It is worth bearing in mind that, alongside all the horror and pain of the REALITY of war, the government propaganda machine was continuously churning out posters and fliers trying to use guilt and emotional blackmail to PERSUADE the young men of Britain to sign up and fight. This poster was perhaps the most famous of all, featuring a very bullying pose by Kitchener, the Minister for War.Sick Leave
In this chapter, we follow Rivers on his 'sick leave'. He spends some time with his sister and her husband, reminiscing about his own childhood, and, in particular, about his fractious relationship with his father. Next he goes to stay with Henry Head and his wife in London, and Head makes an offer to Rivers of a job in a war hospital in Hampstead - but Rivers doesn't know if he can drag himself away from Craiglockhart.
No Escape
The other episodes in this long chapter concern Prior - who is humiliated by a new doctor with whom he lacks the closeness he has with Rivers - and Sassoon - who is immensely excited by the final draft Owen has produced of the poem 'Anthem for Doomed Youth'. However, all of these episodes relate to the notion that one cannot escape the brutal reality of war: Rivers is supposedly on 'holiday', but the guns still keep him awake at night; Sarah discovers the room at the back of a hospital where all the disabled soldiers are 'stored', and wonders why society feels so ashamed of them; and Owen and Sassoon are only satisfied when their poetry admits the horror of war. There really is no escape...
Some things to think about:
- Why does Rivers not want to accept Head's offer of a job in London?
- Why did Rivers fall out with his father as a child?
- What shocks Sarah SO much about the room at the back of the hospital she visits?
- Why do you think Prior feels able to show warmth towards Sarah again?
* * * * * *
Some useful quotations:
... the two bloody bargains on which a civilization claims to be based. The bargain, Rivers thought, looking at Abraham and Isaac. The one on which all patriarchal societies are founded If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and will be able to exact the same obedience from your sons. Only we're breaking the bargain, Rivers thought All over northern France, at this very moment, in trenches and dugouts and flooded shell-holes, the inheritors were dying, not one by one, while old men, and women of all ages, gathered together and sang hymns. [It might be worth comparing this to the poem in the Opening Lines GCSE anthology, Owen's 'Parable'. Both explore the hypocrisy and madness of sacrificing a whole generation for such tenuous goals.]
The congregation, having renounced reason, looked rather the happier for it and sat down to await the sermon. [Having seen what human beings can do to each other, and how horrid life can be, Rivers finds it impossible to keep a faith in some vague, mysterious 'god', because to do so would be to 'renounce reason'.]
...Genesis was no more than the creation myth of a Bronze Age people. [Like the previous quotation, Rivers lost his faith even as early as when he was a little boy.]
They would never come back, those times. [Before the war, it seems that all was happy, pure, safe. Now those happy days are gone forever. It might be worth reading an 1896 poem by Housman in this context.]
Now the same chicks were scruffy, bedraggled things running in the coops, and the only sound in the room was the roar of flame. [Just like the previous quotation, what once was innocent and beautiful, is now ruined and doomed. :(]
Faintly, over dark hedges and starlit fields, came the soft thud-thud of the guns. [There really is NO escape.]
She was still dazzled by the brightness of the light outside and the relative dimness of the interior, and so she had to blink several times before she saw them, a row of figures in wheelchairs, but figures that were no longer the size and shape of adult men. Trouser legs sewn short; empty sleeves pinned to jackets. One man had lost all his limbs, and his face was so drained, so pale, he seemed to have left his blood in France as well. [Compare this description with Owen's poem, 'Disabled'.]
They stared at her, but not as the men had stared on the other ward, smiling, trying to catch her eye. This was a totally blank stare. If it contained anything at all, it was fear. Fear of her looking at the empty trouser legs. Fear of her not looking at them. [Not only has war taken away much of their bodies, their youth, their hope, their life, but also their sexuality. They have, effectively, been desexualised, or even 'castrated' by the war. Here is a pretty girl, and they feel NOTHING.]
If the country demanded that price, then it should bloody well be prepared to look at the result. [Sarah, too, shares the anger of the likes of Prior and Sassoon about it all now.]
He thought he might buy himself...any little treat that might make him feel better. Less contaminated. [A little hint about another effect of the war on the soldier: it made them feel permanently dirty.]
I get this feeling that the...the crust of everything is starting to crack. [This hints at the complete destruction enacted on the whole world by the First World War, a world which would never be the same again. At A Level of university, you will probably read a poem called 'The Wasteland' by T.S.Eliot, which, written shortly after the end of the war, explores exactly the same idea.]
... the two bloody bargains on which a civilization claims to be based. The bargain, Rivers thought, looking at Abraham and Isaac. The one on which all patriarchal societies are founded If you, who are young and strong, will obey me, who am old and weak, even to the extent of being prepared to sacrifice your life, then in the course of time you will peacefully inherit, and will be able to exact the same obedience from your sons. Only we're breaking the bargain, Rivers thought All over northern France, at this very moment, in trenches and dugouts and flooded shell-holes, the inheritors were dying, not one by one, while old men, and women of all ages, gathered together and sang hymns. [It might be worth comparing this to the poem in the Opening Lines GCSE anthology, Owen's 'Parable'. Both explore the hypocrisy and madness of sacrificing a whole generation for such tenuous goals.]
The congregation, having renounced reason, looked rather the happier for it and sat down to await the sermon. [Having seen what human beings can do to each other, and how horrid life can be, Rivers finds it impossible to keep a faith in some vague, mysterious 'god', because to do so would be to 'renounce reason'.]
...Genesis was no more than the creation myth of a Bronze Age people. [Like the previous quotation, Rivers lost his faith even as early as when he was a little boy.]
They would never come back, those times. [Before the war, it seems that all was happy, pure, safe. Now those happy days are gone forever. It might be worth reading an 1896 poem by Housman in this context.]
Now the same chicks were scruffy, bedraggled things running in the coops, and the only sound in the room was the roar of flame. [Just like the previous quotation, what once was innocent and beautiful, is now ruined and doomed. :(]
Faintly, over dark hedges and starlit fields, came the soft thud-thud of the guns. [There really is NO escape.]
She was still dazzled by the brightness of the light outside and the relative dimness of the interior, and so she had to blink several times before she saw them, a row of figures in wheelchairs, but figures that were no longer the size and shape of adult men. Trouser legs sewn short; empty sleeves pinned to jackets. One man had lost all his limbs, and his face was so drained, so pale, he seemed to have left his blood in France as well. [Compare this description with Owen's poem, 'Disabled'.]
They stared at her, but not as the men had stared on the other ward, smiling, trying to catch her eye. This was a totally blank stare. If it contained anything at all, it was fear. Fear of her looking at the empty trouser legs. Fear of her not looking at them. [Not only has war taken away much of their bodies, their youth, their hope, their life, but also their sexuality. They have, effectively, been desexualised, or even 'castrated' by the war. Here is a pretty girl, and they feel NOTHING.]
If the country demanded that price, then it should bloody well be prepared to look at the result. [Sarah, too, shares the anger of the likes of Prior and Sassoon about it all now.]
He thought he might buy himself...any little treat that might make him feel better. Less contaminated. [A little hint about another effect of the war on the soldier: it made them feel permanently dirty.]
I get this feeling that the...the crust of everything is starting to crack. [This hints at the complete destruction enacted on the whole world by the First World War, a world which would never be the same again. At A Level of university, you will probably read a poem called 'The Wasteland' by T.S.Eliot, which, written shortly after the end of the war, explores exactly the same idea.]
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