Sherriff’s ‘Journey’s End’ and Curtis and Elton’s ‘Blackadder’ are both plays which are set in World War One and focus on only a small number of characters. A set up like this allows the audience to observe the various emotions felt by characters towards the War, ranging from jingoism to consciousness objection. Both plays present a shift in the general emotions of characters as they spend more time in the War. The playwrights explore these emotions in different ways, and I will be considering this.
In both ‘Journey’s End’ and ‘Blackadder’ we find characters who are extremely jingoistic concerning their attitudes towards the War. The character of George in ‘Blackadder’ possesses similar qualities to Raleigh in ‘Journey’s End’ in that the two men are very patriotic and enthusiastic about their duty. Both characters explain their feelings upon signing up for the War. Raleigh explains that he was ‘keen to get out’ after seeing Stanhope home on leave expressing the attitude of many young men in England during the time of the War who knew people in the army. George reminisces upon the day of signing up saying ‘gah, what a day that was’ suggesting that, he too, was enlivened about the prospect of becoming a soldier. The extreme patriotism of some of the men in the War meant that they had ardent hatred towards Germans. In ‘Blackadder’ this is dealt with in a humorous way. George shares his strong opinions concerning the Germans with the other men claiming that the War was caused by ‘the vile Hun and his villainous empire-building’ which is rather ironic as it was Britain who had the larger empire. This use of humour and irony expresses the hatred many soldiers felt towards the enemy, but it also serves as an allegory for their lack of ...
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...owever Sherriff has stated that ‘Journey’s End’ was not meant to be a political play. Even if there is no political message, both plays clearly show that attitudes towards the War changed from positive to negative as it progressed.
Both ‘Journey’s End’ and ‘Blackadder’ explore attitudes towards the War. Different characters express different emotions but a common trend in both plays is the decline of patriotism and eagerness as naïvety and innocence are lost. Examples of this can be seen throughout literature and history. ‘A Soldier’s Declaration’ is possibly the best known piece of writing which summarises this change in emotion and it is highly relevant to the attitudes of characters such as Raleigh and Baldrick within these plays. Both plays explore this in different ways, through the utilisation of various characters, literary devices and choices of structure.
Many soldiers who come back from the war need to express how they feel. Many do it in the way of writing. Many soldiers die in war, but the ones who come back are just as “dead.” Many cadets come back with shell shock, amputated arms and legs, and sometimes even their friends aren’t there with them. So during World War I, there was a burst of new art and writings come from the soldiers. Many express in the way of books, poems, short stories and art itself. Most soldiers are just trying to escape. A lot of these soldiers are trying to show what war is really like, and people respond. They finally might think war might not be the answer. This is why writers use imagery, irony and structure to protest war.
In Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front, characters such as Paul and his friends become indifferent to shocking elements of war through constant exposure to them. For example, the characters are unconcerned about the dangers of the front because they are accustomed to being on the front. In another instance, Paul’s friends show no emotions when they witness snipers killing enemy soldiers. Also, Kat finds the unusual effects of mortar shells amusing. These examples prove that through war, characters of the book have become indifferent to things that they would normally find shocking.
In the history of modern western civilization, there have been few incidents of war, famine, and other calamities that severely affected the modern European society. The First World War was one such incident which served as a reflection of modern European society in its industrial age, altering mankind’s perception of war into catastrophic levels of carnage and violence. As a transition to modern warfare, the experiences of the Great War were entirely new and unfamiliar. In this anomalous environment, a range of first hand accounts have emerged, detailing the events and experiences of the authors. For instance, both the works of Ernst Junger and Erich Maria Remarque emphasize the frightening and inhumane nature of war to some degree – more explicit in Jünger’s than in Remarque’s – but the sense of glorification, heroism, and nationalism in Jünger’s The Storm of Steel is absent in Remarque’s All Quiet on the Western Front. Instead, they are replaced by psychological damage caused by the war – the internalization of loss and pain, coupled with a sense of helplessness and disconnectedness with the past and the future. As such, the accounts of Jünger and Remarque reveal the similar experiences of extreme violence and danger of World War I shared by soldiers but draw from their experiences differing ideologies and perception of war.
about the war and his lack of place in his old society. The war becomes
to deteriorate the human spirit. Starting out leaving you're home and family and ready to fight for you country, to ending up tired and scarred both physically and mentally beyond description. At the beginning of the novel nationalist feelings are present through pride of Paul and the rest of the boys. However at the end of the war it is apparent how pointless war really is.
From sunrise to sunset, day after day, war demolishes men, cities, and hope. War has an effect on soldiers like nothing else, and sticks with them for life. The damage to a generation of men on both sides of the war was inestimable. Both the novel All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque, and the poem “I Have a Rendezvous with Death,” by Alan Seeger, demonstrate the theme of a lost generation of men, mentally and physically, in war through diction, repetition, and personification.
...s, demonstrated through the author's talent, are denouncing the authority figures who were supposed to guide his generation into adulthood but instead turned the youth against each other in the pursuit of superficial ideals. The soldiers were simply the victims of a meaningless war.
While soldiers are often perceived as glorious heroes in romantic literature, this is not always true as the trauma of fighting in war has many detrimental side effects. In Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet On The Western Front, the story of a young German soldier is told as he adapts to the harsh life of a World War I soldier. Fighting along the Western Front, nineteen year old Paul Baumer and his comrades begin to experience some of the hardest things that war has to offer. Paul’s old self gradually begins to deteriorate as he is awakened to the harsh reality of World War 1, depriving him from his childhood, numbing all normal human emotions and distancing the future, reducing the quality of his life. At the age of nineteen, Paul naively enlists in World War 1, blind to the fact he has now taken away his own childhood.
World War One was a massive event. It affected millions of people from all walks of life, and inspired countless written pieces. Nevertheless, without being there, it is impossible to truly be able to tell what the war is like. Therefore the use of setting is very important in giving the reader an idea of the circumstance. This is not to say that everyone is in agreement over how the war should be displayed. Quite one the contrary, the two Poems “In Flanders Fields” and “Dulce et Decorum Est” use their settings to create two very contrasting images of human conflict.
Timothy Findley Creates a fictional world through his novels, where readers can relate to the situations and characters. The protagonists that Findley creates are often similar and connected to the hardships that they eventually encounter and defeat or that which they are defeated by. Findley takes his readers back in time to the First World War, displaying his knowledge of history and research, where the hardships of a young soldier’s battles internally and externally are brought to the reader’s attention in his historical-fiction novel The Wars. Findley writes about the reality and absurdity of the First World War, and takes the reader’s on a journey through the active reading process to find what is “sane” and “Insane” throughout the duration of the novel. Following the journey of the protagonist, Robert Ross as he enlists in the Canadian Army after the death of his sister Rowena, and undoubtedly is the turning point of the text and ideally where Findley initiates the active reading process, and where the contents placed in the story by Findley, are analyzed and opinionated based on the reader’s perception and subjectivity of truth. Essayist Anne Reynolds writes “ Findley manages, through technical prowess, to combine Hemingway-like choices of clear moment searing horror and truth at the battlefront with scenes depicting the effects of war on the families and lovers of the soldiers.” (Reynolds, 4) According to Reynolds Findley has been able to display the absurdity and affect that not only the First World War has caused but the ludicrousness war in general has caused the families of soldiers, and society as a whole. Using the literary theory of deconstruction many aspects and scenarios in The Wars can be analyzed, as Fin...
World War One or “The War To End All Wars” was one of the most devastating events in the history of humankind. When looking back at such a gruesome war it is understandable that we might dwell on the key battles and tactics, which are often summarized by statistics on death tolls. However, we often forget that statistics create an illusion that warps our perception of death. As Stalin put it “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic”. In the novel “The Wars” by Timothy Findley, the author draws away from traditional war stories by showing a true appreciation for life that truly touches the reader on a human and emotional level. Timothy Findley narrows in something anyone can relate to: a loving mother worried about her son risking his life in a war. This mother in the “The Wars” is Mrs. Ross, who represents the home front while her son, Robert Ross, fights for the British in World War One. As the book progresses and Robert gets further into the death trap known as the “Great War”, Mrs. Ross becomes increasingly obsessive and connected to her son as his fate becomes more clear.
Now Howell uses George's view on war, his family history and even his death to symbolize realism. From the beginning George sees war as a negative thing that can bring so much pain and suffering contrary to Editha's views. His family had a personal experience with war, having his father lose his arm at war shaped his family's view on war influencing George. His mother's straight forward words about girls that give up their loved ones thinking they will come back alive and unaltered, only expecting to "kill someone else- kill the sons of those miserable mothers and husbands of those girls.
As we know, the pretext of the play is the aftermath of a war, so I
This isn't exactly like one of your swaggering tale of conquer and triumph that is so often sought by the people who think war is thrilling rather it actually unveils all the dirt and forlorn that takes place behind the scene that makes it all the more ugly as condemnable. It is really hard not to relate to this book as the horror which it unleashes is still a part of our lives. The play of death and chance
Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” explores a fundamental struggle of the human conscience. The reader is transported into the journey of a man who recognizes and acknowledges evil but still succumbs to its destructive powers. The character of Macbeth is shrouded in ambiguity that scholars have claimed as both being a tyrant and tragic hero. Macbeth’s inner turmoil and anxieties that burden him throughout the entire play evoke sympathy and pity in the reader. Though he has the characteristics of an irredeemable tyrant, Macbeth realizes his mistakes and knows there is no redemption for his sins. And that is indeed tragic.