Explore Faulks’ Presentation of Loss in the Novel Birdsong Birdsong is a novel set in the period before, during and after the First World War. Automatically one would think of the loss of life that was suffered during this time, but the loss of life is not the only form loss suffered during this time. Standing side -by -side with the loss of life is the loss of love and the loss of faith. Faulks uses vivid descriptions and contrasting images to place the reader at the scene and make them empathise with the characters. Loss is one of the most poignant themes in the book, and is one that fuels a majority of the lines written. The most common understanding form of loss associated with the First World War is the great loss of life. Faulks chose to try and put this into words and create something so vivid that it would stick to your mind and make you tremble. Loss is embedded so deeply in the soldiers minds, that they are seeing dead bodies while their eyes are still closed, “He saw a picture in his mind of a terrible piling up of the dead. …….the row on row, the deep rotting earth hollowed out to hold them”. This powerful line shows how the loss of life has been so badly imprinted on Stephens’s mind that even, normal, everyday things were turning into gruesome, deathly images. Faulks uses a lot of dream like imagery to show how badly the soldiers were affected by loss, even when they are sleeping or floating within their imagination, all they can think about is death. Faulks
The strong imagery paints a picture of the battlefield and draws a connection between the past and present leaving the football players with a feeling of loss.
The novel All Quiet on the Western Front uses imagery that fills the reader with shock and truly disturbed thoughts of World War I. In an early scene in the book, one of Paul’s comrades from school and the Second Company named Kemmerich, contracts gangrene and has his leg amputated. Kemmerich is in much pain and does not receive morphine. As he is dying, Paul watches helplessly as his friend cries until his death. The reader gains a new knowledge of the emotions felt by Paul, the doctors and residents at the hospital, and Kemmerich himself. The war created such fear and awareness of the emanate death the soldiers faced. Paul knew he would witness more deaths of close friends and had to live with the grief and the thought
Erich Maria Remarque did a phenomenal job of evoking imagery in his novel, “All Quiet on the Western Front.” His alluring use of adjectives and adverbs made his words jump off the page. The sweeping images of the dead and wounded, linger in my mind. However, sight is not the only sense that his writing induces. Whilst reading the passages that describe the death, destruction, and fighting, one can almost feel, and smell, as if they lived the very moment. The fact that Remarque describes how the soldiers slowly become disillusioned with the war, makes these images more impactful for me. He explains that the soldiers know that the war was not their fault, and the men they are killing are not actually the real enemy; they are just ordinary
The First World War, or the ill-named War to End all Wars, was one that brought hell to Earth and mankind. For the first time in history, industry had appeared to make killing efficient. In static trenches, young men from around the world were killed by artillery kilometres away, poison gas, and disease. All nations in the conflict experienced the creation of a Lost Generation; men who lost their lives, limbs, or the ability to live a normal life. Paul Baumer, the young German protagonist of All Quiet on the Western Front becomes a member of this sad generation through his sad journey to the ultimate elixir, death. In Erich Remarque’s magnum opus All Quiet on the Western Front, Paul Baumer is faced by various emotionally jarring tests that
The author of the poem “Flander’s Fields”, John McCrae’s, point of view on the war would be that war is a sad and terrible time. The poem
My entrance into this world was eclipsed by the conclusion of America’s seemingly most gruesome war. The image of gore, limply lying upon field after field overshadowed the arrival of my newfangled existence. Brothers, fathers, sons—all drained of vitality, gray with decomposition, saturated mind after mind all for the sake of Confederate preservation. Perhaps, it was the mere thought of another demise to endless carnage that reduced my lively impact—the devastating sting of loss still coursing throughout the veins surrounding me.
The wartime lives of the soldiers who fought in the war were in a state of mind of mixed feelings. Happiness and devastating are two adjectives that can describe the soldier’s feelings in the war because at one second they can be happy that they succeeded on a mission, but on the other hand, it can be very devastating because one of their own soldiers could have been killed during the war. Aside from physical danger losing one of your own soldiers or having your family worry about you every day and night are some negatives and unpleasant parts about fighting in a war. For example, soldiers loved ones worried each day, and hoped that they would not get a knock on their door by someone who was going to tell them that their fathers, husbands, sons, or brothers have died in the war.
The most vivid and shocking image used is when the speaker internally addresses the child and tells him that his "father tumbled in the yellow trenches, / Raged at his breast, gulped and died" (13-14). This is not something one would tell a child, especially when consoling him. The use of the word "trenches," which could be metaphors for graves, contributes to the implicit theme of a funeral setting. This contradiction between verbally comforting family members and internally giving them detailed descriptions of their loved one's death, shows the speaker's struggle with the idea that families and others typically hear the glossed-over story of the nobility of soldiers and the glory of war. This speaker is battling with his military duty of consoling the family members and with his conscience wanting to open their eyes to the fact that these men die gruesome and painful deaths.
Sebastian Faulks describes in his novel, Birsong, the effects of the first world war and to how it both physically and mentally caused hardship for all those involved, primarily for the soldiers. using explicit detail. These details are gruesome and realistic and war is depicted as the 'dehumanisation' of men since soldiers are loosing their sense of what it means to be human. Despite all this brutality however, there are moments within the novel where hope has not completely tarnished. The men still appear to have their sense of humanity.
World War One, known by many as the “Great War”, lives in infamy as one of the harshest, brutal wars in history. While the high amount of casualties decimated populations, another huge factor was the toll the war had on the youth that served. The madness that was known as trench warfare was the stuff of nightmares, from the horrid living conditions, to the unpredictability of the opposing onslaught of artillery, soldiers were surrounded by death. This trauma and constant stress ruined countless lives, old and young. If the bullets did not get you, the stress would. The question was when, not how. In the novel All Quiet on the Western Front, author Erich Maria Remarque told the story of a young man named Paul Bäumer, and how he and
These pictures are slightly something that is tricky to portray and to characterize because it never closes. It is like the war, in light of the fact that it is so terrible it couldn't be possible portray definitely. Amid the war, there is no sureness, and the ordinary human qualities don't number any longer. There is likewise analyze between the officers who kicked the bucket on the front line with all the blood, the bodies, and the emotional workmanship. On the other side the warriors who kicked the bucket noticeable all around ("The War noticeable all around") and battled without anyone else's input and there is just blankness and no one has seen or heard something.
There are wars going on everyday in our lives, while some people are going through the same, they have many of the same thoughts going through their heads. In the book All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria , and “Suicide in the trenches” by Siegfried Sassoon, although their character are in different parts of World War 1 they have numerous of the comparable thought during this time. Paul and Siegfried have similar conditions when they are fighting on The Front, as Siegfried states in the poem “...In winter trenches, cowed and glum, With crumps and lice and lack of rum…’’(Sassoon). Paul describes a similar setting in All Quiet, since it was constantly at war and with all passed away bodies on the ground the trenches were unimaginable
Bird song is one of the most often investigated topics in biology. It is an excellent
Many families lost their beloved ones. The Canadian poet John McCrae’s poem ( In Flander’s Field) , encourages the new soldiers to continue the war after World War I, so the old soldiers wouldn’t have died for nothing. It’s a poem of remembrance , for the people not to forget the effort of the dead ones and to take over their mission. The poem is written by the dead soldier's point of view, in a cemetery, In Flanders Fields. This poem encouraged World War II ; caused many people to take a place in the war in order to honor the efforts of the dead.
The soldiers come from all walks of life and therefore vary in their opinion towards war. John for example, "never forgot" about the horrors he had been exposed to even after going back to England which is depicted by "the green black water of nightmares." Therefore, he is constantly reminded and haunted by the harrowing images of the war. He calls it a "mess" and his only defence mechanism to protect himself against it is "detachment" as he says "that all of it has nothing to do with you." This contributes to his alienation as "everything around and within him was remote." His first encounter with death is seeing "forty bodies" on top of each other "like sandbags." Gradually, John realises that wishful thinking is useless and that "you cannot feel every man's death completely and all the time" as it would prevent him from functioning.