85 pages • 2 hours read
Goodbye to All That
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Symbols & Motifs
War Poetry
World War I produced work by many famous poets who served in combat, including Graves, Siegfried Sassoon, and Wilfred Owen, among others mentioned in Graves’s memoir. War poetry served as a way for civilians to better understand the horrors of war but also, depending on the poet's style or subject matter, could be used to justify England's engagement in WWI and the subsequent loss of so many lives. Graves, having been raised by a strongly literate family, took up poetry writing at a young age. He recalls writing his first poem about the hills above Harlech, where his family vacationed. Graves received an invitation to join Charterhouse's Poetry Society, "an anomalous organization" (42), and remains committed to his poetic practice throughout his service. During the war, Graves continues writing poetry and meets a few other soldiers who also write poems, including Siegfried Sassoon. The two men's styles and subject matter—within the context of the war—differ, though. While they both choose to write about war by contrasting it with peace, Graves does this with images of "children" (232), while Sassoon does it with "hunting, nature, music, and pastoral scenes" (232). Sassoon also initially chastises Graves for writing about the war in such realistic terms; however, after facing combat in the trenches, Sassoon begins to incorporate more realism into his work. Additionally, Sassoon's mixed feelings about the war cause him to write poems with a range of feelings towards the war.
The Little Mother
When dealing with his disillusionment about the war and the military's absurdity, Graves reprints a letter that first appeared in The Morning Post, purportedly written by an anonymous woman. Identifying herself only as "a Little Mother" (228), the woman's letter acts as an indictment of "pacifists" (228) from mothers of soldiers who "play the most important part in the history of the world" (229). The Little Mother takes utter pride in producing sons who will fight, and often die, for the war effort. The propaganda letter receives wide praise from other publications, which reprint it, calling it "one of the grandest things ever written" (231). The Little Mother character represents the kind of jingoistic patriotism of which Graves and Sassoon become aware during their service. Graves includes the letter to show the kind of "war madness" (228) that he and other soldiers face when returning home to England. After Good-Bye to All That's publication, Graves receives a letter calling him a "discredit to the Service" (xi) and praising him only for "quoting the Little Mother" (xi).
Graves’s German Heritage
Prior to World War I, Graves expresses admiration for his German relatives on his mother's side of the family. He particularly respects them for being "easy, generous, and serious" (5). As a boy, Graves recalls many happy trips to visit his mother's family in Germany, feeling there "a sense of home in a natural human way" (34). Once at Charterhouse, though, Graves finds himself faced with anti-German sentiment. Many of the boys there, sons of British businessmen, accuse Germans of "military-menace, Prussianism, useless philosophy, tedious scholarship, music-loving and sabre-rattling" (39). For this reason, Graves begins denying his German heritage and insisting on his Irish heritage. When fighting in France, Graves says that he and his fellow soldiers have more respect for the Germans than they do their allies, the French, as the Germans seem like better, more honorable soldiers.
After England enters World War I, they begin a process of interning Germans who are in England as prisoners of war, with their only crime being their nationality. As reports of these internments circulate, Graves corroborates a 1915 newspaper story in which fifty armed Manchester police officers escort forty German waiters from the Midland Hotel into a "special railway carriage" (71) destined for Lancaster. Graves also confirms that children are interned at Lancaster, as it seemed "more humane to keep them with their friends than to send them to a work-house" (71).
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