Extended Essays 2021

knows and describes. However, Bäumer positions the reader to understand that the other soldiers share his disillusionment as he often reports their opinions from his recollections of their conversations. For example, after an unnecessary visit from the Kaiser, Bäumer and his friends question whether the war was necessary and whether there would have been a conflict if their leaders had refused to participate. The group all agree that they have no personal antagonism towards or interest in fighting the opposition. They conclude that the Kaiser and other political, military and business leaders have selfish interests in fighting wars. Bäumer reports the following conversation, in which Katczinsky and Detering sarcastically demonstrate that they have lost all respect for those in authority, “‘up to now [the Kaiser] hadn’t had a war. And all top-grade emperors need at least one war, otherwise they don’t get famous. Have a look in your history books.’ ‘Generals get famous because of wars, too,’ says Detering. ‘More famous than emperors,’ agrees Kat. ‘And I bet there are other people behind it all who are making a profit out of the war,’ grumbles Detering.” (Remarque, 1995, p. 141). British war poet Wilfred Owen expresses similar themes of betrayal in the ironically titled poem Dulce et Decorum Est (Owen, 1921). The meaning of the poem, which graphically describes the death of a soldier after a gas attack, is that anyone who has witnessed the horrors of trench warfare would never repeat, “ The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est Pro patria mori” . This can be translated as “ it is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country ”. Remarque’s use of present tense first-person narration and reported speech to explore the irony of their situation is effective in demonstrating the soldiers’ loss of faith in the authority figures they trusted and respected before the war. In Birdsong , the soldiers also lose faith in the military leaders who continue to send troops to futile deaths. On the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the tunnellers watch the battle unfold. They expect a swift and decisive attack, as promised by the military generals, but the shelling has made little impact on the enemy wire, and now they stand watching the men being slaughtered. Faulks explores how the tunnellers lose faith in the leaders through the narrator’s description of Firebrace observing, “‘They can’t let this go on… they can’t.’… Jack turned his face away from what he saw, and he felt something dying in him.” (Faulks, 1994, p. 229). This is only briefly explored and a much more prominent transformation in Birdsong is the soldiers’ loss of faith in religion resulting from the incomprehensible killing and horrific destruction. On the eve of the Somme offensive, the army priest comforts the soldiers by praying with them. The narrator describes him, “standing with bands and prayer book on raised ground like a useless earthbound bird… Some jittering movement among the men, non- believers finding faith in fear. A shameful flock formed round the padre.” (Faulks, 1994, pp. 218-219). Faulks’s use of simile to describe the priest as ‘a useless earthbound bird’ alludes to the pointlessness of these prayers, as the reader knows that they will make no difference to the number of soldiers killed in the coming battle. The juxtaposition of the words ‘shameful’ and ‘flock’ draws attention to the hypocrisy of religion that regards a group of men prepared to sacrifice their lives for their country as disgraceful for not believing in a God who cannot protect them. It is ironic that the soldiers put their faith in the military and religious leaders