Essays
Glory of Women
Glory of Women is a poem about how blinded women are by the supposed honor and glory of war. They are ignorant of the hardships and pain that all men at war have to go through, instead seeing only the fame that they believe results afterwards.
The persona in this poem is the author, Siegfried Sassoon. He speaks as a soldier who has experienced sufferings of war to all women in general, who stay at home, fantasizing about their husbands’, sons’, fathers’, and any other men in their lives for their bravery in participating in the war.
This poem is written in an Italian (Petrachan) sonnet form, with a rhyme scheme of A B A B C D C D E F G E F G. It has a rhythm of Iambic Pentameter, which contains ten syllables per line, and read stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, etc. There aren’t a lot of techniques used in this poem; but many different cases of alliteration is used; for example, “heroes, home” in line one and “blind with blood” in line eleven.
Strong imagery is used to emphasize how terrible war is. Lines eleven and fourteen give gruesome pictures of the aftermaths of war, “trampling the terrible corpses – blind with blood,” and “his face is trodden deeper into the mud.” This is done because the poet wants the reader to have a clear mental image of how grisly war is, and also remember what it results in. Using blood and corpses to paint images had a strong effect on stressing the brutality of war.
Glory of Women conveys its message very well because of the ways the poet words his topic. The beginning octave describes women and their actions, thoughts, and feelings about men at war. Sassoon tells of how women love men that are heroes, how they take delight in hearing dangerous war experiences, how they crown a man for his acts of bravery, and how women mourn the memories of those who perished in the war. Then the poet proceeds in the following sestet to inform women of what they had never thought of: that war itself is not about honor
Glory of Women is a poem about how blinded women are by the supposed honor and glory of war. They are ignorant of the hardships and pain that all men at war have to go through, instead seeing only the fame that they believe results afterwards.
The persona in this poem is the author, Siegfried Sassoon. He speaks as a soldier who has experienced sufferings of war to all women in general, who stay at home, fantasizing about their husbands’, sons’, fathers’, and any other men in their lives for their bravery in participating in the war.
This poem is written in an Italian (Petrachan) sonnet form, with a rhyme scheme of A B A B C D C D E F G E F G. It has a rhythm of Iambic Pentameter, which contains ten syllables per line, and read stressed, unstressed, stressed, unstressed, etc. There aren’t a lot of techniques used in this poem; but many different cases of alliteration is used; for example, “heroes, home” in line one and “blind with blood” in line eleven.
Strong imagery is used to emphasize how terrible war is. Lines eleven and fourteen give gruesome pictures of the aftermaths of war, “trampling the terrible corpses – blind with blood,” and “his face is trodden deeper into the mud.” This is done because the poet wants the reader to have a clear mental image of how grisly war is, and also remember what it results in. Using blood and corpses to paint images had a strong effect on stressing the brutality of war.
Glory of Women conveys its message very well because of the ways the poet words his topic. The beginning octave describes women and their actions, thoughts, and feelings about men at war. Sassoon tells of how women love men that are heroes, how they take delight in hearing dangerous war experiences, how they crown a man for his acts of bravery, and how women mourn the memories of those who perished in the war. Then the poet proceeds in the following sestet to inform women of what they had never thought of: that war itself is not about honor