To what extent do Birdsong and A Farewell to Arms communicate the devastation caused by conflict? Rebecca Owen

To what extent do Birdsong and A Farewell to Arms communicate the devastation caused by conflict?

In the novel Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks it follows the life of the protagonist Stephen Wraysford from the build-up of the war in France 1910 through to WW1. Physical devastation is mostly represented, however, the crisis of masculinity, class conflict, the loss of faith and the devastation of nature are embodied in the novel. Another war novel presenting devastation is Ernest Hemingway’s novel; A Farewell to Arms (AFTA) which was written in Italy during WW1, it could be considered a reflection of Hemingway’s military experience in the Italian Ambulance service. There are common themes within Birdsong and A Farewell to Arms such as; love, social support and obviously conflict.  

Physical devastation is shown throughout A Farewell to Arms as it’s a war book, but Hemingway uses brevity in his descriptions of the devastation because of the time the book was published. Hemingway was censored in this way, he knew the tragic loss people had suffered and didn’t go into detail because he knew people wouldn’t have wanted to read how gruesome their fathers, brothers, sons, or uncles, death might have been so he kept his descriptions concise. Hemingway’s use of brevity could also be because he wouldn’t want to relive his war experiences. As this novel could be considered a biography of his war time experience in the Italian ambulance service. Henry is a very stoic character this is shown after Henry and his men are hit by a mortar shell in the bunker, as they are eating. Henry is terribly injured but he still is moving around trying to find his colleagues and when awaiting treatment he insists others go before him, “I’d rather wait, I said. There are much worse wounded than me. I’m all right”^[1].

As Birdsong is also set during WW1, there are considerable amounts of physical devastation. Faulks depicts the psychical devastation of war throughout the novel realistically, this is because he uses graphic language when describing the tragic war scenes. We can see this in the text where he describes “the MO used a knife to cut them off the flesh.”[2] The way Faulks uses the word “flesh”[3] is a lot more vivid and it gives imagery of the flesh being stretched from the body with the clothes, this is happening because this patient was an victim of poison gas. The start of WW1 welcomed a new type warfare, chemical warfare. Which was poison gas, it took so many lives and was so painful to experience. Roughly 9% of English troops were affected by the gas and “The Russian Army suffered 419,340 casualties from gas warfare with 56,000 deaths.  The United States suffered 72,807 and 1,462 deaths.”[4] The Poison gas was used to demobilize the soldiers in the war. The imagery in Birdsong reflects this perfectly; when Faulks describes the man in the hospital whose mouth is open and cannot scream. “He was trying to scream His mouth was pulled open and the sinews of his neck were stretched, but some throat condition appeared to prevent any sound from issuing.”[5] A similar occurrence is reflected in Wilfred Owen’s poem ‘Dulce et Decorum Est.’[6] it reads “Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs” this coincides with the line “bringing a yellow froth from his lips.”[7] The way both the poem and Birdsong are linked shows how devastating the use of gas was to the victims and the witnesses. The gruesome language Faulks uses to describe the war enables us to vividly create an image of devastation both of nature and physical devastation. However in A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway uses more brevity in his writing, when describing an injury he states facts he doesn’t use this imagery that Faulks relies on. Hemingway is not a modern writer and because he published the book in 1929, he delivered the novel into a society that had just gone through the war and had lost many loved ones, therefore he didn’t want people to relive the tragedy. Alternatively we can see that Faulks use of detailed language is seen among other readers of the book, this amazon review of Birdsong from a reviewer called Bibliophage they said “I felt he captured the confusion of battle, the deprivations they endured and the human tragedy unfolding around them…” [8]

Another way in which Faulks represents conflict would be the way he depicts the psychological devastation within the war. Weir is one of the most noticeable characters of this he shows psychological devastation during the course of the war. “Weir’s hands were shaking as he took the bottle”[9], he is trying to pour a drink for himself and Stephen. The impact the war has on Weir can be reflected in his inability to start to talk to people which is highlighted with his “inability to talk sensibly”[10] about the things he has seen, even his parents which happens in part four. Soldier’s experienced terrible shell shock which is represented by Weir in Birdsong similarly to Henry in AFTA he feels the war has broken him, he is telling Catherine this. Other characters in the book do seem to be depressed when they are running away from the war, such as Bonello.

Psychological devastation can also be reflected in the novel when Stephen has an ‘episode’ in the brothel when he is on leave in France during part two. He has taken Weir there, and Stephen sleeps with the prostitute, he visualises a dead comrades body as hers “the ribs and spine, he thought of the shell casing that had stuck from Reeves’s abdomen; he thought of the hole in Douglas’s shoulder”[11] and then pulls out his knife “then ran the handle of it down between her breasts and over her thighs.”[12] It then escalates to be even more violent “the blade pointing upwards towards her abdomen.”[13]                                                                        Henry in AFTA also suffers from psychological devastation because he finally has enough of the war and runs away from it which is desertion. He also shows psychological devastation because he starts the novel hating the Carabinieri, the Italian Military police, but then takes the job into his own hands. When they pick up fellow deserters the other start to run and he makes the decision to kill his own people and calls them “scum” when he is exactly the same as them, he just hasn’t run from his confidents. This could represent the loss of religion causing a lapse of the sense of right or wrong because of the psychological devastation. They also joke and say “’Bless me, father, I killed a sergeant.’ They all laughed.”[14] This kind of damage can be a sign of stress and someone becoming mentally unwell.                                               

Hemingway shows the psychological suffering of women through the way Catherine’s first fiancée dies and she is left so utterly reliant on Henry’s love.  A feminist perspective of the character of Catherine Barkley is that “She is reduced to a symbol of the female principle”[15] This could be because she has certain aspects of her character that make her a very dependent person.

In a critical review of Birdsong another reader empathises with the stories of the men because of Faulks’ descriptions “What’s worse is that after living on the front lines for a long time, you begin to experience a feeling of deadness. As if nothing really matters. You see your friends die one by one in front of you – or they get horribly mutilated and you just don’t care.”[16] This can be represented in part four of the novel where the narrative says this powerful passage “They were killing with pleasure. They were not normal.”[17] This is the idea that the soldiers became animals and lost their sense of God and their moral compass, which is the idea of religious devastation that they have lost God. Alternatively it could represent the idea that the soldiers had no control over what they were doing they just had to follow commands, this resulted in the soldiers suffering which is mentioned in a critical theory “They came home with nightmares, from a devastating, destructive, and useless slaughter.”[18]

Finally the last way in which Faulks presents devastation caused by the war is the devastation of society which occurs with the breakout of the war. You can see tensions rising between the bourgeoisie and proletariats in the first part of Birdsong in the response of the workers to Azaire and Berard’s expectations “the gross demands of a few idle workers”[19]. Also the way the two men talk about the lower class shows the way they think they are so much better than everyone else. This can be reflected in Lucien Lebrun’s reaction to Stephen, where a “skirmish”[20] breaks out, also Bérard and Azaire being upper class and having the workers fight against them is the reflection of Marxism within the novel.

However in A Farewell to Arms the fight between the classes is reflected in the Carabinieri who were shooting the sergeants who had deserted the war. However, they actually were uprising against these sergeants and they were of a lower class to them, yet were condescending and showed no mercy. They basically rebelled and gave themselves a higher status than who they were killing, this shows a power struggle between the classes who were fighting. In a critical reading of Birdsong by Julie Ellam she also agrees that this is interpreted by Marxism “Birdsong highlights how little control those serving in the war had over their own destinies…”[21]  Likewise Henry says about the war being “an industrial accident”[22] which can link to how the lower, working class were also fighting in the war and people forgot about them. It can reflect the devastation of the distinct social classes during the war period because everyone had to work together and they had to get rid of the class distinctions.

 

Also the devastation of society can be represented when Rinaldi caught syphilis and Henry got “the jaundice”[23] is an example of how people’s coping methods can be the reasons for illness and suffering this is Hemingway’s way of portraying the complete psychological devastation was has on any society and every person experienced suffering in a way. The idea that people rely on something to get them through the war, Rinaldi relies on sex and Henry on alcohol, but it doesn’t help them it makes things worse. The psychological devastation comes from the idea that their coping strategies are the one thing that make things worse for the suffering civilians. Henry also starts to feel regret and bad for Catherine when she becomes pregnant because it is out of wedlock. Henry feels that her being pregnant is a punishment for this, which is foreboding for the tragic end of the novel. Again this can link to the idea that people’s coping mechanisms, which in Henry’s case was his love for Catherine, was the reason for their death.

 

In conclusion Faulks and Hemingway are effective in portraying the devastation that can be caused by conflicts on such a huge scale. They do this effectively by looking at how war can have impact on society and also the impact it has on soldiers psychologically and physically. Hemingway finds an effective way of capturing the real devastation of war because he doesn’t just focus on the more obvious suffering of the soldiers like Faulks, but the ideas of other people involved such as the medics and women that were fighting in the war which makes it feel more realistic in the way it effected lots of different aspects of society.

Word Count of essay: 2018

Bibliography: 

1. Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms.
2. Sebastian Faulks, Birdsong
3. http://www.wwvets.com/GasWarfare.html
4. Owen, Wilfred, Dulce et Decorum Est.
5. http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0099387913/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending
6. http://www.bhagwad.com/blog/2012/book-reviews/book-review-sebastian-faulks-birdsong-critical-analysis.html/
7. Claudia Durst Johnson, Vernon Elso Johnson, The Social Impact of the Novel: A Reference Guide (USA, June 30, 2002)
8. Julie Ellam, “Birdsong” (York Notes Advanced), (9 July 2009, London)
9. Joyce Wexler, E. R. A. for Hemingway: A Feminist Defence of “A Farewell to Arms, P.111  (spring 1981, Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia)

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[1] Hemingway, E, A Farewell to Arms, (2004, London)

[2] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 186 (7^th July 1994, London)

[3] Faulks ,S, ibid, p. 186 (7^th July 1994, London)

[4] http://www.wwvets.com/GasWarfare.html

[5] Faulks, ibid, p. 186 (7^th July 1994, London)

[6] Owen, Wilfred,  Dulce et Decorum Est. (1920, London)

[7] Faulks S, ibid, p. 186 (7^th July 1994, London)

[8] http://www.amazon.co.uk/product-reviews/0099387913/ref=cm_cr_dp_see_all_btm?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=1&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending

[9] Faulks, S,  ibid, p. 285 (7^th July 1994, London)

[10] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 285 (7^th July 1994, London)

[11] Faulks, S,  ibid, p. 206 (7^th July 1994, London)

[12] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 206 (7^th July 1994, London)

[13] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 207 (7^th July 1994, London)

[14] Hemingway, E, ibid, p.185 (2004, London)

[15] Joyce Wexler, E. R. A. for Hemingway: A Feminist Defence of “A Farewell to Arms, P.111  (spring 1981, Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia)

[16] http://www.bhagwad.com/blog/2012/book-reviews/book-review-sebastian-faulks-birdsong-critical-analysis.html/

[17] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 379 (7^th July 1994, London)

[18]Claudia Durst Johnson, Vernon Elso Johnson, The Social Impact of the Novel: A Reference Guide (USA, June 30, 2002)

[19] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 13 (7^th July 1994, London)

[20] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 51 (7^th July 1994, London)

[21] Julie Ellam, “Birdsong” (York Notes Advanced), (9 July 2009, London)

[22] Hemingway, E, ibid, p.157 (2004, London)

[23] Faulks, S, ibid, p. 151 (7^th July 1994, London)