From Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
Jack Firebrace. An honest Tommy.
The Novel Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks is a story of various parts of one mans life, Stephen Wraysford. The first par of the book is a love story, when Stephen Wraysford is living and working in Northern France. The main text of the book is when Stephen Wraysford returns to Northern France again, this time as an officer in the British Army, during the First World War. This is the section in which Jack Firebrace features. The final part of the book is a recurring sub plot set in the seventies.
We initially meet Jack Firebrace in the most horrific circumstances possible. Jack is a miner, tunnelling under enemy positions placing mines in the hope of halting enemy advances. Bizarrely Jack’s life is threatened by both sides. He faces either being blown to pieces by enemy mines or being picked off by sniper fire on his all too infrequent breaks on the surface. Should the enemy fail to get him his own side will. Turning on him when he is overcome by exhaustion. On one occasion he is listening for the enemy tunnelling close to his position, he hears nothing and assures his co-miners that it is safe to continue. He sees some of his colleagues literally blown to pieces, had he heard better, they may still be alive. With little sleep, Jack is put on to sentry duty, tiredness gives way to exhaustion. Jack briefly falls asleep. Only to be woken by his commanding officer. The officer’s arrogance and insensitivity to the horrors that preceded this are graphically portrayed to us when Jack is ordered to appear in front of another commanding officer in the morning.
We are told “it’s a court martial offence……you know the punishment”. The following day the “seriousness” of the offence is forgotten as Jack turns up potentially to meet his death to find his superiors have turned to alcohol to anaesthetise themselves to their own horrors. Keen to talk about anything except the reason Jack is there, the insensitivity of the first officer is further revealed to us as starts to talk about some sketches that decorate the walls of the trench. He is soon rebuked by the other officer, Stephen Wraysford, who says “for god’s sake man...he wants to know if he is here for an art lesson or if he is going to be shot”
The charge is dropped, this relieves the atmosphere, already, through Jack’s eyes giving us an insight in...
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...y are also evident in his concern for the horses “so badly knocked about and they didn’t ask for any part of it” In another premonition of fate he finishes his letter by saying “trusting you are keeping well and I will see you again soon”
In Jack’s final scene, as he is listening to enemy tunnelling there is an explosion from an enemy tunnel. Jack is seriously injured; he is trapped by his legs. Though Stephen Wraysford escapes the blast uninjured and immediately sets about to rescue Jack one feels a sense of despair because it is so obvious Jack is not going to make it. In a poignant and moving paragraph, just before Stephen is plucked to safety by German troops, Jack stops trying. His whole war is encapsulated in the events that have taken place since he was injured in the explosion to his ultimate destruction that we are now witnessing. “What I’ve seen …I don’t want to live any more” he refers back to the battle near Auchenvilliers; he refers to the death of his son. Hope is gone; his only comfort is the certainty of death. The terrible events that took place during Jack Firebrace’s war had finally taken him, more than that; they had taken his spirit, his soul, his very being.
Robert also has a special relationship with horses. When he is on the ship, it is the horses that are "his tr...
In the aftermath of a comparatively minor misfortune, all parties concerned seem to be eager to direct the blame to someone or something else. It seems so easy to pin down one specific mistake that caused everything else to go wrong in an everyday situation. However, war is a vastly different story. War is ambiguous, an enormous and intangible event, and it cannot simply be blamed for the resulting deaths for which it is indirectly responsible. Tim O’Brien’s story, “In the Field,” illustrates whom the soldiers turn to with the massive burden of responsibility for a tragedy. The horrible circumstances of war transform all involved and tinge them with an absurd feeling of personal responsibility as they struggle to cope.
A Comparison of Birdsong and Regeneration how far do you agree that these writings produced in recent years about WW1 you should consider the genders of writer any themes and symbols which you have come across in wider reading comment specifically on language? Because bird song and regeneration were both written in the 1990s we see that there is a different atmosphere to some of the earlier works from such authors such as D.H. Lawrence and W. Somerset Maugham. This maybe because Lawrence and Maugham were able to live and write novels and plays as episodes of the great war was being thought, or it maybe because pat barker and Sebastian Faulks don’t want to use as much detail to specific episodes because they do not know what is and what isn’t entirely true. The moods in these two novels are very different to that of "La Tendresse " the two novels are some what more political and cover wider themes such as physiological, political fall out of war...
The tile of the poem “Bird” is simple and leads the reader smoothly into the body of the poem, which is contained in a single stanza of twenty lines. Laux immediately begins to describe a red-breasted bird trying to break into her home. She writes, “She tests a low branch, violet blossoms/swaying beside her” and it is interesting to note that Laux refers to the bird as being female (Laux 212). This is the first clue that the bird is a symbol for someone, or a group of people (women). The use of a bird in poetry often signifies freedom, and Laux’s use of the female bird implies female freedom and independence. She follows with an interesting image of the bird’s “beak and breast/held back, claws raking at the pan” and this conjures a mental picture of a bird who is flying not head first into a window, but almost holding herself back even as she flies forward (Laux 212). This makes the bird seem stubborn, and follows with the theme of the independent female.
One of the hardest events that a soldier had to go through during the war was when one of their friends was killed. Despite their heartbreak they could not openly display their emotions. They could not cry because soldiers do not cry. Such an emotional display like crying would be sign of weakness and they didn’t want to be weak, so they created an outlet. “They were actors. When someone died, it wasn’t quite dying because in a curious way it seemed scripted”(19). Of course things were scripted especially when Ted Lavender died. It had happened unexpectedly and if they didn’t have something planned to do while they were coping they would all have broken down especially Lieutenant Cross. Cross...
What made Stephen Crane’s The Red Badge of Courage become an unforgettable original surpassing other war novels is its depiction of the cruelty of the battlefield through the young soldier’s eyes. During the story’s timeline, Henry undergoes a subtle change in his attitude towards war. Starting as being self-centered and delusional,the youth becomes doubtful of his own self as well as his perceptions of war, afterwards finally matures into a man. This change has contributed greatly to the message of war which the novel conveys.
... horrors of war such as, his parents who still view war as glamorous and idealistic. War takes a heavy toll on soldiers who fight in it and in these dangerous moments anybody would have gone insane. It takes a very special type of soldier to be able to handle both the psychological and physical challenges that a soldier has to face in everyday battle. A soldier such as this must be capable of handling the sight of a mutilated comrade and not immediately chatter to pieces. The author conveys this message in his extreme use of words with negative connotation such as shells, typhus, dysentery, and trenches. In this portion of the novel a great deal of emphasis is placed on the word death which is repeated several times and standing on its own it holds a great deal of negative connotations. Therefore, due to the severity of the situation and the extensive use of words with negative connotations the overall tone of the novel appeared to be very depressing or serious. This selection also demonstrates just how mythical the character of war that many individuals who have not experienced the tragedy of battle believe to be true by illustrating just how appalling and grim war is in reality.
The first words of the book convey a parrot that spoke “a language which nobody understood”, and Edna’s husband “had the privilege of quitting [the parrot] when [it] ceased to be entertaining” (11). In the same light, Edna speaks of and wishes for a life that nobody apprehends. Her husband also possesses the moral, objectifying liberty to quiet Edna when she did not provide leisure, as one can turn off a song once it grows into a tedious nuisance. A further exemplification comes about when Old Monsieur Farival, a man, “insisted upon having [a] bird. . . consigned to regions of darkness” due to its shrieking outside (42). As a repercussion, the parrot “offered no more interruption to the entertainment” (42). The recurrence of the parrot evolves Edna’s state of stagnance as a consequence of being put to a halt by others despite her endeavor of breaking free. Ultimately, as Edna edges out towards the water to her death, a bird is depicted with “a broken wing” and is “beating the air above, reeling, fluttering, circling disabled down, down to the water” (159). This recurrence parallels the beaten bird to a suffering Edna. She has “despondency [that] came upon her there in the wakeful night” that never alleviates (159). Dejection is put to action when Edna wanders out into the water, “the shore. . . far behind her” (159). Motif of birds articulates her suicide by its association with
The French 1884 oil on canvas painting The Song of the Lark by Jules-Adolphe Breton draws grasps a viewer’s attention. It draws an observer in by its intense but subtle subject matter and by the luminous sun in the background. Without the incandescent sun and the thoughtful look of the young woman, it would just be a bland earth-toned farm landscape. However, Breton understood what to add to his painting in order to give it drama that would instantly grab an onlooker’s interest.
When the war breaks out, this tranquil little town seems like the last place on earth that could produce a team of vicious, violent soldiers. Soon we see Jim thrown into a completely contrasting `world', full of violence and fighting, and the strong dissimilarity between his hometown and this new war-stricken country is emphasised. The fact that the original setting is so diversely opposite to that if the war setting, the harsh reality of the horror of war is demonstrated.
The structure of Faulk’s Birdsong allows us to observe the impact of the War upon numerous individuals across the generations. Throughout the novel, even outside the 1914-1918 time-frame, Faulks continues to maintain a link between the past and the present through his use of a number of motifs and themes. The lasting impact of the War suggests that history should never be forgotten, which is the paramount message in Birdsong.
A certain matter-of-fact quality pervades the descriptions of the wounds inflicted and received by soldiers; the face-to-face attacks with rifle butts, spades, and grenades; the sounds, smells, and colors of death and dying in this book.
War forces young soldiers to grow up quickly. In Stephen Crane’s Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage, Henry Fleming is no exception. He is faced with the hard reality of war and this forces him to readjust his romantic beliefs about war. Through the novel, the reader can trace the growth and development of Henry through these four stages: (1) romanticizing war and the heroic role each soldier plays, (2) facing the realities of war, (3) lying to himself to maintain his self-importance, and (4) realistic awareness of his abilities and place in life. Through Henry’s experiences in his path to self-discovery, he is strongly affected by events that help shape his ideology of war, death, courage, and manhood. The romantic ideologies will be replaced with a more realistic representation.
The novel opens with Henry Fleming in the field and remembering the route to his current condition within the war. Crane spends a good amount of time relaying the interaction between Henry and his mother as he prepares to go off to fight in the war as well as the questioning of himself as a man. What is so interesting about this particular part, as it relates to the end of the novel, is that the America ideals of the creation of a man (hero) through war and war as beautiful are approached and challenged.
Jack’s data is very important because in some way the sake of the world is in his hands. Despite the fact that his son is in the North, Jack wants the president to only help the people in the South. Jack had to decide whether or not military troops should risk their lives going to the North in the deadly storm to try to save people or play it safe by just saving the people in the South. This is an important decision because the lives of people throughout the country and the world are at risk.