The Rear - Guard - Siegfried Sassoon Analysis

Poem-

Groping along the tunnel, step by step,
He winked his prying torch with patching glare
From side to side, and sniffed the unwholesome air.

Tins, boxes, bottles, shapes and too vague to know;

A mirror smashed, the mattress from a bed;
And he, exploring fifty feet below
The rosy gloom of battle overhead.

Tripping, he grabbed the wall; saw someone lie
Humped at his feet, half-hidden by a rug.
And stooped to give the sleeper’s arm a tug.
“I’m looking for headquarters.” No reply.

“God blast your neck!”(For days he’d had no sleep.)

“Get up and guide me through this stinking place.”
Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap,
And flashed his beam across the livid face
Terribly glaring up, whose eyes yet wore
Agony dying hard of ten days before;
And fists of fingers clutched a blackening wound.

Alone he staggered on until he found

Dawn's ghost that filtered down a shafted stair
To the dazed, muttering creatures underground
Who hear the boom of shells in muffled sound.
At last, with sweat and horror in his hair,
He climbed through darkness to the twilight air,
Unloading hell behind him step by step.

'Groping along the tunnel' the verb groping gives the reader the idea that the soldier may be in an environment in which they are unfamiliar with their surroundings. And also gives the sense that the soldier must be in a dark tunnel.

‘He winked his prying torch with patching glare’ ‘patching glare’ tells the reader absolute darkness he is in where the only light is from the torch in patches. The personification of the torch ‘winked’ suggests the torch is acting like the soldiers eyes.

‘sniffed the unwholesome air’ shows that since he is unable to see, the soldiers sense of smell becomes enhanced, this gives the idea of how dark it actually is to the reader in the tunnel. Also ‘unwholesome air’ suggests the smell of death and the inhumane conditions.

‘“God blast your neck!”’ ‘Savage, he kicked a soft, unanswering heap‘ This shows the soldier finally losing his patience, the tension of under the tunnel leads to the soldier having the frustrated outburst, the word ‘savage’ sums up the sense of desperation and inhumane actions he is taking due to the tunnels conditions.

‘Dawns ghost’ dawns first beams of light is evoked as a supernatural metaphor, as well as ‘the dazed, muttering creatures underground’ which suggests demons or mythical inhumane creatures that remain living in the tunnels, which also gives the reader the image of Hell.

‘He climbed through darkness to the twilight air, Unloading hell behind him’ ‘unloading hell behind him’ suggests that the soldier literally went through hell – compared to the figure of speech ‘I went through hell’. ‘Unloading’ shows the soldier finally getting free and unloading the built up anxiety of ‘Hell’.