A light, immature and jovial boy finds himself plunged into the terrors of war. In the poem "Suicide in the Trenches", the mood goes from spring to winter, from joy to depression, the life of this boy soldier changed during the war. The boy soldier was transformed by the trenches, as were millions of other men who faced these same conditions. Erich Note's novel All Quiet on the Western Front echoes many aspects and themes of this poem. The novel goes in depth and shows how the soldiers were forced to repress themselves and disconnect from their feelings to simply survive emotionally and focus on the fight. In the poem Suicide in the Trenches, Siegfried Sasson uses the structure of rhythm and meter, emotional connections, imagery and sound tools to expose the theme of the lost generation and the realities of war which greatly affected and robbed the youth of many young men, a theme which is emulated in the novel All Quiet on the Western Front. The boy soldier awoke to a simple joy of spring with the shredders of a lark, but the poem quickly shifts to a different season, which brings depression and fear; winter. Sasson creates the change between seasons to help show the soldiers the change in mental state. Suicide in the Trenches is built over three stanzas with a rhyme scheme that makes the poem easier to read. This adds a joyful aspect that highlights the disconnect between the fascinating perception of war and the true horrors of war. The first stanza depicts this happy and enthusiastic boy who prepares for war without negative thoughts. Then the second stanza presents a major shift to the bleakness of winter, huddled in the dark trenches fighting. Sassoon constructs the feeling of depression that the trenches brought: "In the middle of a paper... a boy soldier allowed himself to arrive at a state of depression, he was only a boy, and he could not not deal with constant fear. In Suicide in the Trenches, a simple soldier loses his youth and in the novel Paul says: “He is right, we are no longer young… we had begun to love life and the world; and we had to tear it apart. (87-88) This quote shows how this generation of men is lost. In the poem, the soldier thought the only thing to end his fear was to commit suicide. The men in the novel come to terms with the fact that they are no longer boys, because no boy should ever have to experience these horrors. In the poem, Siegfried Sasson uses structure, emotional connections, imagery, and devices to display the theme of the lost generation and the realities of war, a theme that is emulated in All Quiet on the Western Front. The boy soldier was murdered by war, not by himself.