How does Faulks evoke the conditions in the trenches and the relationships of the men?
Faulks evokes the conditions in the trenches through his use of imagery and language techniques. We are first introduced to the trenches and the tunnels beneath at the start of part 2, on page 121. We are introduced to a new character, Jack Firebrace, whose very name already brings the connotation of fire that will be explored later. Faulks describes the trenches and the tunnels that Jack works in as cramped and claustrophobic, beginning the passage with “Jack Firebrace lay forty-five feet underground, with several hundred thousand tons of France above his face.” This is an interesting sentence as it describes Jack as being underground, with “Several hundred …show more content…
Firstly, the fact that they are working underground, with the world above, suggests that they perhaps in a form of hell, emphasised by language such as “the wooden wheezing” and the description of the air passing through the pipe as being “Exhausted” before it even reaches him. This cramped and hot tunnel is filled with isolated sound, the large mass of France above serving to cancel out any outside sounds as the tunnels are filled with a constant hammering of men behind setting up timbers, the sounds of men working, and the distant but constant thunder of shellfire above. This in conjunction with the heat and the pure physical exertion expected of the men conjures up images of a sort of hell on earth in which these men …show more content…
How the men in the trenches and tunnels build their relationships is that of survival instinct, rather than of compassion. The first part of the book deals heavily in the compassion side of this balance scale between comradeship and compassion, exploring the love between Isabelle and Stephen. The men in part 2 of the book however have a different kind of relationship, one built of a need for comradeship and a will to survive to see another day. In an environment where these men expect death at every corner, working together to survive is a natural survival instinct. However, these men try to distance themselves in compassion with each other, as a sort of mental block to keep their sanity. As we see in the tunnel passage, four men that Firebrace knows are violently and explicitly killed in front of his own eyes, and he barely bats an eye, hardly even feeling guilty that it partially was a mistake on his part that may have got them
Faulks evokes the conditions in the trenches through his use of imagery and language techniques. We are first introduced to the trenches and the tunnels beneath at the start of part 2, on page 121. We are introduced to a new character, Jack Firebrace, whose very name already brings the connotation of fire that will be explored later. Faulks describes the trenches and the tunnels that Jack works in as cramped and claustrophobic, beginning the passage with “Jack Firebrace lay forty-five feet underground, with several hundred thousand tons of France above his face.” This is an interesting sentence as it describes Jack as being underground, with “Several hundred …show more content…
Firstly, the fact that they are working underground, with the world above, suggests that they perhaps in a form of hell, emphasised by language such as “the wooden wheezing” and the description of the air passing through the pipe as being “Exhausted” before it even reaches him. This cramped and hot tunnel is filled with isolated sound, the large mass of France above serving to cancel out any outside sounds as the tunnels are filled with a constant hammering of men behind setting up timbers, the sounds of men working, and the distant but constant thunder of shellfire above. This in conjunction with the heat and the pure physical exertion expected of the men conjures up images of a sort of hell on earth in which these men …show more content…
How the men in the trenches and tunnels build their relationships is that of survival instinct, rather than of compassion. The first part of the book deals heavily in the compassion side of this balance scale between comradeship and compassion, exploring the love between Isabelle and Stephen. The men in part 2 of the book however have a different kind of relationship, one built of a need for comradeship and a will to survive to see another day. In an environment where these men expect death at every corner, working together to survive is a natural survival instinct. However, these men try to distance themselves in compassion with each other, as a sort of mental block to keep their sanity. As we see in the tunnel passage, four men that Firebrace knows are violently and explicitly killed in front of his own eyes, and he barely bats an eye, hardly even feeling guilty that it partially was a mistake on his part that may have got them