"Does It Matter?"

The three effects of the war on a soldier the poem touches on is losing your legs, losing your sight and losing your mind or dream.

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 the people they were fighting against.
We don't believe the poem reflects that attitude, because the poem explains that by fighting in a war the soldier will earn respect among his or her community. However, the poem is very ironic. It feels like the soldier has given up, and does not care about his or her life.

The reason why this poem has experienced some sort of revival considering its popularity is because Britain is still involved in wars, such as the ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

We feel that "Does It Matter" were more appealing to us than "The Soldier" because "The Soldier" was very complicated and difficult to understand, while "Does It Matter" was easier to read between the lines. It was filled with a sort of melancholy which gave the poem depth.

In the documentary about Siegfried Sassoon I learned these facts:

The WWI poets were brought up in a romantic era. They had the image of wars being fought with dignity. Things weren't like expected. Millions of young men were sent out to the trenches and died in the battlefield. The soldiers weren't prepared for the new guns and machinery that they had prepared for the WWI. Plus, the war was fought on foreign ground in France.

Sigfried Sassoon wrote poems and articles in the Times that were critical against the war. He wrote that at the beginning, the war was about protecting the country, but at the end, it was about conquering and aggression.

The government put him in a mental hospital because of his opinions. The reason they chose a mental hospital instead of a jail was that they simply couldn't lock up a well known Marshall from the war in jail for no specific reason. That would have caused massive riots and antagonism among the people.