Compare and Contrast the ways in which attitudes towards the First World War are presented in “My Boy Jack”, a 1997 play by David Haig, and the poetry of Siegfried Sassoon.
The coming of The Great War in 1914 ended a lengthy period
of peace and stability in British society.
Britain was a confident and strong country. Its navy was the strongest in the world. The
Edwardian period (1901-1911) was a time when Britain “ruled the waves”-until
Germany challenged the supremacy of the Royal Navy by building a threatening
fleet of its own. Queen Victoria, of
German extraction, had married her children into many of Europe’s great ruling
families to successfully maintain and preserve peace. However, Britain had perhaps become
complacent due to the might of its global Empire, its wealth gained through
trade, and its military confidence.
In the years before the Great War, the poet and novelist
Rudyard Kipling and the poet Siegfried Sassoon had both enjoyed, benefitted
from and celebrated this sense of permanent peace and national pride. Rudyard
Kipling was a writer famous for his patriotic and stirring work, supporting in particular
the vast British Empire, believing that it had brought “civilisation” to many
areas of the world, such as India and parts of Africa. His novels and poems
celebrate a sense of national pride bordering on jingoism and even xenophobia.
His view was that Britain’s global influence of the late 19th Century was positive
and patriarchal; he did not consider it exploitative. Siegfried Sassoon enjoyed a private income, a
public school education, a place at Cambridge University and a leisurely upper
middle class lifestyle of cricket, hunting and country pursuits. His patriotism
and desire to preserve the stability of his lifestyle led him, like many of his
class, to join the army on August 4, 1914, the day war was declared. “For a
middle class young man with a public school background there was very little
choice”[1] Here C. H.
Sorley confirms the contemporary notion of responsibility and duty that seemed
quite natural to Sassoon, Kipling and many others of their social class.
Public enthusiasm for
war
Both Sassoon and Rudyard Kipling, as presented in “My Boy
Jack”, were writers who were to respond in depth to the Great War of 1914-18. When
it began, Kipling and Sassoon were idealistically and enthusiastically fully supportive of the
government’s military and political decisions regarding going to war.
Unfortunately, these decisions led to
tragedy and destruction with the war being perceived as “a catastrophe that has
haunted the western world ever since.”[2]
Over 8 million people lost their lives.
British attitudes to war changed between 1914 and 1918. These developments are depicted vividly in
David Haig’s play “My Boy Jack” (1997) and the contemporary poetry of Siegfried
Sassoon.
In the summer of 1914 the mood in Britain was confident and
largely belligerent, fuelled by growing German confidence and aggression. This jingoism was noted across the population;
here Robert Saunders notes (with the use of the word “restless”) that the
excitement across all social classes perhaps reflected an eagerness for the
violence of war, so that British superiority could be imposed: “Everywhere in
London you see flags flying…(with) an atmosphere of restless excitement.”[3]
National pride was equalled by anti-German feeling.
By the Christmas of 1914, five months into the war, there
had been 1,186,357 volunteers. Enthusiasm
to fight and protect the British way of life was at a level that the government
had not foreseen: “The response overwhelmed the army. In 18 months, 2,467,000
men had joined up- only to find that the army did not have enough rifles or
uniforms.”[4]
Support for Joining
Up
This level of feverish national commitment is reflected
early in by Haig “My Boy Jack” when Kipling is pressuring his son John to
volunteer for officer training:
MOTHER: There’s no hurry. JOHN: Daddo thinks there is. (My Boy Jack, Act 1, page 9)
This exchange is part of a tense, clipped conversation about
John Kipling’s upcoming interview to join the army, the undercurrent of which
is that John and his mother feel less keen about the process than Rudyard
Kipling himself, who, never having served in the armed forces, seems anxious to
act out his nationalist pride through his only son. Rarely does Haig write in
full sentences; he represents the tension and uncertainty in the Kipling family
using short staccato phrases reflecting a lack of commitment to duty:
“What’s the matter?...Nothing….We’re fine…Why are you
upset….we’re not…” (MBJ Act 1 Sc1 p.8)
More evidence for Kipling’s uncertainy:
Page 6 KIPLING: “Yes the army needs volunteers…why?”
Even though this is a test for John to prepare him for his interview, Haig ends
the line with “why” which implies possible uncertainty;
Page 24 KIPLING (TO JOHN): “I’m thrilled you’re so
keen” Haig implies an air of relief and tension. Telling his son he’s
“thrilled” makes it seem he possibly expected the opposite.
Page 28 ELSIE: “No-one will tell me why the army have had a
change of heart!” KIPLING: “Not now!” Here Haig wants the reader to feel
that Kipling fears a discussion of this topic as he knows- deep down- the he
was wrong to persuaded his old friend the general to take his son with such
poor eyesight. ALSO Page 29 : ELSIE “I want to know why the
army changed their mind!” KIPLING “This is so selfish!”
Page 33 JOHN “It is an honourable task….isn’t it?”
Here Haig voices uncertainty through John’s hesitant answer to his father.
This nervous indecision can be contrasted with Sassoon’s
relaxed, fluid tone, reflecting his
confidence and optimism that the war is unquestioningly right;
“I wait death’s savage hour that shall deliver My
soul and leave the soaring night serene.”
“A Testament”
Sassoon’s approach here is certain, calm and considered, but
is not as convincing as his later ”trench” poems, which attack the war and
are ironic, personal, and passionate.
His use of rhetoric in “A Testament” seems naïve and unconvincing and gives a
sense of emotional detachment: “Rhetoric was the means he used to express his
perplexity…(using) symbols of faith…”[5]
Here, one biographer implies a certain naïve confusion in Sassoon’s eager sense
of duty. Sassoon had no religion and his use of mystic images suggests trying
unsuccessfully for a grand effect. His
voice here seems distant, and was criticised by a contemporary poet, Robert
Graves: “He frowned and said that war should not be written about... in a
realistic way. Siegfried had not yet
been in the trenches.”[6]
Graves was a more seasoned soldier than Sassoon and his comment here reflects a
sense of cynicism on the part of one who had seen the horrors of war. Yet, he did not want to unduly discourage his
friend.
In Haig’s Kipling
household discussion in Act 1, any pretence that there is no imminent danger to
the recruits breaks down when the realities of John’s involvement in the war
grows closer and becomes real. Haig gives
his characters’ voices an urgent, hyperbolic tone that becomes increasingly
personal and emotional:
RUDYARD: “When will people wake up? We don’t have much
time…” (MBJ Act 1 Sc 1 p.9)
Ironically, it seems that the country had ”woken up” and
shared his enthusiasm for war. Haig suggests that Kipling is possibly unaware
of other reasons for supporting strongly John’s applications for a commission. On
the surface it is because he claims it is his duty. However, Haig plants the seed that the ageing
Kipling (48 in 1914) might be feeling in some way inadequate about his own
inability to undertake military service.
This deepens the audience’s sense of ambiguity regarding his motives:
MOTHER: You want.
RUDYARD:
For his sake.
MOTHER: No, it’s for your
sake. (MBJ, Act1 Scene1 Page 10)
Sassoon’s attitude and belief, stemming from a comfortable
upper middle class upbringing, was also unquestioningly patriotic and had been
influenced by Kipling’s work; he “admired and knew much Kipling by heart”[7]. This is evident
in Sassoon’s poem “The Daffodil Murderer” (1913) which recalls in some detail
the peaceful, rural Edwardian British lifestyle often celebrated by Kipling.
Yet, as Sassoon’s friend, the poet Robert Graves later confirmed, Sassoon
joined up enthusiastically on the day war was declared somewhat naively and
idealistically “without the remotest idea of what lay ahead”[8].
Sassoon’s decision reflected the mood of
the country; it was not necessarily heroic, but simply a characteristic shared
by many young, gentlemen of his class: “The duty to defend Britain was so
obvious, so intrinsic to the bedrock of their being, that they scarcely
recognised it”[9]. What exactly Stempel claims here they were
“defending” is open to conjecture; it can be argued that they simply wanted to
protect and maintain a world in which they could live privileged lives. Sassoon’s contemporary verse underlines his
total commitment to war:
“He lusts to break the loveliness of spires” (“The Dragon and the Undying”)
Haig offers further evidence of Kipling’s almost manic
patriotic fervour at the start of the war.
As a famous writer, he makes a public speech in Act 1 Scene 4 which uses
rhetoric and great over exaggeration to create an emotional response in the
audience:
“Our English soul will be squashed and squeezed until it
cries out in pain…” (p.25)
Kipling’s use of hyperbole would be comical if it were not
so frightening; when he says the invading Germans are the ”germs of a disease”
(ibid.) he makes a lighthearted pun on germs/Germany yet creates a fearful
image at the same time. However, Haig
adds that Kipling fears that the “Germs” will “contaminate our blood” which
hints at a sense of racial superiority, a crime ironically that the Nazis in
Germany were to be guilty of. This
shifts the tone away from humour, as a mood of dark dramatic irony is created.
Sassoon is not quite so fervent or excitable, but his
“spires” line shows that he is prepared to destroy the house of God to defeat
the enemy, such is his commitment.
Perhaps the poet Edward Thomas’ expression of patriotism is relevant
here; in 1917, just before he died, he picked up a pinch of Hampshire soil and
said that any sacrifice he might make would be “literally, for this”. Indeed,
those young gentlemen who did not rush to become officers in 1914 were looked
down upon: “Anything other than volunteering (in 1914) would be a cowardly
shirking of my obvious duty.”[10]
The First World War
Viewed From Today
Central to any comparison of Haig’s play of 1997 and
Sassoon’s contemporary verse is an understanding of the effect of the eighty-year
difference in audience awareness. Our
modern, terrible knowledge of the Great War adds an air of tragedy to the high
level of dramatic irony. Sassoon’s early
enthusiasm, hopefulness and sense of moral purpose is very real: “I am in the
field where men must fight” (“To My Brother”). His individual bravery is not in
question, while Haig notes that the idealism and pride of “My Boy Jack”,
written nearly a century after the Great War is necessarily both innocent and
ill-advised:
JOHN: “I’ve always wanted to join the army, to fight for my
country, and to er…preserve our…” (MBJ Act 1 Sc1 p.8)
A modern audience is
mindful of the coming horrors and huge casualty lists and is generally aware
that the public enthusiasm of 1914 would soon be replaced by remorse and
cynicism. However, a modern audience also tends to believe, thanks initially to
poets like Sassoon, that ALL war is futile, adding a layer of poignancy to the
debate in the Kipling family; the Great War is indeed a huge tragedy for
thousands, as will be the death of their only son. Haig works with this dramatic
irony throughout his play. Modern
awareness gives Jack’s concerned mother’s words great weight and portent while making
Kipling seem misguided:
“Do you think it’s fair to encourage him?” (MBJ Act 1, Sc1
p.9)
Haig knows that his audience must draw upon knowledge that
the characters do not have. However,
Jack’s mother senses danger and quite rightly insists upon caution: “we should
wait…” (ibid.). Haig here gives weight
to Carrie’s well judged natural concern and thereby draws attention to her
husband’s ill advised certainty and confidence.
Pressures From
Society To “Join Up”
Both Sassoon and John Kipling in Haig’s “My Boy Jack” were
of a similar social class and equally willing to join up, but both were perhaps
pressured by others keen to see them do their duty, as any young gentleman’s “neighbours
expected him to square up to his responsibilities”[11].
While Sassoon’s verse displays little evidence of direct pressure, it is clear
that John Kipling was pressurised in ways suggested in Leighton’s observation
in this comment.
At the outbreak of war in August 1914, these strong social pressures
gave rise to images of destiny and nobility regarding the defence of one’s
country from invaders. In this sense both
Haig (ironically) and Sassoon (innocently) reflect the attitudes of suffragettes
Emmeline and Christabel Pankhurst, who, very soon after the declaration of war,
committed the suffragette movement to suspend its direct and often violent
action to join with the rest of society in supporting Britain's war effort,
demanding that “men go to battle like the knight of old”[12] This uninformed attitude expressed by the
Pankhursts reflects a misguided belief that war in the twentieth century would
be like the ‘honourable’ conflicts of the past, with swordfights and cavalry
charges. Sassoon’s attitude to the
coming conflict, in his early war poem “Absolution”, is initially idealistic with
a similarly anachronistic mood, similar to that of the Pankhursts. It was written
before he had left the comfort of his country home, or had experienced combat,
or had fought in the trenches:
“War is our scourge, yet war has made us wise, And, fighting for our freedom,
we are free” (Absolution, 1914)
He continues:
“Horror of wounds and anger at the foe
………all
these must pass…”(Absolution)
In “The Dragon and the Undying” (February 1916) he writes of
dead soldiers using language that shows scant experience of battlefield
conditions, seemingly unconcerned about the horrible ways in which the men
died:
“Yet, though the slain are homeless as the breeze
Vocal they are, like storm-bewildered seas.”
Sassoon’s writing is lyrical and romantic here, avoiding
physical reality. In this sense,
Wilson’s view that the poem is “not entirely convincing”[13]
can be understood.
As Robert Graves notes, the poet writes about the heat of a
battle without any personal experience or knowledge of combat. Sassoon’s poetry is generalised and non-specific.
At this stage, for Sassoon, war is only a concept; a necessity to maintain the
freedom that was the expectation of his generation. This position is also true for Rudyard Kipling
as represented by David Haig in “My Boy Jack”.
Haig presents Kipling’s view of the coming war as that of a spiritual
crusade which is ennobling and pure: “fighting for civilisation itself!” (MBJ Act
1 Sc 1 p.9). Haig makes Kipling’s voice a combination of
strident politician and evangelical preacher, in which higher ideals of
freedom, civilisation and tradition are placed above personal desires. His belief is that one’s own needs must be put
to one side- the protection of our values and way of life is paramount. This is also reflected in Kipling’s view of
how noble it is to be British: “as constant as the brook that cuts deep into
the valley soil” (ibid.) Sassoon’s motivation is, however, still suggested in
his early poems. The line “I want to fill my gaze with the young-limbed copse”,
from “To Victory, written in 1914, suggest that his love for his home land
reflects Kipling’s physical love for his country.
Attitudes to Death
Haig explores Kipling’s Christian notion of duty,
responsibility and sacrifice. This is a
Victorian view. There was a notion that
the wealthy, and certainly the more enlightened and educated had a duty of care
to those less fortunate. Certainly, Haig presents Kipling as someone who is
prepared to sacrifice their children, the next generation, to defend the
British way of life:
“We must continue to pass our children through fire…” (MBJ,
Acty 1 Scene 5 p. 31)
Kipling assumes that his son John agrees, although it is not
discussed in depth. Sassoon also uses an
image of fire, a cleansing and destructive force, to assert his own belief that lives must be
sacrificed to defend democracy and a way of life. In his 1914 poem “The Dragon
and The Undying” he writes the a soldier must be:
“…stung to rage by his own darting fires”.
Kipling maintains this belief even when confronted by his
wife and daughter. When they learn of
John’s disappearance, they do not feel that sacrificing his life is necessary:
CARRIE: “You never tried to stop him!”
RUDYARD: “ Carrie, if by any chance John is dead, it will have been the
finest moment in his young life. WE
would not wish him to outlive that”
(MBJ, Act 2 Sc 1 p.51)
With Kipling’s use of the plural “we” Haig is suggesting
that Kipling assumes that his wife does- or should, anyway- share his notion of
sacrifice. Sassoon responds to the death
of anonymous soldiers in a similar way; he does not know them, and remarks that
their deaths are glorious and meaningful:
“And they are fortunate…” (“France”)
And “When…you died…I speed you on your way” (“To His Dead Body”)
However, when both Sassoon’s brother (November 1915) and then his best friend David Thomas (May
1916) are killed, he is forced to examine his philosophy, yet he still retains
the idealism and sense of sacrifice that Haig has given Kipling:
“Dreams will triumph, through the dark” (“A Letter Home”)
and
“You roam forlorn along the streets of gold…” (“An
Investiture”)
Sassoon continues to take a spiritual view of death here; he
still believes that the “dream”, or higher purpose is important and, it seems,
worth the sacrifice as heaven and glory will be the reward.
Haig presents Kipling as coming under pressure from his wife
and daughter about his views on John’s death.
When he needs to justify his position to them, Kipling once again is
less than convincing in his defence of his philosophy:
RUDYARD: NO sacrifice…is too great…no sacrifice…however
painful, is too great…if we win the day…” (MBJ Act 2 Sc 1 p.52)
Haig’s use of ellipsis here implies hesitancy and a lack of
conviction. Kipling’s repetition and uncertainty
diminishes his belief to an audience. Yet Kipling never wavers from his
position that John’s sacrifice is a meaningful and spiritual act, approved of
by God. Even when Kipling hears the
truth of John’s painful death, he continues to persuade himself that he values
it:
RUDYARD: “There is a glory!”
CARRIE: “He was alone, in pain…you can’t convince me there
is any glory in that!” (MBJ Act 2 Sc 3 p.78)
Haig implies that Carrie, his wife, cannot accept the higher
purpose. Her tone is more credible and
natural, with human passion, putting the life of her child before anything
else, including God’s will.
Yet Sassoon has seen death at first hand and believes that
the sacrifices made are wrong. He
develops the view that men are dying needlessly, as no military purpose is
gained. He believes that the generals
see the troops as expendable:
“He’s a cheery old card, grunted Harry to Jack…
But he did for them both by his plan of attack”. (“The General”)
He finds the death of friends difficult to accept when he
sees that they died needlessly:
“I wish they’d killed you in a decent show” (“To Any Dead
Officer”)
… and that the war has become about international politics
rather than a humanitarian attempt to stop the destruction of Belgium and
France. Sassoon’s position, which has
changed after many bitter and horrific experiences makes Kipling’s seem
inflexible and ill informed. Carrie and
Elsie’s humanity makes it seem hard and pitiless. Sassoon could have been echoing Carrie, and
undermining Kipling, when he wrote in his poem “The Dug-Out”:
“You are too young to fall asleep for ever.”
While Haig has
created Kipling as a principled man with integrity, he has implied that
Sassoon’s view is more realistic and human.
In his ironically titled poem “The Hero”, Sassoon portrays a mother
trying to find meaning in her son’s death:
“We mothers are so proud of our dead soldiers”
Yet she had been lied to; her son was a coward, a “cold
footed, useless swine” and her belief that his death was glorious was based on
a lie. The hunt for the truth about John’s death reveals a great deal of
uncertainty; Haig presents the Kipling family as being desperate to believe
that their son died nobly:
RUDYARD: “It was done with, quickly” (MBJ, Act 2 Sc 3 p.77)
despite an eye witness telling them that “the lootenant’s
cryin’ with the pain…” (MBJ Act 3 Sc. 2 p.74).
Patriotism and
Superiority
Sassoon’s idealism and Haig’s portrayal of Rudyard Kipling’s
patriotism embrace the genuinely felt but tragically misplaced nobility and spiritual
British superiority implicit in the Pankhursts’ speech. They have little understanding of what the
next four years held in store. Sassoon’s
noble claim: “Fighting for our freedom, we are free…” (“Absolution”) echoes Kipling’s words in Act
One Scene 4 “…a people whose soul is as strong and old as an British Oak” (MBJ p.24). In this scene Haig presents a rewrite of an actual
speech made by Kipling in 1914, the rhetoric, the pride and pomposity of which
makes the horrors of the next four years even more ironic and unacceptable. At this stage, both Sassoon and Haig reflect
an over-confidence stemming from the global dominance of the British Empire,
which had underlined British strength, militarily, politically and culturally,
for over fifty years. Kipling’s poem “For All We Have and Are” (1914) shows
that Haig’s portrayal of him as a fervent supporter of the war is accurate:
“There is but one task for all-
One life for each to give,
What stands if freedom fall?
Who
dies if England live?”
Sassoon and Kipling know that they, or those they love, may
well be killed. Yet they write about such
tragedies at a conceptual level; national pride, sense of duty and loyalty to
one’s country and willingness to follow orders overrides any sense of loss they
might later experience. Sassoon writes in
1914 about his brother’s possible death in battle:
“But in the gloom I see your laurelled head And
through your victory I shall see the light.” (To My Brother 1914)
The poem seems clichéd and uninspired, perhaps because of
the poet’s lack of experience; his biographer, Wilson, describes it as “tired,
giving no sense of personal loss”[14]
This view argues that the poet’s enthusiasms are misguided and at worst
insincere. Perhaps his brother still
being alive allowed Sassoon to be idealistic. Sassoon was only to find his real
voice later on in the war, after the death of his brother and many other close
friends. In pre-1914 poems such as
“France” Sassoon shows further evidence of misguided idealism and naivety:
“And they are fortunate, who fight”.
Similarities in optimistic tone and mood between Sassoon’s
poetry and Kipling’s attitude in Haig’s play, can be perceived when Sassoon and
John Kipling were both undertaking military training in Britain. Sassoon was not to reach the front until late
1915; John Kipling did not see action until the Autumn of 1915. During this interim period the patriotism of both
Sassoon and Kipling continued to idealise and glorify both the war and the
nobility of a sacrificial death. Haig implies that Jack Kipling’s mother and
sister understand with horror and great misgivings the position clearly, but
question it; boys like Jack are being killed every day, with little
effect. They seem to see through Rudyard
Kipling’s apparent acceptance that Jack may have to die to serve the great cause
of civilisation, freedom and history – the British Empire- which combines
“benevolence and commerce” (MBJ Act 1
Scene 5 p.31):
ELSIE: To preserve that you would put your son’s life at
risk? (MBJ ibid)
At the same time the inexperienced Sassoon was yet to be
persuaded that the war was not noble and just; in his early poem “A Testament”
he writes of the “triumphant dead” echoing Kipling’s (and the Pankhursts’) view
that the Great War is a cause worth dying for.
Sassoon continues to employ lofty rhetorical devices to continue to
support the war in another contemporary poem, “To Victory”:
“My sight shall be clear and my heart rejoice” (“To
Victory”)
Gender Representation
in Families
Sassoon expresses both concern and contempt in his verse for
the fathers of soldiers. Fathers are
sometimes sympathetically presented: in “Ancient History”. The biblical countryman “Adam” has it seems
had a breakdown; Sassoon describes him as a “gaunt wild man whose lovely sons
were dead”. A father whose son still
serves is frozen with fear in case he receives the worst news:
“I Think I’ll never weep again
Until I’ve heard he’s dead” (“The
Hawthorn Tree”)
He does, however, have strong words for men like Haig’s
depiction of Kipling, who consider the danger then believe that losing a son is
acceptable in the name of patriotism:
RUDYARD: (quietly) There is a price that we have to pay (MBJ
ibid.)
Haig implies with “quietly” here that Rudyard’s commitment
to the cause is perhaps weakening. Kipling’s daughter’s use of direct speech
and non-rhetorical questions contrasts starkly with her father’s pompous
ambiguity, suggesting that his views are less valid than his daughter’s. Sassoon gives little such consideration to
women in his poetry. Mentions of bereaved
mothers and patient wives cast women in reactive and passive roles, while younger
women are not to be trusted:
“You love us when we’re heroes, home on leave,
Or wounded in a mentionable place…” (“Glory of Women”)
Sassoon sees women as unreliable and superficial, who,
unless they are nurses, are likely to reject men whose wounds are disfiguring
or disabling. Haig, writing with a 1990s
sensibility, gives Kipling’s wife Carrie and his daughter Elsie wisdom and
intelligence. Kipling describes the
British Empire, as being benevolent and responsible. Elsie notes, with perhaps the benefit of a post-empire
political perspective, “and to make money” (MBJ Act1 Sc 5 p.30). Haig gives this perceptive, rebellious and,
for 1914, almost treasonous comment to an articulate young woman who is
prepared also to get to the truth of her brother’s apparent nationalism:
JOHN: “I do give a damn about Empire”
ELSIE: “No you don’t. You’ve said
you don’t”. (MBJ, ibid. p.31)
Unlike Sassoon, Haig gives women a voice in 1914. Fathers, however, are depicted by both Haig
and Sassoon as ill informed, pompous and out of touch. In his poem “The Fathers”, Sassoon depicts
proud fathers as tragically ignorant of the effects of their enthusiasm. When one parent boasts that his son is in
France “getting all the fun”, another must admit that:
“My boy’s quite heart broken, stuck in Britain”
Sassoon creates a boastful mood; his son is desperate to
fight, even though the father admits he is still in Britain. Sassoon uses a hard hitting epigrammatic
final line to emphasise the futility of the parents’ arguments, calling them
his “impotent old friends”. This of
course is exactly the situation that Haig creates for Kipling. He pleads with the recruiters “John has so
much to offer” (MBJ Act1 Sc 2 p.17) and eventually persuades an ageing general
to bend the rules so that John is accepted.
The War in Popular
Culture and Music Halls
In “My Boy Jack” Haig explores the importance of the popular
culture of the time; both in terms of how Rudyard Kipling himself, a hugely
popular writer, affected it (his speeches were published in the national press)
but also how Rudyard was himself affected by popular patriotic music-hall songs
of the period. The play opens with him singing a banal theatrical song while,
paradoxically, teaching his son that pince-nez give a man gravity and
seriousness- an “overall impression” of maturity. Ironically, this is undercut
at Jack’s interview for a commission:
OFFICER: Right, spectacles off…
JACK: It’s pince nez, actually. (MBJ,Act 1, Scene 2, l.16)
This juxtaposition, in the first pages of Act One, implies
to the audience a worrying contradiction in Rudyard; that he equates war with
image and theatricality, not pain and death.
Having spent some time in the trenches, having lost dear
friends and having seen that the view of the war at home is grossly optimistic
and lacking in reality, Sassoon had seen through the hollow optimism of such popular
opinion that turns war and death into pantomime, the “prancing ranks of
harlots” that “mock the riddled corpses round Bapaume” (“Blighters”). Sassoon realised that the patriotic music-hall
audiences ‘at home’ would never understand the horrors of the war while being
fed propaganda.
KIPLING: “when I take my morning promenade……” (MBJ Act 1 Sc
1 P.1)
By presenting Kipling singing a music hall song, now linked
for modern audiences with misinformed enthusiasm for a brutal war, Haig depicts
him as ill informed and unthinking, both accepting populist nationalism at face
value without even considering an alternative view and fuelling it with his
poetry. This is underlined when a
recruiting officer plays a record of a Kipling poem that is on sale to the
public. It states how God must be on
Britain’s side:
“Lord God of hosts, be with us yet…” (MBJ Act 1 Sc 2 p.15)
Sassoon’s view in this regard hardens by mid 1916. He is completely disillusioned by the war at
this point and despises the ignorance of the British public:
“You smug faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads pass by,
Sneak
home and pray you’ll never know
The hell where
youth and laughter go.” (“Suicide In
The Trenches”)
Sassoon’s Disillusionment
versus Kipling’s Inflexibility
Sassoon’s poetry begins to reflect his experiences in the
front line from early 1916. His
idealistic, nationalistic view soon disappears as the mindless reality of the
slaughter becomes an everyday experience for him. This view is echoed by Max Egremont:
“Sassoon had written of enthusiastic beginnings, but then
moved on to disenchantment, even despair.”[15]
One way in which Sassoon begins to differ in view from Haig’s
portrayal of Rudyard Kipling is in his attitude towards the enemy. The nationalistic support for Britain transformed
quickly into hatred of Germany. Those at
home and in the media spent less energy supporting their own armed forces and
more in hatred of Germany and Germans:
“There was a high animosity against all things German”[16]
“Many shops bearing German sounding names were ransacked”
(ibid)
“Anyone with a hint of German in their name was open to
victimisation” (ibid)
Anti-German feeling, as reflected in this evidence from a
contemporary observer, was clearly a form of stereotyping that the government
did little to discourage and fuelled support for the War. Haig depicts Kipling
as supporting these feelings as this hatred is taken up with a passion and
indeed fuelled in his public speeches.
Haig presents such a public speech almost word for word in the play.
“There are only two divisions in the world today- human
beings and Germans”[17]
Haig draws from a number of these recruitment speeches made
by Kipling in 1914 and 1915 and represents these in Act 1 Scene 4:
“The German will bring riot, arson and disorder, and
starvation and bloodshed…when the ashes of our burnt down homes are cold and
our raped women are huddled and still, what then?” (MBJ Act 1 Sc 4 page 25)
Haig uses rhetoric openly and unsubtly here to both
underline Kipling’s unchanging depth of feeling but also to imply that perhaps
he is overreacting- that his enthusiasm for his son’s joining-up might stem
from his own deeper motives. However, Sassoon,
who has seen in the confusion of the battlefield that German soldiers are being
manipulated by their government and are as much victims as their British and
French counterparts, is more flexible and realistic:
“O German mother dreaming by the fire,
While you are knitting socks to send your son
His face is trodden deeper in the mud.
(“Glory of Women”)
A contemporary writer, Beverley Nichols, seems to have
summed up the emerging differences between Kipling and Sassoon’s new ideas:
“If you wish to see what the young men think of the war
today- you will not find it in the flamboyant insolence of Rudyard
Kipling. You will find it in the verse
of Siegfried Sassoon.”[18]
Images of Trench Life
and Battle
Sassoon and Haig’s depiction of Kipling differ in that while
both are idealistic and patriotic in 1914, Sassoon experiences dangerous
military action from the early Spring of 1916 while Kipling is clearly too old
to fight. Sassoon’s verse presents
vivid, eyewitness accounts of life in the trenches and during battle. Haig too presents the reality of fighting in
“My Boy Jack”, but must do so in a contrived way; John Kipling is never able to tell of his
experiences. Haig is able to present the
hideous and terrifying aspects of war via an eye witness account given by one
soldier of many that Kipling questions about his son John’s disappearance:
BOWE: “I see the gas creepin’ toward me, like somethin’
livin’…there’s a body…” (MBJ Act 2 Sc 3 p.70)
Haig uses ellipsis frequently to give a fragmented, nervous
and highly emotional tone to Bowe’s personal account of the day John Kipling
dies. Clearly these survivors are
traumatised by their experiences; this suggests that had John survived, he may
well have been emotionally affected also. It is probable, however, that Haig
referenced poets such as Sassoon to be able to give such detail:
“I see them in foul dug outs, gnawed by rats” (“Dreamers”)
This experience and trauma turned Sassoon against the war
and enabled him to see the enemy as victims also; he realises that they are men
too and all soldiers in war suffer alike.
While he has been through a dehumanising and traumatic experience, he
has emerged with a poetic voice that displays understanding, compassion and
humanity. He tells bereaved parents to remember:
“The mothers of the men who killed your son”
(“Reconciliation”)
Use of Language and
Tone
While Rudyard Kipling’s language, particularly in his speech
in Act 1 Sc 4, is still stylised, hyperbolic and repetitive, Sassoon’s has
become more earthy, conversational, personal and practical. Sassoon speaks to individuals now, it seems,
while Haig continues to present Kipling as speaking impersonally and
abstractly, to a mass audience. Sassoon
is not against Germany or Germans, but war itself. He has seen and has empathised with the
suffering of German soldiers and feels a bond with them.
“Remember…the German soldiers who were loyal and brave.”
(“Reconciliation”)
When John Kipling goes missing in action in October 1915,
aged just 18, Haig presents his father as unchanging in attitude; he still believes that the war is a crusade
against evil and that sacrifice is needed for the greater good. Despite his wife and daughter’s protests, he
claims:
RUDYARD: “No sacrifice…is too great…no sacrifice, however
painful, is too great…if we win the day...”
ELSIE: “You’ve missed
the point, haven’t you!...You’ve no idea!...God! You’ve no idea!” (MBJ Act 2 Sc 2 p52)
Haig here gives Rudyard the impersonal rhetoric of the recruitment
speech in Act 1 Scene 4, implying by using hesitation that as his words seem
empty now, so were they back in 1914.
Rudyard does not show that he grieves as a father or even as an
individual; he seeks to justify his pain by finding meaning in the fight, that
defeating the enemy is and always has been of greater importance than his only
son’s life. By this means Haig enables
the audience to recognise a depth of ambiguity in Rudyard Kipling’s moral values. Haig’s implication, that aggressive defence
of British values is his priority, is supported by biographer Martin
Seymour-Smith, who describes Kipling’s behaviour soon after John’s death:
“He never ceased to be war-like in his utterances.”[19]
Loss and death cause Sassoon and Kipling’s philosophies to separate.
Sassoon loses comrades in the fighting, which often seems pointless and
arbitrary, and his poetry reflects a sense that the war is hopeless and full of random meaninglessness. He rejects the rhetoric of both Kipling and
the suffragettes: “I’ve said goodbye to Galahad” (“The Poet as Hero”). He
focuses more and more on describing the reality of individuals:
“His wet white face and miserable eyes” (“Died of Wounds”)
While Sassoon writes in stark, harsh language to focus on
the very real suffering of individual men, Kipling continues to take the wider
view, even after the death of John, which did not alter his commitment to the
general cause. Haig continues to present
his wide, general, impersonal view:
“Every sacrifice that we make has true value.” (MBJ Act 2 Sc
3 p.79)
Haig presents a brittle Rudyard rationalising his grief, finding
meaning in patriotism and empire.
Implicit in Haig’s depiction of a man coming to terms with his grief is a
hardening of support for the political and military machinery that made the
decision to go to war and to continue to use tactics which led to hundreds of
thousands of apparently arbitrary deaths.
Sassoon is affected differently by the random nature of the death and
destruction. He writes of simple
soldiers and their loyalty, obedience and patriotism, cruelly abandoned and
sacrificed by upper-class general who see the troops as mere statistics: In “The General”, troops speak fondly about a
grand, distant figure:
“He’s a cheery old card” grunted Harry to Jack
As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.
But he did for them both with his plan of attack.” (“The General”)
When in the spring of 1916 his poetry become increasingly
critical of the war and often bitterly ironic, Sassoon uses epigrams
exemplified by the last line of “The General”.
He described how he mastered“…the device of composing two or three
harsh, peremptory, and colloquial stanzas with a knock-out blow in the last
line.”[20] The epigram is a traditional way to include
humour or satire, but notable in Sassoon’s use is a deeper sense of outrage and
ironic, bleakness.
Yet, like Kipling, Sassoon had to face the death of a loved
one. When Hamo, his brother, died in battle, followed soon after by his best
friend David Thomas, Sassoon’s grief is expressed without bitterness, but in
terms of spirituality, particularly in his long poem “The Last Meeting”:
“I know that he is lost among the stars
And may return no more but in their light.” (“The Last Meeting”)
Spiritual Aspects of
War
Both Haig and Sassoon explore the growth of
otherworldliness, spiritualism, and mediums in British society as a response to
the sudden deaths of thousands of loved ones in the Great War. Many bereaved families reached out for help
and ways to understand their loss, as
“…spiritualism found a large and ready audience…”[21] Bereaved families, then often became
desperate to find meaning and solace in the slaughter of the War, and sought
spiritual connections when previously, as implied here by Grogan, they had
never felt inclined to do so before. As
with Haig’s presentation of Kipling in “My Boy Jack” Sassoon tries to find some
deeper explanation and purpose in the deaths that affected him so deeply. He tries to see death as “a transformation
rather than an end”[22]. Previously Sassoon, like much of the
population, had not been spiritually inclined, as implied here by biographer
Wilson. While the verse he writes
mourning private soldiers is conversational and ironic in tone, the deaths of
Hamo and Thomas are conveyed in terms of transcendence and spirituality,
ostensibly to dull the pain of separation.
This mood soon passes, however, and Sassoon’s grief comes to take the
form of compassion for individual soldiers who suffer at the hands of uncaring
generals and politicians who “speed glum heroes up the line to death” (“Base
Details”).
While Sassoon’s response to the deaths of Hamo and David
Thomas is perhaps part of this national wave of desperate searching, Haig’s
detached references to spiritualism in “My Boy Jack” suggest that in 1915
Rudyard Kipling sought no solace from séances. He was able to subsume his
grief, expressing pride in his son’s achievements and finding meaning in his
death through nationalism. Haig outlines the
popularity of spirituality through Carrie, who believes death is not
“the final word” (MBY Act 4 Sc2 p.79). Kipling asks her:
KIPLING: “So…you believe that…spiritually, on some
wavelength Jack is still alive…”
RUDYARD waits for a
response from Carrie, but gets none. (MBJ
Act 2 Sc 4 p.79/80)
Haig implies with this silence that the door on spiritualism
as a practical way to bring John back is closed for good. This reflects how Kipling himself rejects it
completely as seen in his 1916 poem “En-dor”.
Sassoon’s poetry rarely explores spiritualism after the initial grief of
Thomas’s death. He turns to a more
brutally realistic and practical approach and does not fall back upon the theme
of spirituality again.
Haig, through
Kipling, exposes the view that the spiritualists were in fact heartless
tricksters attempting to exploit those weakened by grief and desperate for any
sliver of hope.
“What possible grounds are there for assuming our lives
after death are protected in any way whatsoever?” (MBJ Act 2 Sc3 p.79)
Sassoon’s Influence
upon Haig
In the depiction of trench life and battle action, it is
important to remember that by 1997 Haig had had eighty year’ worth of
information to draw upon when writing “My Boy Jack”; poetry, plays, novels and
personal memoirs had, by 1997 provided a rich body of evidence to enable him to
write credible trench scenes. Indeed,
the poetry of Sassoon, who along with of poet-soldiers write the very first eye
witness accounts of the horror, almost certainly informed Haig’s writing. There are areas where this seems possible. Firstly, Haig depicts post-traumatic stress
disorder in the many soldiers that Kipling interviews. In “My Boy Jack” he details how, in 1917,
Kipling interviews Bowe, an eye-witness to his son’s death:
“Jesus, I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe…” (MBJ Act 2 Sc 3 p.65)
“I can’t remember the simplest things” (MBJ, Act 2 Sc 3
p.65)
“Oh God, stop me shakin’, stop me shakin’” (MBJ, Act 2 Sc 3
p.65)
Recounting the war is not easy for returning soldiers in
Haig’s play. In 1916, PTSD was not a
recognised condition; soldiers’ mental turmoil was passed off as nerves, “funk”
or “neurasthenia”, implying some sort of weakness. Sassoon suggests that the breakdown of
soldiers is a direct and very real result of battlefield stress. In “Lamentations” he depicts an innocent,
honest soldier whose mind has been destroyed by the war: the man “Moaned,
shouted, sobbed and choked.” With a bitterly ironic epigram, he criticises
those who fail to understand such a condition:
“ …in my belief…such
men have lost all patriotic feeling…”
By making soldiers’ reminiscences confused, contradictory, painful
and horrific, Haig underlines the reality of Kipling’s endless, obsessive
search for the truth about his son. In 1917, Sassoon had similarly written of
men who were unable to cope with memories of battle, calling them “citizens of
death’s grey land.” (“Dreamers”). They
could find no peace. He repeats this
idea in other works:
“Those whispering guns…O Christ, I want to go out And screech at them to stop” (“Repression of
War Experience”)
“Men who went to battle, grim and glad…
Children
with eyes that hate you, broken and mad.”
(“Survivors”)
“I walk the secret way with anger in my brain…” (“A Mystic
As Soldier”)
“I’m back again from hell with loathsome thoughts…” (“To The Warmongers”)
“You whisper of the war, and find sour jokes for all those
horrors left behind” (“A Whispered
Tale”)
In creating Bowe’s account, Haig explores a range of causes
for Bowe’s subsequent mental health.
There are the reasons that may would expect, such as witnessing horrible
mutilations and facing regular threats to one’s own life. There is also the fear of the unknown, such
as the horrors that poison gas represents: “Where’s me mask?” (MBJ Act 2 Sc 3
p.70). Bowe’s speech reflects the battle
in that it is disjointed, full of curses and garbled in random phrases. This is in contrast with the colloquial,
controlled dialogue throughout “My Boy Jack”. Haig does not explore the attritional effects
of constant bombardment or the noise of the guns; these trials are not
experienced by John. Sassoon’s voice,
however, is based upon personal experiences- these reflect several months spent
in the front line and is therefore more wide-ranging in its blame. Sassoon writes of the pain and emotional
impact of losing close friends, and the guilt that results:
“…I will go up the hill once more
To find the face of him that I have lost…” (“The Last Meeting”)
Sassoon’s extensive experiences included seeing the mental
breakdowns of soldiers who lose relatives in battle; In “Lamentations” he
witnesses the breakdown of a soldier whose brother had “gone west”. This knowledge gave him a vision of such men
reverting to a helpless, childlike state; “the shock and strain” has “caused
their stammering, disconnected talk”, rendering them “children, with eyes that
hate you, broken and mad” (“Survivors”).
Clearly this aspect of war was not on Haig’s agenda as he focused upon
the physical death of his son.
Bowe explains that he “ran away” (MBJ ibid.) and did not
help the dying John, becoming the cowardly youth that Sassoon describes in “The
Hero”. Bowe is not blamed for his
reaction to the immense stress of the battle. Haig again has Kipling detach
himself emotionally, de-personalise the incident and treat Bowe objectively:
“Thank you. Would you like something to
eat?” (MBJ ibid). Bowe is strikingly
similar to Sassoon’s “cold-footed” boy who, we infer, found the horror just too
overpowering.
Another Sassoon observation that David Haig reflects and
explores in some detail in “My Boy Jack” is that officers reporting deaths in
battle to parents adopted the tactful habit of lying to reduce pain and
grief. In the ironically titled “The
Hero”, an officer writes “gallant lies” about a soldier who was a “cold-footed,
useless swine” and had actually “panicked”.
The mother, reading this, is “so proud”; her eyes shone “with gentle
triumph”. Sassoon, who frequently writes
of the pain of bereaved mothers of both sides, seems to accept the need for
this deception and finds some rare humanity in the lies. Haig, however, dramatically reverses this
scenario. Although Kipling convinces
himself rather half-heartedly that John was “lucky” and that his death was
“done with quickly”, Carrie is more realistic ….”don’t pretend to me!” (MBJ Act
2 Sc 3 p.65). Haig subverts Sassoon’s
scenario when the surviving soldier-witness Bowe reveals the horror of John’s
death: “There’s nothin’ below his top lip, nothin’ at all. He’s cryin’ tears,
cryin’ with the pain, sir.” (MBJ Act 2 Sc 3 p.74)
Such contemporary observations by Sassoon and other poets
such as Wilfred Owen would have been a primary source for Haig’s research into
his presentation of Bowe and other soldiers questioned by Kipling.
Kipling Finally
Changes His Mind
Haig writes that by 1933, many years after John’s death,
Kipling’s attitude has finally changed and he no longer finds meaning in his
son’s sacrifice. Sassoon had criticised
such uninformed enthusiasm as dangerous and foolish in his poem “The Fathers”,
describing two boasting parents as “goggle-eyed”.
In 1919 Kipling published “Epitaphs to War” in which he
wrote:
“If any question why we died
Tell them- because our fathers lied…”
He raised questions and concerns just a year after the war
had finished. Eventually, in 1933, listening
to a radio broadcast detailing the rise of Germany again, Kipling comes to
realise that the Great war had failed to prevent all war and that his son’s
death had been futile:
“For nothing, for nothing, for nothing…” (MBJ Act 2 Sc5
p.87)
Ultimately, David Haig’s play “My Boy Jack” and Siegfried
Sassoon’s poetry differ greatly. Haig
depicts how the tragic loss of a son in the Great War deepens a man’s
commitment to its objectives. The voices
of Carrie and Elsie, his wife and daughter, echo a modern attitude; that the
greatest duty should be to oneself and one’s family, not to the concept of duty
to one’s country or to any philosophy.
CARRIE: “He died in the rain…he was alone…in pain…you can’t
persuade me there is any glory in that”. (MBJ Act 2 Scene 3 p.78)
By having Carrie
state this more modern, existentialist view with passion and commitment, Haig
seems to imply that the reply by Kipling is hollow when he refers to the death
of his son John as a great and worthwhile (“glorious” Act 2 Sc.3 p.79)
sacrifice. Sassoon depicts men, like
Kipling, with such beliefs as “Poor father sitting safe at home”
(“Remorse”). However, Kipling’s attitude, which reflected a
belief in something greater than oneself or individual lives, was considered
noble in its day. The play depicts how it
is difficult for us to understand contemporaneous attitudes which clearly
differ so greatly from modern beliefs.
Sassoon, however, responded differently to the grief of personal loss. His love for the men under his command and
those friends who died created contradictory emotions. While he bitterly attacked those who
continued the war in the British government, he was desperate to return to the
front due to the deep sense of responsibility that he felt for the men that he
had left behind:
“I am banished from the patient men who fight…
Love drives me back to grope with them through hell.” (Banishment)
Sassoon’s dilemma is that his hatred for the continuation of
the war is contradicted by his desire to be with his men, his “brothers through
our blood” (“Sick Leave”) for whom he feels great responsibility.
Responsibility to
Your Country...or to Yourself?
Haig’s play explores the mentality of a man for whom the
notion of responsibility transcends personal issues. He prioritises the good of
the country over personal concerns, while Sassoon’s poetry becomes concerned
with individuals. It charts the
development of a man making several very subjective emotional responses. Haig supported the political regime that led
to his son’s death while Sassoon came to vigorously oppose it. Yet Sassoon wanted to return to fight with
his men and risked his own life. The
writers express responsibility in very different ways.
In this sense, both Kipling, as represented in Haig’s play,
and Sassoon, were similar in that both kept their integrity to their sense of
responsibility. While Kipling was
prepared to sacrifice his son’s life (and his own, had he been allowed) to defend
his country, his way of life and the people he loved, Sassoon, despite serious
political misgivings, showed in his poetry that despite his revulsion against
the politicians, he too was prepared to die for those he loved- in his case,
the men who trusted and needed him-because of his own deep-seated sense of
responsibility.
Sassoon poems:
“Sick Leave” “Banishment” “The Fathers” “A Mystic As
Soldier” “To The Warmongers” “The Hero”
“A Whispered Tale”
“Dreamers” “Repression of War
Experience” “Survivors” “Lamentations”
“Base Details” “The Last Meeting” “The General” “Died Of
Wounds” “The Poet As Hero”
“Reconciliation” “A Testament” “To My Brother” ”Suicide In
The Trenches” “Glory Of Women”
“Blighters” ”The Dragon and The Undying” “Absolution” “To
Victory” “Remorse” “The Hawthorn Tree”
[1]
C.H. Sorley in Siegfried Sassoon- A Biography Jean Moorcroft Wilson, London,
Ceceil Woolf, 1985 (pp 157-60)
[2] Siegfried
Sassoon Bernard Knox Grand Street Vol. 2, No. 4 (Summer, 1983), p. 140
[3] Robert Saunders, letter, 14 Aug 1914
in Malcolm Brown “The First World War” Sidgwick & Jackson 1991 p23
[4]www.historylearningsite.co.uk/LordKitchener.htm
www.historylearningsite.co.uk/LordKitchener.htm
[5]
Siegfried Sassoon John Stuart Roberts Metro 2005 p.74
[6]
Goodbye To All That Robert Graves
[7]
Siegfried Sassoon, Jean Moorcroft Wilson, Duckworth 1998 p.175
[8]
Siegfried Sassoon, John Stuart Roberts, Metro 2005 p.57
[9] Six Weeks, John Lewis-Stempel, Orion (2010) p.35
[10] Roland Leighton, letter, August 1914
[11]
Ibid. p.58
[12]https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282877545_'By_Jingo'_Popular_Music_Patriotism_and_Recruitment_in_Britain_during_the_Great_War Hochschild, 2012:107).
[13]
Siegfried Sassoon Jean Moorcroft Wilson Duckworth 1998 p.234
[14] Ibid.
p.206
[15]From Still More
Adventures With Britannia: Sassoon’s War Max
Egremont HRC 2003 p.89
[16]
Robert Saunders, letter to his son, 1914 in The First World War Malcolm Brown, Sidgwick & Jackson 1991
p.23
[17]
Speech made by Rudyard Kipling June
2015 Southport
[18]
Beverley Nichols Article, Morning Post 28 August 1917
[19] Rudyard Kipling Martin Seymour-Smith Papermac 1990 p.352
[20]
Siegfried’s Journey Siegfried
Sassoon Faber and Faber 1927 p.41
[22] Siegfried Sassoon Jean Moorcroft Wilson Duckworth 1999 p.240
