Fiction Adaption: The Death Bed & Siegfried Sassoon Research

I decided i wanted to research a bit about the poet Siegfried Sasssoon and do an in-depth breakdown of the poem 'The Death Bed" as in the past when i have studied poetry it has always been useful for me to understand the poet and strip apart the poem. It gives me a deeper understanding and also helps to give me visual ideas of my own for adapting it.

When researching about Siegfried Sassoon i discovered that his brother died in November 1 1915 in the Battle of Gallipoli. That same month he was sent to France with the 1st Battalion. The poem was written in 1916 and therefore could be based on his experiences at war or an ode to his brother.
The poem is about the last few hours of a soldiers life in a hospital bed which makes you think more about the aftermath of war rather than the fighting and reasons behind it. He was born into an affluent family and lived a extremely comfortable upbringing. He went to Cambridge but apparently spent most of the one year he was there hunting, playing golf and reading and writing poetry. He showed enormous promise as a writer and published privately his first collection in 1906. A further nine pamphlets appeared before the outbreak of war in 1914.

Sassoon received the Military Cross during the war and displayed such reckless bravery that he earned the nickname “Mad Jack”. I find this particularly interesting and may have one of my characters in the film  Temporarily invalided back to England he became increasingly disillusioned with the war and the appalling loss of lives. He wrote a declaration against the war and called for a negotiated peace risking court martial but his commanding officers sent him to Craiglockhart War Hospital where he met and influenced Wilfred Owen. Sassoon survived the war, continued to write and published a semi-autobiographical trilogy in the 1930s sustained by his strong religious faith. In 1951 Sassoon received a C.B.E. and in 1953 he became an honorary fellow at Clare College Cambridge. In 1985, eighteen years after his death, his name was added to a slab in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.

He drowsed and was aware of silence heaped
Round him, unshaken as the steadfast walls;
Aqueous like floating rays of amber light,
Soaring and quivering in the wings of sleep.
Silence and safety; and his mortal shore

Lipped by the inward, moonless waves of death.The start of the poem talks abut how the soldier is sleeping and conscious in a hospital. He is safe now as he is no longer fighting at war. I see this in terms of my adaption of the begin of the bullied teen making his way to his destination, all his movements are slow and drowsy as he leaves the house or  "steadfast walls" - he is no longer afraid - "unshaken". 

Someone was holding water to his mouth.
He swallowed, unresisting; moaned and dropped
Through crimson gloom to darkness; and forgot
The opiate throb and ache that was his wound.
Water-calm, sliding green above the weir.
Water-a sky-lit alley for his boat,
Bird- voiced, and bordered with reflected flowers
And shaken hues of summer; drifting down,
He dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept.

At the soldier´s bedside, “someone was holding water to his mouth”, while trying to help him survive. He moans and through the pain medication is able to 'forget' his wound. However, probably months ago, water had meant summer on the lake as the soldier “dipped contented oars, and sighed, and slept” while relaxing on “water – a sky-lit alley for his boat”.  The soldier is dreaming of a happier time or imagining it. I see this image of water as possibly one of the factors in the bulling for my story - possibly that these people have been trying to force him to drink something he doesn't want to and then gives into peer pressure or thinking that these people are his 'friends' and he can trust them. The end if this section will be also when the boy takes his overdose. While he is taking about water we will be back in the present and seeing him approach the water and sit with a branch mimicking movements of rowing as we see the numerous painkillers he has taken on the floor beside him.

Night, with a gust of wind, was in the ward,
Blowing the curtain to a glimmering curve.
Night. He was blind; he could not see the stars
Glinting among the wraiths of wandering cloud;
Queer blots of colour, purple, scarlet, green,
Flickered and faded in his drowning eyes.

This shows time passing. When people die their senses slowly go one by one so this is saying that his sight is going, he cant see the stars in the sky. In my adaption i see the colours as being his bruises and the stars as a metaphor for being punched. 

Rain-he could hear it rustling through the dark;
Fragrance and passionless music woven as one;
Warm rain on drooping roses; pattering showers
That soak the woods; not the harsh rain that sweeps
Behind the thunder, but a trickling peace,
Gently and slowly washing life away.

This section describes what he can hear - another look at his fading senses i imagine. Water is also a sign of life as it helps the plants to grow so when it takes about the woods and roses its more gentle. Sassoon uses the water to wash life away and sort of like a metaphor as the soilder deteriorates further. So far i am unsure what to do with this section of my adaption but i like the idea of making the rain less physical and more about something to do with his bullying. 

He stirred, shifting his body; then the pain
Leapt like a prowling beast, and gripped and tore
His groping dreams with grinding claws and fangs.
But someone was beside him; soon he lay
Shuddering because that evil thing had passed.
And death, who’d stepped toward him, paused and stared.

This is the moment in the poem where we begin to hear a lot more about the pains of this soilders death. But as soon as he is in pain, someone is at his bed side and he no longer feels that 'evil thing'. The person at the bedside in the poem would have been a nurse i imagine as in those days at war it is unlikely family would have been able to come quick enough or even be in the same country. Death is also unsure at this point if the soilder will die so he waits to see what happens. In my adaption i would like this to be the moment when someone find the boy who has taken an overdose and shouts for help and trys to save him. 

 

Light many lamps and gather round his bed.
Lend him your eyes, warm blood, and will to live.
Speak to him; rouse him; you may save him yet.
He’s young; he hated War; how should he die
When cruel old campaigners win safe through?

In this section people/nurses/doctors are gathering round the soilders bed in an attempt to save his life. Sassoon also uses this opportunity to say how this young soilder hated war about how the true villains and people who choose to go to war in the first place always remain unharmed but the innocent get hurt. I would have this section be about how more people with torches come to the boys side and attempt to save his life. how he hated fighting and confrontation and how it seems that the people responsible for cruel acts and bullying always seem to get away scot free.

But death replied: ‘I choose him.’
So he went, and there was silence in the summer night; 

Silence and safety; and the veils of sleep.

Then, far away, the thudding of the guns.

The lines at the end of the poem describe the soldiers death but also that the fighting is continuing. This also describes how one death, isn't enough to end a war. Even 100 deaths would not be enough. Only the "Cruel old campaigners" and their attitudes can change the outcome and end a war. This gives me the image of the bullied victim of the abuse, in my adaption, dying. I would like to instead of show him die show a still and calm shot of a calm water scene with a nice view, i want it to be more of a moment of ponience.  I want then for the bullies to be getting on with their daily life unaware and uncaring. have a shot of them laughing and joking and their instantly recognisable siloettes against the same sky backdrop or the same sort of area we were just looking at.  I also like the idea of guns possibly not meaning the literal sense but something else.

This breakdown has really helped me to undertsand the poem a lot more and what i want to do with it.

stay safe,

helen