Does it Matter? - A poem by Siegfried Sasson

Does It Matter?
By Siegfried Sasson

Does it matter?- losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

Ingrid, Mikkel and I analysed this poem, and here are our thoughts:

The poem touches three effects the war has had on the soldier; social problems, physical damage and psychical damage.

“Does it matter? - losing your legs?”
This is the first line in the poem, and this is an example of the physical damage the war does to these soldiers.

In the second verse, three line are as follows:
"There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind

As you sit on the terrace remembering"

These lines show that even though the soldiers were safe at home, they still had a lot off horrible memories from the war. The war had left them with psychical damage which the rest of the community probably would never understand.

The last verse shows another effect the war had on these soldiers; social problems.
“For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit. “
These last lines, I think, sais a lot about the community at that time. The soldiers had to live with all the horrible memories and pain from the war alone, because the community only saw them as “soldiers who fought for our country”, and not as individuals and victims.

It is often argued that the two great wars were fought by working-class men on both sides and that the people they were fighting for, were often more the enemy than he people they were fighting against. We think that this poem reflects this attitude because it seems like the soldier is a working-class man and it seems like the rest of the community doesn’t really see what he has sacrificed in the war. People say that he did it for the country. They don’t really see the individual, but try to glorify his actions. We also think that the government played a big part in this “propaganda for the military”. They gave the expression that the damage didn’t really matter; the focus was on the fact that the soldiers had to fight for their country.

This poem has enjoyed a bit of a revival of late. Today we have more focus on individual rights, and we think it is important to see the individuals and what they sacrifice in for example wars. In this poem, the community appreciate the country more than the individual. That was normal in the time period this poem was written (around 1916). Today in the modern society we can see an opposite trend where much less people for instance join political organizations than 100 years ago. (source: “Å gjøre en forskjell”, Jonas Gare Støre). These two very different ways of thinking might be one reason why the poem is popular in later times. Siegfried Sasson’s message in this poem is something we find very important in the modern community.

Siegfried Sasson was an English poet and author, and he was very famous for his anti-war poems like “Does It Matter?”. It was very brave of Sasson to speak up for the soldiers, because the rest of the community and the government didn’t like that he put themselves in that negative light. He thought it was important to show the world what these soldiers were going through, and he showed how the war had gone from a war of defense, to a war of aggression and conquest.