"On Passing the New Menin Gate"

Paper Summary:

This paper explains that modernist literature is characterized chiefly by a rejection of 19th-century traditions; thereby, the World War I poets reinvented the conventions of poetic prose, turning ballads of war glory into vivid accounts of horrific tragedy and painful suffering. The author points out that, in Siegfried Sassoon's poem, "On Passing the New Menin Gate" (1928), a short fourteen-line response to the Great War, disenchantment is manifested as cynicism, which establishes the context of the poem as post-war criticism, creating the stylistic technique of poetic social commentary. The paper relates that, while Victorian poetry attempts to criticize the conditions of society, modernism focuses on concrete issues such as Sassoon's contrast of the dehumanizing war and the dehumanizing wall, each a product of man's will to enhance civilization on two different levels.

From the Paper:

"War exists in Sassoon's poem as a transforming image for poetry and the perception of its reality. In condemning Menin Gate, there manifests an overall disapproval for mankind. Sassoon writes, "Paid are its dim defenders by this pomp; / Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone," mocking the excuse which is to replace what has been lost. Following this line he states, "The armies who endured that sullen swamp," a line that is isolated within the poem but comes after this explanation of how the wall is to honor the fallen soldiers. It is possible that Sassoon does this to show the inadequacy of the wall or any memorial in respect to the tribulations the soldiers went through."

More papers on "On Passing the New Menin Gate":

• Article Review # 130317 : "Jack Welch and "The New Rules"
• Book Review # 122384 : "The New Buffettology"
• Book Review # 89448 : "'The New Crusade'"

APA Citation:

MLA Citation: