Memorial Tablet

Memorial Tablet (Great War) is a 1918 poem by Siegfried Sassoon that makes the reader feel great pity for the soldiers. The author achieves this by adopting the persona of a dead soldier. The soldier is angry and tells us how his life was wasted, by his being forced to fight and end up dying for nothing. The details the poet gives us and the strong blunt language are the effective techniques for engaging our feelings for the soldier. The poem gives us insight in to what the war was about: a gruesome pointless death, for this soldier.

The poem opens with the Squire ‘nagged and bullies’ the boys of the town to go and fight for their country. The Squire stayed safe at home and didn’t go to war, which tells the reader that he knew what was going to happen to the boys when they went. The poem goes on to describe him by falling off the duckboards when a shell hit it. He fell in to bottomless mud and drowned a pointless death. The soldier is dismayed and astonished to find that his name is the only thing he has to show for his life. The soldier’s message is that there is no glory in death in war.