Extended Essays 2021

knowledgeable about the war than his son. Ironically, while he has been living in the comfort of his home engaging in pointless activities like feeding his toads, his son and the other soldiers at the Front have been risking their lives underground or fighting on the battlefield. Similarly to so many other people who have not experienced trench warfare, Weir's father is oblivious to the horrific realities. He demonstrates a complete lack of understanding or sympathy resulting in a breach in their relationship. Although Weir’s feelings of detachment are very similar to Bäumer’s experiences, it is difficult for the reader to grasp the intensity of his emotions because of the author’s choice of narrative perspective and reliance on reported speech. Faulks also alludes to, but does not explore, a transformation of the relationship between the tunneller Jack Firebrace and his wife. In the final attack of the war, Firebrace is critically injured in an underground explosion and while he is dying, he confides that, “‘When I die… I’ll be with men who understand… My father died when I was a baby. My mother brought me up. Surrounded by women I was. They’re all gone now. Only Margaret, and I couldn’t talk to her any more. Too much has happened.’” (Faulks, 1994, p. 471). This is one of the few times in Birdsong that any of the characters discuss feelings of alienation from home and family. A limitation of the novel is that the narrator does not explore the transformation of relationships in detail, so the reader cannot comprehend the soldiers’ experience in any depth. Faulks is therefore less effective than Remarque in conveying the transformation of the soldiers’ relationships with family and society. The soldiers in All Quiet on the Western Front lose trust in the older generation including parents, teachers and military and political leaders when they realise that they have been coerced into fighting a pointless war. Remarque explores this transformation of faith through the voice of Bäumer, who places responsibility for all the death, misery and suffering on the people the soldiers once admired and respected. He believes they should have known better than to send innocent young men to fight in a senseless and brutal conflict. As Bäumer passionately explains, “They were supposed to be the ones who would help us eighteen-year- olds to make the transition, who would guide us into adult life… Quite often we ridiculed them and played tricks on them, but basically we believed in them… But the first dead man that we saw shattered that conviction.” (Remarque, 1995, p. 9). Remarque alludes to the fact that the young soldiers used to believe in their parents and teachers as role models. Ironically, they are the same people who have sent so many “ young men to iron” (as one of their teachers unironically describes them) to a miserable death (Remarque, 1995, p. 11). Again, the authorial choice of present tense, first-person narration is an extremely effective technique in conveying this transformation in the soldiers’ beliefs. When Bäumer refers to ‘we’ it is not clear exactly who he is talking about. It could be his immediate friendship group, the young soldiers in his company, the German army or even all the young men on both sides of the conflict who are suffering and dying. Nevertheless, the reader understands that all soldiers were betrayed by the older generation, and that they have consequently lost faith in them. A limitation of first-person narration can be that the reader only knows what the narrator