Does it matter

Maria, Ingrid and I have read the poem «Does it matter» by Siegfried Sassoon and analyzed it:

Does it matter'
by Siegfried Sassoon
DOES it matter?--losing your legs?...
For people will always be kind,
And you need not show that you mind
When the others come in after hunting
To gobble their muffins and eggs.

Does it matter?--losing your sight?...
There's such splendid work for the blind;
And people will always be kind,
As you sit on the terrace remembering
And turning your face to the light.

Do they matter?--those dreams from the pit?...
You can drink and forget and be glad,
And people won't say that you're mad;
For they'll know you've fought for your country
And no one will worry a bit.

The poem touches three effects the war has had on the soldier; social problems, physical damage and psychical damage. "Does it matter? - loosing your legs?" That is in the first verse and it is about physical damage. The second verse covers psychological damage because he looses his sight and he can't see anything, but still he turns his face to the light and trying to be positive. The last verse is about the social problems that fighting a war can give you. You can be mad after experiencing all those horrible things you can experience in a war, but people won't mind, because you have fought a war and it is OK to be mad.

We think the soldier is a working-class man. The rest of the community doesn’t see what he has sacrificed because he did it for the country, so his damages is not that bad. It seems like it is the government saying “Does it matter?” and they don’t really see the individual but try to glorify his actions.

The poem has a newfound popularity and it might be because today we focus more on individual rights, we think it is important to see the individual as a person and not for what they sacrifice in a war. In this poem they put the country above the person which was normal to do in that time period(around 1916). We can also see this trend in the rest of the modern society with less person joining for instance political organizations today than 100 years ago. (source - "Å gjøre en forskjell" Jonas Gahr Støre)

When we started working with the poem analyze the studends in the class could choose between “Does it Matter?” and a poem called "The Soldier" by Rupert Brooke. All the studens chose "Does it Matter"

We believe that "Does it Matter" was the poem that appealed to the most of the students because we found it more direct and easier to understand than "The soldier" We believe that it's because "The soldier" is a very romantic poem and do not describe the reality of the war.