Siegfried Sassoon The Iconoclast

Abstract

Sassoon is a breaker of the myth of glorification of war in the truest sense. He unmasks the brutality and irony of war. War is the negation of life, peace and beauty. The concept of grand “heroism” is punctured in his poems. Sassoon’s scathing, sarcastic treatment of the horror of World War I evokes pity and fear in every heart. 1914-18, the years of doom, horror, massacre. Hopelessness, futility are vividly portrayed in the collage of war poetry. Sassoon remains the father-figure of this tradition.