WAR - Regeneration, My Boy Jack & Poetry PDF

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Summary for A-level War literature- Regeneration, My Boy Jack & Poetry...

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WAR Summary Regeneration ●

“They hurried past Rivers, bursting into nervous giggles” P. 16 (VADs) ○ “She held out her hand to him in a direct, almost boyish way” (Sarah introducing herself to Prior) ○ “[Women] seemed to have changed so much during the war, to have expanded in all kinds of ways, whereas men over the same period had shrunk into a smaller and smaller space” P.90 ○ “All the women were yellow skinned” ○ “We didn’t look human …. They looked like machines, whose sole function was to make other machines” P.201 ○ “Feverishly working fingers flicking machine-gun bullets into place insider glittering belts”

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“Men said they didn’t tell their women about France because they didn’t want to worry them. But it was more than that. He needed her ignorance to hide in” Prior and Sarah ○ Chapter 19 pg 216 prior- ‘ if she’d known the worst parts she couldn’t have gone on being a haven for him

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“The point is you’ve gotta put a value on yourself. You don’t, they won’t. You’re never gonna get engaged till you learn to keep your knees together” - Ada to Sarah P.194 ○ “Well, she must’ve got desperate, because she stuck summat up herself to bring it on. You know them wire coat hanger?” Lizzie discussing Betty’s ordeal ○ “Oh, and she says that the doctor didn’t half railroad her. She was crying her eyes out, poor lass. He says, You should be ashamed of yourself, he says. It’s not just an inconvenience you’ve got there, he says. It’s a human being” (Lizzie discussing Betty’s ordeal at the hospital)

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“The point is, you hate civilians, don’t you?” P.14 Rivers and Sassoon ○ “Is ‘hate’ a too strong a word? No.” P.16 Rivers and Sassoon ○ “That, and an absolutely corrosive hatred of civilians” P.16 Rivers and Sassoon ○ “The only thing that really makes me angry is when people at home say there are no class distinctions at the front. Ball-ocks.” P. 67 ○ “He wasn’t old enough to enlist. And nobody gives a damn.” P. 69 Sassoon and Rivers talking ○ P.g. 5 “An elderly vicar, two middle-aged men” described as “looking as if they’d done rather well out of the war”

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“Somebody, on the floor below, screamed. Rivers… wish[ed], not for the first time, that he was young enough for France.” P.108

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‘All the other ladies began to look at each other...I was naked’ // “Confined by ‘a pair of lady’s corsets’ Pg 28. Anderson’s Dream ○ “It is possible someone might find being locked up in a loony bin a fairly emasculating experience?” Pg 29. Anderson ○ ‘Only his hole was between his legs’ Pg 33. - When recovering from his gunshot wound, Sassoon recalls another soldier ○ Pg 40. Burns gets back from his excursion and Sister Duffy ‘bore down upon him, scolding and twittering’ ○ ‘Men who broke down or cried , or admitted to feeling fear, were sissies, weaklings, failures. Not men.’ ○ ‘Fear, tenderness - these emotions were so despised that they could be admitted into consciousness only at the cost of redefining what it meant to be a man ‘ ○ ‘He’d get a damn sight more sympathy from me if he had a bullet up his arse.’ P. 57, Mr Prior

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Pg 42. ‘Again the pad came out. ‘THERE’S NOTHING PHYSICALY WRONG’’

“Distinguishing characteristics of nightmares is that they are always remembered” Pg.67 ○ [Sassoon] “Felt safe with Rivers” Pg.86 ○ Pg. 5 “the whistle blew” for the train - triggered Sassoon to vision “lines of men” that “face the guns” “He blinked them away.” ○ “the pavement was covered in corpses.” “old ones, new ones, black, green.” P.12 Sassoon talking to Graves ○ “Their twisted and blackened shapes began to seem like old friends” P. 16 (Sassoon memory about corpses on the battlefield) ○ “What filled his nose and mouth was decomposing flesh” P. 19 (Burns experience, recounted by Rivers) ○ “Like a fish in a pond that’s drying out”. P. 79 (Prior account to Rivers) ○ “The usual jumble: paper, bottles, mugs the black boxed field telephone, a couple of revolvers”. P. 101 (Prior recollection of past) ○ “Of the kettle, the frying pan, the carefully tended fire, there was no sign, and not much of Sawdon and Towers either”. P. 102 (Prior memory) ○ “What am I supposed to do with this gobstopper?” P. 102 (Prior memory) ○ “Clumps of brilliant yellow cabbage weed, whose smell mimics gas so accurately that men tremble, hung over the final trench” P. 104 (Prior memory) ○ “I started to run and I was running through bushes… my father-in-law came towards me, waving a big stick. It had a snake wound round it.’ ○ Pg. 37 Burns on the bus ‘sound like machine-gun fire, and he had to bite his lips to stop himself

crying out’ ●

When in the forest, Burns arranges dead animals “in a circle”. ○ Broadbents complete disregard for reality due to schizophrenia, his “damp handshake” implies he is withdrawn into himself and not able to exert himself in a normal way. P.60 ○ Anderson was found by Rivers in his room, “huddled in a foetal position, in the corner by the window, teeth chattering, a dark stain spreading across the front of his pajamas” P. 136 ○ Rivers describes Burns as a “fossilized schoolboy” P.169 ○ ‘suddenly his body had the rag-doll floppiness of the newborn.” P.180 Burns ○ “in case the hundred-foot drop...should prove too tempting an exit from the war” pg19 ○ “you will never make me feel” pg 79 ○ “snapping branches off of trees with a crack like rifle fire” pg 142 ○ pg 177 - Rivers was “woken by what he immediately took to be the explosion of a bomb”

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"A horse’s bit. Not an electrode, not a teaspoon. A bit. And instrument of control. Obviously he and Yealland were both in the business of controlling people."- Pg 238 Rivers ○ P.g. 4 - initial introduction of Rivers is him walking “across to the window” observing the “many” “patients” in the “hospital grounds”. ○ Pg 8 - Sassoon “looked out of the window at the crowded pavements” while on the train, feeling scared about going to Craiglockhart

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“Corpses. Men with half their faces shot off, crawling across the floor”. P. 12 (Sassoon memory) ○ “A thin, yellow-skinned man was on his feet, choking and gagging”. P. 17 (Sassoon seeing Burns) ○ “Burns on his knees… retching up the last ounce of bile… he hardly looked like a human being at all” P. 19 (Rivers watching Burns) ○ “Bloody fingers clutched a hideous wound” // “Clammy creatures groping underground” P. 24 (Sassoon’s poem) ○ “Young faces bleared with blood // Sucked down into the mud” // With limbs that twist awry”. P. 25 (Sassoon poem) ○ Pg 99. Rivers noticing Priors “circles round the eyes. He had shadows under the shadows ○ “At one point he’d had to pass two hands sticking up out of a heap… like the roots of an overturned tree”. P. 16 (Sassoon account) ○ “Sucked into the mud” P. 25 (Sassoon’s poem) and “Sucking earth” P. 38 (Burns in field)

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“Rain had blurred the landscape, dissolving sky and hills together in a wash of grey” P. 37 (Burns looking out of the window) “From sunlight to the sunless land” P. 44 (Burns account in field) “It was wailing round the building, moaning down chimneys, snapping branches off trees with a crack like rifle fire”. P. 142 (Wind around Owen’s room at Craiglockheart, recounted by Rivers) “Coils of wire twitched as if they were alive”P. 168 (Rivers looking out of the window from Burns’ house)“

“Veil of rain”

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Pg 18. Rivers “felt the bed begin to shake and put his arm around burns’ shoulder” ○ Pg 7. ‘You know, Robert, I wouldn’t believe this from anybody else.’ ○ Pg 19. Sassoon, too impatient to wait indoors, running down the steps to meet him ○ Pg 21. Graves to Rivers: ‘And he loves them. Being separated from them would kill him.’ ○ “I’m telling you this is … I’d hate you to have any misconceptions. About me. I’d hate you to this I was homosexual even in thought. Even if it went no further” pg 199 ○ “love between men” ○ “right kind of love” ○ chapter 18 pg 210 prior to rivers- ‘never wanted you to be daddy.’

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Pg 67 - “what you wear, what you eat. Where you sleep. What you carry. The men are pack animals”. ○ ‘for the...the labouring classes illness has to be physical’

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Pg. 15 “you seem to have a very powerful anti-war neurosis” - Rivers to sasson. ○ Pg. 21 “People can accept a breakdown. There’s no way back from being a conchie.” - graves speaking to Rivers ○ chp. 15 "Nothing justifies this. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing." (Rivers when he finds Burns in outside freezing in the middle of the night) ○ pg. 81 “better mad than a pacifist” (Sassoon to Owen)

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Rivers’ view in the early stages of the novel- “It’s his duty to go back, and it’s my duty to see he does.” ○ Pg.23 When you put the uniform on, in effect you sign a contract. And you don't back out of a contract merely because you've changed your mind. (Graves to Rivers)

My Boy Jack ●

“Jack’s sacrifice is doubly glorious” // “Every sacrifice we make has true value” ○ “So spiritually, in come context, on some wavelength, Jack is still alive” ○ “Because really, what possible grounds are there or assuming our lives after death are protected?” ○ “I would willingly lie down and sleep for an eternity if I thought it would help bring him back” ○ “But I miss him” // “So do I (he drops his head and cries)” ○ “It doesn’t actually matter if Jack’s last moments were ugly or dignified because now he is free” ○ “Do you want me to go down on my knees and own up? Confess my... complicity. Admit that it’s all down to me. That I… murdered my son” ○ “Tides” (cyclical structure) // “[Rudyard switches off the wireless” // “For nothing, For nothing, For nothing” ○ “[As if children were in the room]” ■ Cyclical to the start of the play, where he is persuading jack to go to war ■ Suggests rudyard’s guilt to the ignorance and blindness to the war, acting as an apology for the indirect cause of his son’s death - Rudyard goes from propaganda to pacifist

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“Keep going” // “Carry on” // “Duty” // “Responsibility” // “Absolute duty to protect” // “That’s why our empire is uniquely successful” // “The world is a better place, a more comfortable place, than it was a hundred years ago” ○ The presentation of Rudyard as a mouthpiece and the epitome of recruiters in the time through his extended and dominating tone/dialogue ○ “It won’t stay on daddo” // “Pince-nez’ // “Topples off”

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“We must demand that every fit young man must enlist”

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“And to preserve that, you would put your son’s life at risk?” ○ “Condemn your son to oblivion, to insensate nothingness” ○ “You think for one second that Jack gives a damn about the British empire - do you?”

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“I’m terrified that Jack will be killed. I dream of his death night after night” - carrie “I don’t give a damn whether it’s sensible or not, or dangerous or not, I don’t give a damn as long as get away, and out of this house”-Jack

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“Made of black iron, looking down on us, like it was alive” ○ “The noise of the bombardment is unbelievable loud. It is still raining” ○ “I start to shake… I can’t breathe… I can’t help it… I can’t… but I can’t … I don’t know how … I can’t remember” P.66

Owen Poetry A New Heaven ● “Let’s die home, ferry across the Channel! Thus, shall we live like gods there” Apologia Pro Poemate Meo ● “War brought more glory to their eyes than blood” ○ Metaphor of blinded by glory, consequence of propaganda? like Rudyard? ● “Gave their laughs more glee than shakes a child” ○ Like Sassoon’s suicide in the trenches - “the hell where youth and laughter go” Smile, Smile, Smile ● “Undying dead” ● “Like secret men who know their secret safe” ● “The casualties (typed small)” ● “Nation?” Soldier’s Dream ● Juxtaposes new and old testament - jesus v God, shows generation gap of father and son ● Parallel syndetic structure, listing machinery in a syndetic list ○ “Big gear guns” to a “Pikel” - back in time ○ Absolute pacifism - war repeats itself (wwII) Disabled ● “Jewelled Hilts” // “Smart Salutes” // “Drums and Cheers” ● Soldiers “Asked to Join” to “Please giddy jilts” ● “He’s lost his colour very far from here, poured it down shell holes till the veins ran dry” ● “He thought he’d better join” ● “And half his lifetime lapsed in the hot race” ● “He didn’t have to beg” ● “Smiling he wrote the lie: aged nineteen years” ● “Ghastly suit of grey // legless” ● “Women’s eyes passed from him to the strong me that were whole” Self-inflicted Wounds ● “Tim died smiling” - written “truthfully” ● “Father would rather see him dead than in disgrace” ● “Death sooner than dishonour, that’s the style!” ● “(Later they found the English ball)” - the bullet after suicide The Next War ● “Never an enemy of ours!” ● “Old Chum” ● “Laughed” // “Whistled” // “Chorused” Anthem for Doomed Youth

● “Those who die as cattle” Parable of the old man and the young ● “But the old man would not so, but slew his son, and half the seed of Europe, one by one” Dulce et Decorum Est (it is sweet and glorious to die of one’s country) ● “The blood came gargling from the froth corrupted lungs” // “Obscene as cancer” // “Bitter as the cud of vile” // “Incurable sores on innocent tongues” ● “Guttering, choking, drowning” ● “Bent double, like beggars under sack, knock kneed and coughing like hags” ● “As under a green sea, I saw him drowning …. Gargling from the froth of corrupted lungs” ● “The old lie: Dulce et Decorum est, pro Patria mori” ● “Like a devil’s sick of sin’ The Last Laugh ● “Bayonets’ long teeth grinned” ● “Rabbles of shells hooted and groaned” ● “And the gas hissed” Sonnet ● “Daily I must on her” ● “Will death be merciful, and keep her whole?” ● “Her beauty lives not? How, then, can her soul?” Exposure ● “Slowly, our ghosts drag home” ● “Bullets streak the silence. Less deadly than the air that shudders black” ● “Rain soaks, Clouds sag stormy” ● “We lie out here” ● “And nothing happens” ● “Crusted dark-red jewels” ● “Mad gusts tugging on the wire like twitching agonies of men” ● “Twitching agonies of men among its brambles” ● “We turn back to our dying” ● “For love of god seems dying” ● “On us, the doors are closed” Mental Cases ● ‘These are the men whose minds the Dead have ravished’ ● ‘Therefore still their eyeballs shrink tormented, back into their brains, because on their sense sunlight seems a blood smear’ ● ‘Awful falseness of set-smiling corpses’ ● ‘Treading blood from lungs that had loved laughter’ Arms and the Boy ● “How cold steel is, and keen with hunger for blood” Spring Offensive ● “Breasted the surf of bullets” ● “Fearfully flashed the sky” ● “The whole sky burned with fury against them” ● “Some say god caught them even before they fell” The Sentry ● “We’d found an old Boche dug out, and he knew, and gave us hell” ● “The Sentry’s body” (don’t refer to him as a person, dehumanising nature of war) ● “Under the shrieking air” ● “I see your lights! - but ours had long gone out”

A03

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70,000 killed - 11.5% of all soldiers who fought ○ Almost 2.3 million injured ■ Weapons of mass destruction that men couldn’t win a fight against ■ Tanks and machine guns ■ In Passchendaele, 40,000 dead passively in the mud, and they gained just 5 miles ○ Those who didn’t fight or refused were shot for cowardice - 346 shot ○ Conscientious objectors ■ About 2% of men who appealed against conscription ■ Did non-combat work, such as stretcher bearers ■ Thousands sent to prison - often treated harshly ● Bertrand Russell (philosopher) was one of the 6,000 arrested ● Changed after the war - in WWII there were 59,000 conshies ● 1933 Oxford Student Union Debate - concluded that there was “No circumstance that they would fight for ‘King and Country’ ○ Trenchfoot and disease killed many - passive fighting ○ 526,816 with no known graves ■ 176,000 memorials erected in France alone ○ 19,240 dead or injured in the battle of the Somme ○ First use of gas was the Germans on the French in 1915, chlorine gas

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Pals Battalions forged men's relationships - they went and signed up to the war together ○ Often entire town's worth of men died in battle as they were in the same battalion ○ Having no women led me to become closer to each other - fatherly figures etc ○ Often went to war to prove their masculinity - otherwise cowards ■ White Feather Campaign, propaganda etc ■ Attitudes to those who returned injured or disabled was not glorious ■ MENTAL HEALTH stigmatised ● 80,000 recorded cases of shell shock in the British Army ● Over⅘ of men suffering from shell shock and hospitalised never returned to the front line

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Joint trench experiences = unity between the classes ○ Lions led by Donkeys ○ Many angry at the government and home front for ignorance

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Imperialistic and nationalistic ideas, helping make a better future for England and future generations ○ Believed it was their duty to protect their country ○ Jingoism

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Allowed to join between 18-41 years old ○ Youngest was 12 ○ Over 6000 signed upon the first weekend ○ By the end of 1914, over 1 million volunteers ○ National Registration Act 1915-16 introduced conscription ■ 2.2 million men conscripted ■ Among 250,000 were under 19

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Munitionettes ○ 9% of women working in factories came from middle to upper classes ○ Women’s role was a homemaker and a child bearer, not a worker

A04

E. Alan Mackintosh - Recruitment ● “Lads you’re wanted, come and die” ● “Gallant sacrifice” ● “Girls with feathers” ● “Go and help to swell the names in the casualty lists” ● “Lads, and can’t you hear it come from a million men that call you to share their martyrdom? ● “More poor devils just like yourself, waiting to be killed by you” ● “Can’t you see them thanking god that they’re over 41?” ● “The wicked german foe” ● “To live and die with honest men” ● “On the railway carriage wall, stick the poster, and I thought of the hands that penned the call” Rupert Brooke - The Dead ● “Dying has made us rarer gifts than gold” ● “Red sweet wine of youth” Rupert Brooke ● “Hell to be in it, hell to be out of it” ● “Like several different kinds of hell” Rupert Brooke - The Soldier ● “There’s some corner of a foreign field that is forever England” ● “In heart’s at peace, under an English heaven” ● “A pulse in the eternal mind, no less” Sassoon - Suicide in the trenches ● “Smug faced crowds” ● “He put a bullet through his brain, no one spoke of him again” ● “Sneak home and hope you’ll never know, the hell where youth and laughter go” Sassoon - A Soldier’s Declaration ● “A war of defence and liberation, has now become a war of aggression and conquest” ● “I believe that the war is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it” ● “I am making this statement as an act of wilful defiance of military authority” ● “I may help to destroy the callous complacence with which the majority of those at home regard the continuance of agonies which they do not share, and which they have not sufficient imagination to realise. Sassoon - A Night Attack ● ‘The rank stench of those bodies still haunt me/ and i remember things i’d best forget” Phillip Larkin - MCMXIV ● “Never such innocence again” ● “The crowds of hats” ● “Called after kings and queens” ● “Shadowing Domesday lines” ● “The thousands of marriages, lasting a little while longer” ● “Those long uneven lines, standing as patiently as if they were stretched outside the Oval or Villa Park” ● “Grinning as if it were all an august bank holiday lard” ● “The place names all hazed over” ● “Never such innocence again” Robert Bridges - Wake Up England ● “Stand up, England” ● “Thy courage as Iron” ● “But that they love life best, die gladly for thee” ● “ENGLAND STANDS FOR HONOUR” ● “Thy love of their mothers” // “The fame of their fathers is might to their hands” Rudyard Kipling - If ● “And you’ll be a man, my son” Rudyard Kipling - Vectis, A Ballad For Patriotic Poets ● “The ships of England riding out the storm” Rudyard Kipling - Epitaphs

● “If any ask us why...