‘Repression of War Experience’ by Siegfried Sassoon demonstrates the weight of emotional trauma that a soldier suffering from ‘shell shock’ must bear. The term ‘shell shock’ was given ‘official existence in medical discourse by Charles Myer, a psychologist, in 1915 (Loughran 105). It was a ‘popular catch-all name applied to … mental affliction arising from the war’ (Bogacz 232) and the disorder can now be recognised as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Sassoon himself was diagnosed with shellshock in 1917 and was sent to Craiglockhart War Hospital near Edinburgh for treatment, where he befriended the psychologist and anthropologist W.H.R. Rivers. Rivers pioneered the ‘talking cure’ for treating those with shell shock, when it was common for doctors to use electric shock therapy or hypnotism, along with advice for patients to ‘repress’ their memories. In a lecture he delivered to the Royal Society of Medicine in December 1917, he advocated the ‘facing of painful memories’ and ‘[deprecated] the ostrich-like policy of attempting to banish them from the mind’ (16), which he felt was more damaging. The title of this lecture was ‘Repression of War Experience’ which Sassoon then took as the title of his poem, which engages in the notion of repression.
The poem is narrated by an unidentified speaker, recuperating in a domestic setting away from warfare, which emphasises the universality of psychological trauma among soldiers. Shell shock was a widespread issue that affected scores of men fighting in the war, with 80,000 cases diagnosed during WWI (Young 359). However, it was initially regarded with suspicion, viewed as a form of ‘malingering, where soldiers pretended to be ill … so that they did not have to fight’ (Anderson). ‘Repression’ challenges this mindset with its stream-of-consciousness style that delves into the psyche of the speaker, who finds himself struggling against memories of the front line that threaten to overwhelm him. The irregular metre and lack of rhyme scheme coupled with stanzas of varying length add to the sense of his bewildered turmoil. Additionally, the frequent caesura alludes to fragmentation of his mind.
The poem takes place during the night, beginning with the speaker instructing himself: ‘Now light the candle…’ The appearance of a moth conjures memories of the war, symbolising soldiers who ‘[blundered] in / And [scorched] their wings with glory, liquid flame’. The glorification of war encouraged men to join the fight but it is war that leaves them with traumatic memories that are always threatening to emerge. The speaker tells himself, ‘No, no, not that, it’s bad to think of war, / When thoughts you’ve gagged all day come back to scare you.’ The repetition of ‘no’ underlines his frenetic desperation and tenuous grasp on his mind, with ‘gagged’ evoking a sense of suffocation, as well as violence and brutality. He becomes an example of how ‘each man was back in his doomed sector of a horror-stricken Front Line,’ as Sassoon witnessed during nights in the hospital (Sherston’s Progress 51). Rivers reasoned that it was ‘natural’ for ‘painful thoughts [that] have been kept from the attention throughout the day by means of occupation’ to ‘come into activity’ with the ‘silence and isolation of the night’ (13).
In the speaker’s attempts to regain control, the lingering voice of a medical authority and society, in general, asserts itself in the background, their ‘advice and admonishments continually [entering] his stream of consciousness’ (Cole 97). This is first exemplified by: ‘And it’s been proved that soldiers don’t go mad / Unless they lose control of ugly thoughts’. It was believed, before 1914, that ‘war would be the supreme test of character and will’ and so, shell-shock was initially linked to cowardice (Bogacz 231, 228). Furthermore, the ‘natural tendency to repress [was] … almost universally fostered by relatives and friends, as well as by medical advisers’ (Rivers 3). Thus, the speaker faces added pressure from the people surrounding him, whose lack of awareness of the extent of the psychological trauma results in advice that, albeit well-meaning, only deepens the pain. With the stigmatisation and having perhaps been told he has a ‘duty to forget’ (Rivers 5), he believes this is something he can control. Therefore, when he fails to do so he is all the more overwhelmed.
He tries to refocus his mind on small rituals, like lighting his pipe, with half-hearted bids to reassure himself (‘look, what a steady hand’). He orders himself to: ‘Draw a deep breath; stop thinking; count fifteen’, perhaps mimicking the advice he has been given. The heavy pauses that the semi-colons elicit are indicative of the laborious effort it takes for him to claim any semblance of composure. The clichéd phrase of ‘And you’re as right as rain’ takes on an ironic tone, a cynical attempt at convincing himself that he isn’t spiralling into madness. Yet, though he implores himself to read a book, he slips into a state of ‘immobilization,’ as Leffler writes (46). ‘You sit and gnaw your nails, and let your pipe out,’ the speaker says to himself. The pipe is no longer a comfort and his lack of activity means that he begins to lose himself among his memories. The ‘big, dizzy moth that bumps and flutters’ alludes to the disoriented speaker, pulling between past and present. And the ‘breathless air’ elucidates the constriction and suffocation he feels in the battle to repress his memories. His attention switches to the garden, where ‘There must be crowds of ghosts among the trees.’ His memories bleed into reality and his paranoia grows, resulting in hallucinatory symptoms, which Rivers cites as a characteristic of war neurosis (Instinct and the Unconscious 207).
Eventually, in the last stanza, he loses his grasp and the memories overwhelm him completely. ‘You’re quiet and peaceful, summering safe at home,’ he begins; the sibilance highlights the contrast between a setting in which he should feel at ease and the messiness of his inner state. The back and forth dialogue as he struggles against his own mind is demonstrated: ‘You’d never think there was a bloody war on!… / O yes, you would… why you can hear the guns.’ The ellipses suggest the ‘quiet’ is anything but ‘peaceful’ for the speaker. Instead, it brings forth sounds of gunshots and memories of the war: ‘Thud, thud, thud, – quite soft… they never cease – / Those whispering guns.’ The onomatopoeia and personification of the guns emphasise the insidiousness with which these memories pervade his life, how they linger in the background but then come barraging to the forefront. In the final lines, he cries ‘I’m going crazy. / I’m going stark, staring mad because of the guns.’ Here, the harsh sibilance finishes the poem in an abrupt tone, illuminating the depth of psychological pain that the speaker is plunged in.
In this way, the poem embodies Rivers’s idea of the ‘evil influence’ of attempting to ‘banish [the war] experience from [the] mind’ (4). Rivers’s prescription of ‘talking, reading, and thinking about war experience [in moderation]’ could perhaps have provided the speaker with the relief he so desired. The latter described how he wished for a ‘thunderstorm’ with ‘bucketsful of water to sluice the dark,’ signifying his need for a sense of release to wash away the pain inside him. He also wanted the ‘roses [to] hang their dripping heads.’ Patients were unhelpfully told to ‘lead their thoughts to … scenery and other pleasant aspects of experience’ (Rivers 3) and the speaker seemed to be in defiance of this, exasperated at being told to see beauty in the world when he had witnessed humanity at its worst. The personification of the books ‘standing so quiet and patient’ could also have been a projection of his longing for a figure like Rivers, who would be ‘quiet and patient’, to guide him in a healthy confrontation of his memories. Thus, Sassoon’s ‘Repression of War Experience’ is an acute observation of the impact of traumatic memories and how repression of such memories can trigger further pain.
It is worth noting that Wilfred Owen, whom Sassoon met at Craiglockhart, also explores the interconnection between memory and pain in shell-shocked patients in his poem ‘Mental Cases.’ He portrays patients as ‘purgatorial shadows’ sitting in the twilight, stuck in memories of ‘multitudinous murders’ and ‘carnage incomparable.’ For these men, ‘night comes blood-black; / Dawn breaks open like a wound that bleeds afresh.’ They run through a constant cycle where every day brings back the memories as raw as a fresh wound. They may have left the war but the war hasn’t left them.