![]() ![]() Against this buoyant strain runs a harsher counter-melody, as if Owen is saying don't let's forget what has to be overcome for optimism to prevail, and echoes of other Owen poems help to put things in perspective. To read Sassoon's remarkable MEMOIRS OF AN INFANTRY OFFICER is to have it confirmed that something in the soul of man makes such an attitude more than a mere defence mechanism. A meal with Death! That symbolic act of sociality and fellowship! Death's table manners may not be of the best ('spilling mess tins in our hand') but still 'we laughed at him' (10), more than that, we 'leagued with him' (10) as if after all we might be on the same side.Ĭan coolness, blandness such as this really be a part of war? Yes, Owen says, for it links with courage, comradeship, pride, an unconquerable spirit. Quite friendly! Isn't Death (personified by Owen to heighten the reality) the enemy? It seems not.ĭeath can be nonchalantly walked up to, sat down beside, eaten with. Out there we walked quite friendly up to Death (1) Its form may be conventional (sonnet) its content is not. ![]()
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