War Flashcards
‘There were horrors enough, but it was unexpected detail that threw him and afterwards would not let him go.’
Opening sentence of part two (191): Time shift: five years future
The storyline shifts forward almost five years into the future. The opening paragraphs are disorientating for the reader as we do not know where, or with who, we are until the relevant details are gradually revealed to us.
War/ historical fiction
Crime of war and conflict
“It was a leg in a tree. A mature plane tree, only just in leaf. The leg was twenty feet up, wedged in the first forking of the trunk, bare, severed cleanly above the knee… It was a perfect leg, pale, smooth, small enough to be a child’s…”(p192).
It was a perfect leg, pale, smooth, small enough to be a child’s - described unnaturally as something pure and perfect, separate from the gore and chaos of war. Horrors of war are not always bloody and gorey and the simplicity of language to convey atrocities. This biological limb is torn apart from a child just as war has torn apart the relationship between Robbie and Cecilia.
Analysis of body imagery: The surreal image of a disembodied leg in a tree is unsettling in itself but the detached, matter-of-fact tone in which it is described suggests that the soldiers are numbed, used to seeing such atrocities, however Robbie is bothered by it and throws up. The image becomes recurring thoughout this chapter - the suggestion that this is a“child’s”leg seems to be the detail which means that Robbie cannot get this image out of his head, he is haunted by the thought that the scrap of clothing he saw“may have been a child’s pyjamas” and starts to imagine ‘A French boy asleep in his bed.’ (194)
There is a stark contrast between Robbie’s responds to leg and the response of his companions, who refuse to dwell on it as“in the past few days they had seen enough”.
‘Three and a half years of nights like these, unable to sleep, thinking of another vanished boy, another vanished life that was once his own, and waiting for dawn, and slop-out and another wasted day.’
202
Futility of war
The extended sentence reflects the monotony of war with several commas to list the endless suffering.
‘Vanished boy’ referring to civilian eliminated by war.
Demonstrates the unglamorous reality of war- it isn’t romanticised.
Slopping out is the manual emptying of human waste when prison cells are unlocked in the morning. Degrading nature of war equivocal to prison.
Reflection on the boy killed in his bead and own youth wasted in prison. Number emphasises prolonged suffering at the hands of Briony. ‘Vanished’ suggests finality.
The Bonnet Brothers
The pair of French brothers in the France countryside who shelter Turner, Nettle, and Mace during their march back to England, recount the destruction they have seen around the town of Arras ‘The place had been completely destroyed and was deserted’ and are clearly traumatised by the memories:“When they shut their eyes, they saw those mutilated bodies”(p199).
“A dead civilisation. First his own life ruined, then everybody else’s.”(p217).
Robbie’s thoughts move from the personal to the universal.
Just as he has suffered for a crime he did not commit, he sees the whole world as suffering from another crime – war – a crime against humanity.
The thought that“civilisation”is dead suggests that humanity has regressed to a primitive state.
War Victims
“At the head stood an officer dispatching each horse with a shot to the head…” “The horses patiently waited their turn.” (219)
“Minutes later they passed five bodies in a ditch, three women, two children. Their suitcases lay around them.” (219)
“Lying face-down beyond the pile of earth was a boy of fifteen or so. A crimson stain on the back of his white shirt spread from neck to waist… clipped to his shirt pocket was a row of fountain pens,” (224) - The fountain pens suggest that he was writing, he had ambition and a life, symbolic for what Robbie once was.
‘mother and child had vanished’ (239)
The Stuka attack
234-246
‘Nightmares had become a science. Someone, a mere human, had taken the time to dream up this satanic howling…. ‘It was the sound of panic itself’’ (236)
- War is presented as a crime itself. The use of diabolical imagery (‘satanic’) conveys the human capacity for evil. ‘Nightmares’ and ‘dream’ are a reminder of childhood terrors but also juxtapose one another to show how someone’s dream may be another persons nightmare.
McEwan uses a range of sensory detail to capture the terror of the Stuka attack with a particular focus on aural (sound) imagery.
‘the end of a Stuka attack was the paralysis of shock.’
‘Each dive brought every man, cornered and cowering, to face his execution. When it did not come, the trial had to be lived through all over again and the fear did not diminish.’ (239)
Metaphor for what Robbie has to go through because of Briony.
Links to punishment
Everyday vs war images
‘over the next hedge a woman in the back seat of a passing motor car was absorbed in her knitting, and in the bare garden of a new house a man was teaching his son to kick a ball.’ (235)
‘he saw a man and his collie dog walking behind a horse-drawn plough… Now he was standing under a tree with his dog, as though sheltering from a shower of rain.’ (235)
‘These lives were lived in parallel’ (234)
The juxtaposition helps to make the almost instant destruction even more shocking.
War crimes committed by Robbie
Desertion: Mace said “If you want to go home to the crumpet, get between us and limp.’
Nettle said. “Would you like me to pop my bayonet through your foot.” (244)
Leaves his weapon
The fight in the cafe
‘But he was in the RAF and the tommies held him accountable.’ (251)
‘Everyone had suffered, and now someone was going to pay.’ - an attempt to enforce justice. (251)
‘any remaining sense of individual responsibility fell away.’ (251) - war = diffusion of responsibility
‘They hated him and he deserved everything that was coming his way. He was answerable for the Luftwaffe’s freedom of the skies, for
every Stuka attack, every dead friend.’ (251)
‘The real danger came from the mob itself, its righteous state of mind. It would not be denied its pleasures.’(252) - ‘righteous’ is ironic - justice has become obscured.
Turner’s reaction:
‘Turner assumed there was nothing he could do to help the man without risking a lynching himself.’ (251) McEwan provides us with an insight into the mentality of a mob with its growing lists of grievances which become ever more personal. There is a genuine danger of a “lynching”.
‘Turner understood the exhilaration among the tormentors and the insidious way it could claim him.’ (251) - Robbie understands the actions of the mob - it is a result of collective grief, anger, and frustration, all ready to erupt in an act of violence by men who have suffered like Robbie. They want justice and this is the only form they can get. However Robbie resists the temptation to join in recognising its ‘insidious’ pull.
‘If he had said something, anything at all, the troops surrounding him might have remembered that he was a man, not a rabbit to be skinned.’ (252) - dehumanisation of soldiers.
AO3: many soldiers in british army held the raf responsivle for heavy losses to german air raids
‘But what was guilt these days? It was cheap. Everyone was guilty, and no one was.’ (261)
‘Let the guilty burry the innocent, and let no one change the evidence.’ (262)
Rhetorical questions shows a change of perspective - War crime is overshadowing real crime.
Man falls down stairs
258
In a bombed hotel, men are dragging out mattresses, but a fight breaks out and several fall downstairs. One man is left ‘screaming hoarsely, almost inaudibly, as though in a panicky dream.’ with a broken back, while ‘men were stepping over him’
Within war, crime has changed. This image shows the fragility of life.
