Imagine my delight at reading this blog post. I've been an examiner for Language, not Literature, so it is reassuring to find that my near obsession (you must have noticed it right from first looking at 'Six Young Men') with the idea of avoiding a simplistic view that everything must be read through the lens of how terrible the war was, is not wide of the mark.
Gary Sheffield’s ‘Forgotten Victory’, Brian Bond’s The Unquiet Western Front and Dan Todman’s The Great War: Myth and Memory, which question the orthodox literary view that the War was entirely futile.
I think I go along with this reading, but a reading of the poem as bleakly ironic is surely plausible as well. I concur with the blogger that students' tendency to read everything through a 'futility of war lens' should caution us against automatically assuming that anything positive must surely be masking the horrors of war. Remember there's no reason why a character joking about dirt in tea should not actually be concerned about dirt in tea. When I'm cycling to school there's a risk I might be knocked off my bike and killed, but I don't spend much of my riding time thinking about that fact, and if I happen to notice the beautiful autumn leaves, it isn't necessarily to hide the reality that I might at any moment be ground under the wheels of a bus. Admittedly, cycling to school doesn't have the same stresses as trench warfare, I imagine, but I think the principle that almost whatever their circumstances, humans still have ordinary concerns and feelings still holds true.
I'm not sure what you're getting at here Brad. No: not everyone will have had ambivalent feelings about the war, but I think it's reasonable to suppose that most will. The fact that people will have had their opinion shaped by those of others seems incontrovertible. Even people who were direct participants in the war will surely have been influenced by those around them, and perhaps by others, on the Home Front and elsewhere. Your 'but' seems to suggest you are contradicting the view of the blogger at this point, but I don't see where the conflict is with what you went on to say.
Markers give credit to well-written essays that show a mind actively engaging with the text and showing some expertise in handling literary concepts and terminology.
Just doing this to see if the comment malarky actually works because I don't really have a clue, but this was really useful. I've spent my mornkng reading "The First Casualty" by the wonderful Ben Elton and it has definitely demonstrated some strong links to themes commonly conveyed in Regeneration. Definitely worth reading if in my class ( if any of you actually see this)
This blog is..
for students and readers of World War One poetry and prose. Read detailed notes and add your own thoughts. Take a look at our 'Welcome!' page to find out more about this blog.
This website is a project of the English department at Southfields Community College, Wandsworth, London UK.
As you can see, this website is geared specifically towards the very course we are studying. Hooray!
As you can also see, if you are logged in to Diigo you can highlight web-pages and make notes on them.
Even hoorayer!
I look forward to seeing you litter the internet with your stickies. Get to it.