." Siegfried Sassoon - Poetry Archive. N.p., n.d. Web. 04 Dec. 2012. .