Tag Archives: oh wow more death

‘Christ and the Soldier’ & ‘Counter-Attack’

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These two poems of Sassoon’s stuck out to me the most for their descriptive and conceptual power.

I find Christ and the Soldier particularly fascinating because it mirrors my own thoughts about religion in tandem with the war. I’m not a religious person myself, and I always thought that using Christianity and God as motivators for fighting in the war was a little strange because if the British believe God to be on their side, but the Germans believe God to be on theirs, then which is true? Ultimately, because Christ doesn’t answer the soldier’s question, I think Sassoon conveys that God has no place in this war and cannot be relied upon. I mean, why would so many soldiers have to die in such horrific ways if God was on their side? Why does an innocent mother have to grieve simply because her son was 18 and loved his country (or was pressured)? I would think when the circumstances are that senseless, faith would be quite hard to sustain.

I thought Counter-Attack had a very disturbing but vivid description to it. The last 4-5 lines in particular stuck out to me because they reminded me of the Owen poem we talked about in class, Dulce et Decorum Est. Both poems describe a soldier dying, but in different ways. One dies from gas, and the other from a shell explosion of sorts. Both poets chose to say these soldiers are drowning. I think this fits with the physical sensations of Owen’s soldier in Dulce et Decorum Est, but there must be a deeper meaning. Sassoon’s uses of ”smothering gloom” and ”blurred confusion” make me realize the trauma of dying in his soldier’s manner. Not being able to stop your own death or receive help must be an extremely suffocating feeling, worsened by the fact that he is lying in the middle of the terrible chaos. I liken it to the fact that if you’re actually drowning, it’s also a chaotic experience that is out of your control. Applying that idea generally, every soldier, including Sassoon himself, is drowning more as the war goes on.

Death

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Porter’s book is unusual in our reading (is there something else besides “L’Enfant de Malheur”? help my tired brain) that considers what might come after life. I mentioned this quotation in my 11:00 section and Amal asked if I could post it for further reflection:

“Death is death, said Miranda, and for the dead it has no attributes” (323).

Depression and the Influenza

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So after reading the first assignment of Pale Horse Pale Rider and the article about the pandemic that broke out in 1918, I can’t help but realize how absolutely tragic it is that a deadly new flu swept the world and took so many lives from the generation that was already exterminated and destroyed by the war, shortly before said war was about to loosen its grip on humankind. The fact that soldiers and nurses could’ve survived the war only to come home and shortly thereafter contract the illness and die, or have to watch a loved one die, is so devastating.

Anyway, this got me thinking about what I’ve learned in my psych classes about how mental health can affect physical health and vice versa. Specifically, chronic stress is soooo bad for one’s immune system, like genuinely terrible. Clearly, everyone in the U.S. and most European countries was under severe, long-lasting stress during this war. By 1918, humankind was simply exhausted, and I think this played a major role in the successful attack of the influenza (along with the spread of germs via soldiers living in unsanitary conditions and the lack of food across nations, etc.) Not only were people depleted physically, but mentally as well. Hope for an easy victory was lost at this point, and the horrors of combat broke people down.

Through Miranda’s perspective of the home front, we see not only despair and anxiety but also attempts to deny the dark reality of war, feelings of inferiority in men who can’t fight, and a general numbness/dissociation of American society. All of these are similar to symptoms of depression. I definitely think Miranda has depression, but to me, it also seems to be a societal experience at this time. Along with the chronic stress, I say this played a huge part in the ravage of the influenza. Yes, the conditions brought upon by the war and the improper handling of it made it harder to eradicate, but the hopelessness and the low spirits and the deep, deep sadness of the world ultimately made it easier for the influenza to kill people.