Summary
"Attack" is a poem by Siegfried Sassoon about World War I. The poem vividly portrays the brutal realities of warfare through the perspective of soldiers on the battlefield.
The poem begins with the dawn light revealing a large gray ridge. The sunlight is purple and angry-looking as it filters in through smoke. The scarred slope appears menacing.
One by one, tanks move slowly toward barbed wire. The enemy begins to fire, but soldiers must make their way out of the trenches, laden down with battle gear. With fear and eventually despair, the soldiers engage in battle, and the speaker appeals to Jesus to make the horror stop.
Analysis
"Attack" is a powerful critique of war. Siegfried Sassoon, himself a decorated war veteran, uses intense and vivid imagery to expose the terrifying reality of warfare, far from any romantic notions of honor and glory.
The poem begins with dawn breaking, but the daybreak is represented as a threat that exposes the men to the enemy side. This contrasts the usual poetic association of dawn with hope and new beginnings. Instead, it sets a grim and tense mood. The daylight reveals a large gray ridge, or a long, narrow raised part of a landscape. The fact that it is "massed" could indicate the top of a trench, meaning that the ridge was created by humans for the purpose of war (Line 1).
The environment has clearly been altered by war. Trenches, barbed wire, and marks of explosions and other violent acts alter the landscape, which is described in the poem as a "menacing scarred slope" (Line 4). The light smolders through spouts of drifting smoke that are likely created by artillery, shells, and the like. To smolder is to burn slowly with no flame, showing the way that war technologies pollute the environment. This image contributes to the sense of chaos and fear in the poem.
The use of personification and visual imagery in "Attack" is significant. Sassoon describes the morning as threatening, personifying it to represent the danger that daylight brings by revealing the soldiers' positions. The sunlight is "wild purple," indicating the strange, unnatural feel of the battlefield (Line 2). The light also glowers, which means to have an angry or sullen look on one's face (Line 2). The word contains the word "glow" but twists its meaning, which reflects the way that war negatively impacts the natural order of things.
Slowly, "one by one," tanks make their way toward enemy lines (Line 4). This progression does not inspire much confidence, as the tanks "creep and topple forward" (Line 5). In other words, their movement is slow and clumsy as they go toward barbed wire. The word "creep" implies not only slowness, but careful movement so as to avoid being heard or noticed. However, the earlier emphasis on daylight suggests that the enemy is aware of the advancing tanks.
Sassoon uses robust and vivid language to describe the pandemonium of the battlefield. The "barrage roars and lifts," indicating that the opposing army has opened fire (Line 6). A barrage is a concentrated artillery bombardment over a wide area. The word "roar" in this context refers to the high velocity at which the bombardment occurs, making a loud prolonged sound. It also evokes a crying animal, which personifies the barrage as something wild and untamable.
The soldiers must make their way into this violent onslaught. They are first described as "clumsily bowed" because of the equipment they carry, but the posture of bowing also evokes obedience (Line 6). The soldiers have no choice but to engage in battle. They, like the opposing side, are equipped with tools for war: "bombs and guns and shovels and battle-gear" (Line 7). With no pauses or punctuation, this list wears the reader down in the same way as the items wear the men down. The weight of war will soon become apparent in the poem.
The soldiers' movements, like the tanks described earlier, are clumsy and slow. They "jostle and climb to, meet the bristling fire" (Line 8). The action of jostling means to push roughly through a crowd, or to struggle to move. The comma that divides the line inserts an awkward pause, reflecting the awkwardness of the soldiers' progress as they make their way toward the aggressive onset of enemy fire.
The desperation and fear of the soldiers are almost palpable, capturing the truth of their experience. They are described as "Lines of grey, muttering faces, masked with fear" (Line 9). The grayness of their faces matches the grayed landscape. Muttering could imply quiet intercommunication, but it also resonates with the experience of shell shock: a condition resulting from active warfare that was first identified in soldiers undergoing bombardment in the trenches in World War I.
In other poems by Sassoon, trenches are places comparable to hell. But in "Attack," the soldiers must leave the safety of the trenches to engage in battle. The line that describes this includes the phrase "going over the top," which indicates not just physical climbing but an allusion to the soldiers' mental conditions (Line 10). To go over the top implies losing one's mind. This is further expressed by the way "time ticks blank and busy on their wrists" (Line 11). War impacts all routines and markers of normalcy, including time. That time "ticks blank and busy" implies the futility of the war effort.
In another instance of personification, hope "Flounders in mud" (Line 13). This section could also be an example of a transferred epithet, in which hope's "furtive eyes and grappling fists" actually belong to the soldiers (Line 12). The confusion in these lines reflects the overall chaos of the situation. As the soldiers follow the order to "Attack" and move across the muddy unstable ground, they become disillusioned.
The poem ends with a desperate plea made by the speaker to Jesus: "make it stop!" (Line 13). This prayer underscores the soldiers' desperation and the bleakness of their circumstances. It might also imply that the speaker has lost faith in human figures of authority (such as military officers), and now must appeal to divine figures. The use of monosyllabic words in this plea creates a tense, clipped rhythm that echoes the urgency and panic of the battlefield.
The poem "Attack" is one long stanza composed of thirteen lines written mostly in iambic pentameter. On the page, it resembles a sonnet, which was likely a conscious choice made by Sassoon. However, the poem is thirteen lines, not fourteen, and the meter does not strictly adhere to iambic pentameter. These deviations are important in that Sassoon purposely sought to challenge romantic images of war in his poetry.
"Attack" serves instead as a reminder of the horrors of war and the human cost of conflict. The poem is a memorial to those who died or were changed as a result of being in the war. Overall, this is a testament to the power of poetry in that it captures the truth of a situation, ensuring that it won't be forgotten.
