Sassoon - On Passing the New Menin Gate

Hi,

As it is hard to find a lot of information about this poem, I would like to ask it here. Is there anybody who can help me with some interesting ideas about this poem?

Thanx from Belgium,
Watchdog

Reply 1

louinwonderland

2

watchdog

Hi,

As it is hard to find a lot of information about this poem, I would like to ask it here. Is there anybody who can help me with some interesting ideas about this poem?

Thanx from Belgium,
Watchdog

OK, don't know whether you need it, but here's some background to the poem:
Sassoon began this poem in Brussels, 25 July 1927 and finished it in Campden Hill Square, January 1928. 54,889 names are engraved on the Menin Gate, which was built to commemorate the MISSING. Disturbingly, the authorities so under-estimated the number of names of the missing that another memorial had to be built for 12,000 more names.

The tone of the poem, I think, is one of contempt and disgust. What immediately strikes you is the Sassoon-esque sound patterns and rhyme schemes built into the poem. There is:
Alliteration: "Paid, with a pile of peace-complacent stone"
Internal Rhyme: "The unheroic Dead who fed..."
Assonance: "Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime"

These create harsh sounds that demonstrate Sassoon's anger - the Ps make it sound like he's spitting his words out.

Sassoon starts by questioning the reader directly "Who will remember, passing through this Gate / the unheroic dead...?" This rhetoric style accuses the reader, and all civilians, of neglecting to honour properly the "Dead".

He mourns the fact that there is nobody to "absolve" the men - i.e. they cannot be given a proper Christian burial because they are missing.

He suggests that the "Sepulchre of crime" (the gate) actually degrades the missing men, whose memory is reduced to "nameless names" (If you go to the Menin Gate or other memorials, you'll see what Sassoon means - there are so many names that individuality is erased and the names are meaningless).

The Gate is criminal because of the hypocrisy practised by the authorities who have built it: '"Their name liveth forever", the gateway claims'. The use of the word 'claims' and later 'belied' tells us that the Gate represents false honour and mourning. This is contrasted by imagery of the Dead, who "endured that sullen swamp" and "struggled in the slime". A common feature of Sassoon's poetry is this - he uses vile images to shock the public or the authorities in this case, who he believes to be 'complacent' and ignorant of the suffering of the troops.

Bearing in mind that the poem is written in the aftermath of war, it is not as vicious as other works by Sassoon (To The Warmongers etc), but for me it still shows the scars left on ex-soldiers, whose sacrifice, they felt, went unpaid and unrecognised.

I hope this helps - it's just my interpretation of the poem, and it certainly isn't definitive, so feel free to disagree, in fact, do (!) because I'd like to know if I've go it aaaall wrong.

Reply 2

watchdog

OP

Hi there!

Thanx for the reply. There are some interesting thoughts in it!
I can agree with your version as I'm writing my essay in a similar way (disgust, anger worked out in the structure of the poem...)
And as I live in Ypres, I will go and see the Menin Gate again this evening :wink:

This is also the reason why I really wanted to work on this poem.

When I was working on my essay this afternoon, I started doubting about the form. It is a sonnet, that's clear... and it has the typical rhyme scheme of a Shakespearean sonnet, but is it correct to interpret the poem as having 3 quatrains and a concluding couplet or do you have to interpret it as having an octave and a sestet, with a volta in between. I was in favour of the first interpretation as I would like to interpret the last two lines as a sort of conclusion 'Let the Dead arise and they will deride that sepulchre of crime'
But I'm not sure about it, may be there is a volta after line 8, but I don't know...

Thanx a lot!
Feel free to add some ideas!
(and to correct my English)

Greetz,
Watchdog

Sassoon - On Passing the New Menin Gate

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