Our class was given "Base Heights" by Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967). Thinking back to our sonnet lecture and presentations, I remember the word 'base' meaning not just an army base, but also meaning of little to no value. (My group analyzed Sonnet #33 and this form of base was utilized by William Shakespeare). That catch made the rest of the poem more meaningful because of the play on words. For our assignment, we needed to choose one poetic device to convey the speaker's attitude. In order to appeal to the satirical form of this poem, I have chosen to analyze the use of irony. Yes, this may seem basic, but I need to learn how to analyze from a very standard device.
The speaker, most likely a fellow soldier, begins this poem off by wishing he was of higher command. The irony automatically starts in line 3 when Sassoon writes, "And speed glum heroes up the line to death." The first thing that popped into my mind was to get the miserable soldiers out of the eat first because they are sad and want to die anyways. Oops. However, I thought more into it and it's very ironic how lines 5, 6, 7, and 8 state, "Guzzling and gulping in the best hotel,/Reading the Roll of Honour. 'Poor young chap,'/ I'd say-"I used to know his father well;/ Yes, we've lost heavily in this last scrap.'" That's when it clicked. These men do not care about the fighting soldiers. They literally could not care less about who these men were that they were sending to fight. Ironically enough, in conjunction with line 3, they are sending these weak, amateur soldiers out while they are sitting in their hotel room with the most experience in the field. And that is where the criticism arises. Sassoon uses irony as a euphemism to make readers laugh and thinking their own what they laughed about. This irony then conveys the idea that the military does not care about their soldiers and who they are putting on the front line. All they care about is how many more drinks they are going to guzzle down.
Even though I am no the best at analyzing, I'd like to think this was an okay first time. We analyzed a bunch of sonnets, but they have a certain structure and form to look for and you will basically be all set. With this kind of poetry, I have no idea what is going on, just 10 lines of Siegfried Sassoon writing eloquently. It was actually kind of fun determining what
this means. Or maybe I'm just trying to make it sound better to convince myself to push through. Who knows. Until next time!
EG
Hello! So great to read your posts as they are always hysterical! I enjoyed your outlook on the poem and how you incorporated other work you had done in class to explain the poem. However, in the beginning of your post it is difficult to understand the literary device that you picked, is it Irony? I feel like in the beginning you could have stated that just to clarify what exactly the prompt was. In addition, I feel like your paragraphs are so split up you jump from topic to topic, making it a little hard to comprehend I would suggest trying to make you’re writing more sound. However, I did the irony that you found in the poem because most of it had gone right over my head. I do believe that their were more important literary devices throughout the poem that conveyed the authors tone and attitude. In the future, make sure to answer all parts of the prompt. I too found it to be a Satire, which I too loath. On the contrary, I felt that this poem conveyed the humor quite well. If the higher ranks were sending the more experienced soldiers out to fight instead of the youth, maybe they would have less casualties and more victories. Keep Writing!
ReplyDeleteOh my gosh I hate you too for using "Dand back at it again . . " in the beginning of your posts. Just kidding haha. It really made this blog funny though, because the poem "Base Details" obviously isn't. It's talking about soldiers fighting and their commanders being lazy good for nothings. After reading your post, I got kinda confused on what your literary device was because even though you stated you were going to analyze irony, you kind strayed off. Like Rose said, you jump from topic to topic a lot, which does make it hard for me to comprehend. However, I did enjoy how you were included your process in analyzing the poem even though you struggled with it. I myself had issues with it as well. But even if you did struggle, I was able to understand what you were trying to tell us even though irony wasn't what I saw. I understood the tragedy of war, and the laziness it comes with it as well when it came to the bosses saying in their big hotels while their men go off to fight. I think you should of focused on satire as a literary device for this poem, but other than that I think your blog was well written. It just needs more in coming up with an analysis because in some areas, it's just fillers. Connect to the real world.
ReplyDelete"Dang*"
DeleteHaha I definitely had a good laugh from the start of your post! To be honest, I did not know about the whole “dang Daniel” was until maybe two days ago; haha I definitely have to catch up! As always, your posts are very funny and intriguing which makes it easier to not only understand your claims but as well understand what kind of writer you are. And because you are so creative, it's really hard for me to get distracted without reaching the end and I hope many youngsters feel that way when reading your blog because we get to learn a lot without realizing it! Irony indeed plays an important role in Sassoon's poem “Base Details”, through his sarcasm one can really see the disgust he feels by the injustice of those young men fighting the war while they Majors enjoyed luxurious lifestyles. I really liked how you used quotations to support your claims, I believe that doing such helps the one who have not yet read the poem. For future posts, I'd recommend using transitions so your ideas and claims become stronger. I definitely look forward to reading your posts to come, keep reading and analyzing :) they make us stronger and better writers!
ReplyDeleteIt took me five minutes after reading the first line to continue reading the rest of your blog post because I was laughing so hard. Well, I'm going to start off by saying that you are seriously fooling yourself if you think that you are bad at analyzing, I'm bad at analyzing you're brilliant at it. Your blog posts really connect to everyone because it's funny but also really informative. This blog post in particularly had all of your usual quirkiness but a bit different because you talked extensively about the process of how you got to your final realization (if that makes sense). We all have that moment when we think something means this but really it means that what I'm trying to say but can't seem to find the words is that, I love, love, love how you told us about what you thought the poem initially meant and then had your "Einstein" moment. You explained the use of irony brilliantly and made me think and that is when I had my "Einstein" moment and finally understood the poem. At first, I did not understand the poem at all and after reading this I finally understand what the author was trying to convey, because I did not see it as irony, I believed that he really wanted to do all of those things, that he wanted to grow old and talk about the olden days (wow I really interpreted this poem wrong). Your blog post gave me a realization.
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