DREAMERS

Soldiers are citizens of death's gray land,

Drawing no dividend from time's to-morrows.

In the great hour of destiny they stand,

Each with his feuds, and jealousies, and sorrows.

Soldiers are sworn to action; they must win

Some flaming, fatal climax with their lives.

Soldiers are dreamers; when the guns begin

They think of firelit homes, clean beds, and wives.

I see them in foul dug-outs, gnawed by rats,

And in the ruined trenches, lashed with rain,

Dreaming of things they did with balls and bats,

And mocked by hopeless longing to regain

Bank-holidays, and picture shows, and spats,

And going to the office in the train.

‘Dreamers’ is a poem by the British poet of the First World War, Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967). Written while Sassoon was convalescing at Craiglockhart Hospital, ‘Dreamers’ is a poem which contrasts the realities of war with the soldiers’ longing for home and domestic comfort and security.

ANALYSIS

‘Dreamers’: the very title tells us how Sassoon is depicting soldiers in this poem. Yet it does not tell us the whole story. Rather than rejecting the idea of war as a noble and heroic calling, Sassoon actually endorses such an idea: the soldiers are standing in ‘the great hour of destiny’ and determined to win some ‘flaming, fatal climax with their lives’.

‘Dreamers’ begins with Sassoon describing soldiers as inhabitants of the ‘grey land’ of death. Immediately, we are in No Man’s Land, in the trenches of the First World War. This is the land of death because these men know they could die any moment: today might be the day they are shot down by machine guns, or blown to pieces by a shell. The concept of ‘tomorrow’ makes no sense to such men, since there is no point in thinking about the future when you might be dead by tomorrow. Sassoon uses a financial metaphor to describe this: the soldiers can draw ‘no dividend’, i.e. no share of the profits.

Sassoon continues by describing the soldiers as rooted to the present moment: that ‘great hour of destiny’. Their fates are in the hands of destiny. These soldiers have their own private quarrels or ‘feuds’, their jealousies, their sorrows; but immediately, these are forgotten in the next line, as Sassoon reminds us that these men have been made to commit themselves to action, rather than feeling. Not only must they give their lives in the cause of the war, if necessary, but they must go out, as we like to say, in a ‘blaze of glory’.

And yet note the immediate contrast again in the next line, as we shuttle back from ‘action’ to ‘feeling’ or thought: ‘Soldiers are dreamers’. Even when the guns begin to fire and their lives hang in the balance, these soldiers – ordinary men, sons, fathers, brothers, husbands – think not in narrow military terms but of home comforts, their wives in their clean beds (rather than the lice-ridden pallets they sleep on in the trenches), and the warmth of their ‘firelit homes’ rather than the cold, damp world of the Western Front.

In the final six lines of ‘Dreamers’, Sassoon contrasts these ‘firelit homes’ (dreamed of, but far away) with the grim reality of the soldiers’ lives at war: instead of these firelit homes they inhabit ‘foul dug-outs’, instead of their wives they have ‘rats’ for company, and instead of their ‘clean beds’ they sleep in those ‘ruined trenches’. The rest of the poem conjures a stock-image of pre-war English life: cricket matches, Bank Holiday weekends, going to the cinema of ‘picture shows’, and even commuting to work – at least that is a safe and ordinary existence.

Source: https://interestingliterature.com/2020/05/siegfried-sassoon-dreamers-analysis/amp/