Poetic devices

Alliteration

Alliteration is one of the poetic devices used in Siegfried Sassoon’s poem “The Hero”.

The author uses alliteration in the first stanza of the poem, to describe the mother’s reaction to the Colonel’s letter. The mother’s eyes “brimmed with joy/ Because he’d been so brave, her glorious boy” (ll. 11-12). The alliteration in “b” suggests a repressed emotion, of sorrow and grief somehow comforted by the knowledge that her son died bravely. An alliteration in “b” also occurs in the last stanza, to a different effect: “Blown to small bits” (l. 17). This time, it is used to imitate the sound and suddenness of the explosion which took Jack’s life.

Antithesis

The poem places together two contrasting perspectives. One is the mother’s unrealistic perspective of the situation, which is the result of her being deceived by the beautiful lies written by the Colonel,...