Base Details, by Siegfried Sassoon
Siegfried Sassoon is a much admired writer of war poetry, and in his work, “Base Details” we have plenty justification for that admiration. This poem takes the often glorified image of the Majors from World War 1 and strips them bare showing them for their true selves, sending out to us the feeling he has of these Majors being worthy of none of the respect they have ever received. He skilfully uses the powerful medium that is poetry, combines it with his mastery of literary techniques such as word-choice, imagery, rhythm and sound, to create an extremely critical view of the way WW1 was conducted. The very first thing we notice about this poem is of course the title. The words “Base Details” could be taken to be talking about an actual army base. On the other hand they could be taking another meaning of the word “base”, which is dishonourable, and thus getting the title, dishonourable details, which is very much in line with the tone of this poem, which is unyielding, right from the very beginning. This of course only heightens the impact of the first line. “If I were fierce, and bald, and short of breath,” line 1 There, in that first, single line, Sassoon destroys any preconceptions we might have had about tall handsome
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Some common words found in the essay are:
Honour Poor, Majors Short, Fodder Majors, World War, Base Details, Word Count, Siegfried Sassoon, guzzling gulping, youth stone dead, stone dead, army base, section poem, world war, base details, front line, youth stone,
Approximate Word count = 920
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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