key quotes Flashcards
1
Q
Attitudes towards Home Front
A
- “the callous complacence . . . which they have not sufficient enough imagination to realise”
- “he hated everybody, giggling girls, portly middle-aged men, women whose eyes settled on his wound stripe like flies”
2
Q
Duty
A
- “You can still speak up for your principles, you can argue against the ones you’re being made to fight for, but in
the end you do the job” - “When you put the uniform on, in effect you sign a
contract” - “the itch and constriction of the uniform”
- “He wanted Sassoon to be ill. Admitting this made him
pause” - ” Rivers was aware, as a constant background to his work, of a conflict between his belief th
3
Q
Sassoon
A
- “Sassoon’s determination to remember might well account for his early and rapid recovery”
4
Q
Emasculation
A
- “The boy . . . had a neat little hole too. Only his was between the legs”
- “I suppose it is possible someone might find being locked up in a loony bin a fairly emasculating experience?”
5
Q
Class
A
- ”
6
Q
Women
A
-
7
Q
Male relationships
A
- “He was used to being adopted as a father figure.”
8
Q
Reality of life in the trenches
A
- “passing the same corpses time after time, until their twisted and blackened shapes began to seem like old friends.”
9
Q
Patriotism
A
“No way of telling if they were British or German hands. No way of persuading himself it mattered”
10
Q
Mental suffering
A
-
11
Q
Physical suffering
A
- “His collar bones and ribs were clearly visible beneath the yellowish skin”
- “He’d been thrown into the air by the explosion of a shell and had landed, head-first, on a German corpse, whose gas filled belly had ruptured on impact.”
12
Q
Treatment of neurasthenia
A
- “Sassoon’s determination to remember might well account for his early and rapid recovery”
13
Q
Rivers
A
-
14
Q
Burns
A
- “He cupped his genitals in his hands, not because he was ashamed, but because they looked incongruous, they didn’t seem to belong with the rest of him.”
15
Q
Prior
A
-
