Revision:The Great War and Modern MemoryTSR Wiki > Study Help > Subjects and Revision > Revision Notes > English > The Great War and Modern Memory
- On the irony of the war – ‘every war is ironic because every war is worse than expected.’
- Brief summary: ‘eight million people were destroyed because two persons, the Archduke Francis Ferdinand and his Consort, had been shot.’
- ‘The Great War… reversed the idea of progress.’
- At the beginning of the war, a volunteer had to be 5’8” to enlist; by November, that was reduced to 5’3”
- To boost morale, the Poet Laureate Robert Bridges released an Anthology entitled The Spirit of Man
- The Somme affair was known as ‘The Great ****-Up’ among the troops
- [Look up Philip Larkin’s poem MCMXIV]: ‘never such innocence again’ after the Great War; Britain was shaken out of her ‘Georgian complacency’
- Common use of heroic language before the war: pseudo medieval phrases: ‘fallen’, for killed, ‘gallant’ for brave, ‘comrade’ for friend, etc, supported classical ideology of heroism as bred in the public schools
- Many people expected civil war in Ireland during 1914, not European conflict – it came as a shock
- Rupert Brooke describing the war, in winter of 1914-15 – ‘It’s all great fun’
- Vitaï Lampada, written by Sir Henry Newbolt, intertwines the public-school ethos of good ‘sport’ with war - incidentally, Newbolt was a friend of Haig
- Gas, when first introduced by the Germans was not seen as ‘sporting’; the English were reluctant to use it, it wasn’t seen as part of the ‘game’
- Footballs were kicked towards the enemy line on attack to encourage troops to move forwards; it was a mark of honour if you could dribble it into the other side’s trench (needless to say that wasn’t common)
- [Look up Laurence Binyon’s For The Fallen]
- [Look up Blunden’s poem ‘Report on Experience’] – ‘I have seen a green country… knocked silly with guns and mines.’
- Wilfred Owen’s letter to Susan Owen is a classic example of dichotomy through language (‘I have not been at the front./I have been in front of it.’)
- 10% of a battalion destined for attack would stay behind in order to train the new recruits who would rebuild the battalion if the 90% were obliterated
- Staff officers wore red on their uniforms and were easily spotted: an example of how they were so far from the front that they didn’t need camouflaging colours like the infantry
- Classes mixed in the trenches for the first time – a possible reason why the Labour Party were successful in the elections during WWII?
- Poet Charles Sorley: ‘I should like so much to kill whoever was primarily responsible for the war.’ (1914)
- Lord Northcliffe, in charge of British propaganda, used domestic similes to bridge the gulf between those at home and those at the front: ‘Machine guns like a boy rasping a stick along palings/Victorian policeman’s rattle.’
- The command ‘stand-to’ comes from the archaic ‘stand to arms!’
- Three rows of trenches: front | support | reserve
- Sassoon ‘varied between happy warrior and bitter pacifist’ (Graves)
- Binary vision in Sassoon: ‘what in earlier times had been drafts of volunteers were now droves of victims.’
- Max Plouman: ‘It is marvellous to be out of the trenches: it is like being born again.’
- Rumour of a Canadian soldier crucified by the Germans was probably inspired by the numerous European calvaries (Protestant England had no equivalent). Also, a common punishment for soldiers who misbehaved in some way was to be tied, spread-eagled, to an immobile object and left ‘til he was deemed to be sorry
- Rumour of a group of crazed deserters from all sides living wild in abandoned dug-outs/trenches/caves in No Man’s Land, who came out at night to steal food and could be heard (the obvious explanation could be the crying of the wounded, abandoned in pain without food or water), stemming from:
- A sardonic mirror-image of the conditions of the actual trenches
- Shame of leaving the wounded to die
- Embodied defiance of despised authority
- Solidarity between nations: every soldier was a victim of War rather than The Other Side
- Two texts that soldiers would have been familiar with and referred to in letters and memoirs: Morris’s The Well At World’s End, in which Prince Ralph quests to find a magic well whose waters can heal the scars of battle wounds; also, Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress – soldiers who put down their load of soldiering (either literally with their pack or on leaving the trenches) compared themselves to Christian; also land destroyed by the effects of war was compared to ‘The Slough of Despond’ or ‘the Valley of the Shadow of Death’ (name taken from a Psalm)
- Sheriff’s ‘Journey’s End’ – title alludes to Othello’s speech in V.ii (as well as Pilgrim’s Progress)
- WWI was the first truly literary war: in 1914 basic education was provided for everyone, and there was no radio/television and little cinema; self-improvement through study was popular and there was great belief in the educative powers of classical and English literature – reading was seen as a way of mobilising yourself socially
- American literature of the war was ‘spare and one dimensional’ because there was no literary history to sustain it
- Louse hunting was called ‘reading one’s shirt’!
- [Look up Herbert Read’s ‘My Company’]: illustrates the strength of affection between officers and men – remember comitatus? (Also Sassoon’s affection for his soldiers in Regeneration)
- [Look up Wordsworth’s A Happy Warrior] – famous letter sent from Alexander Gillespie the day before his death – ‘I could never be all that a warrior could be, but it will please you to know that I am very happy, and whatever happens, you will remember that…’
- Privates changing the pretentious language of their upper-class officers: mutation from ‘the arms of Morpheus’ (i.e. sleeping) to ‘the arms of Murphy’ to ‘Murphyized’
- Classic example of the British glorifying war: what the Americans call The Unknown Soldier the British call The Unknown Warrior
- Hatred of the Germans was so strong in England, the German Shepherd dog was renamed ‘Alsatian’; Robert Graves saw a Dachsund stoned in the street
- Men often used the passive voice in narrating their experiences, to distance themselves from the horror and absolve themselves of responsibility, e.g. instead of ‘we found no body parts’, ‘none were found’
- Stage trenches were erected in Kensington Gardens to comfort civilians – they gave the impression that dug-outs were warm and cosy and clean. Soldiers who went to look on leave said they’d never seen anything remotely resembling it on the front.
- Famous Scotch Major (Campbell) came to lecture at Flixécourt: ‘The bullet and the bayonet are bother and sister,’ he said. Cf. Sassoon’s ‘The Kiss’
Comments
These notes are aimed at A Level English students at A2 level.
Originally written by Lidka on TSR Forums.
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