Extended Essays 2021

share with Bäumer. When he returns from the war in 1918, Wraysford is unable to speak for two years, and spends the rest of his life suppressing his war experiences. According to his wife, “from that day on it was as though [the war] hadn’t happened.” (Faulks, 1994, p. 494). However, he does commit his private thoughts and feelings to a journal, which he writes in a secret language. When this is discovered and deciphered, the reader is finally given a glimpse of how profoundly Wraysford has been affected by the war, “Many times I have lain down and I have longed for death. I feel unworthy. I feel guilty because I have survived. Death will not come and I am cast adrift in a perpetual present… No child or future generation will ever know what this [war] was like. They will never understand. ” (Faulks, 1994, pp. 421-422). Evidently, although Faulks explores the transformation of identity through Wrayford’s experiences, his methods are less effective than Remarque’s in conveying this theme to the reader. Although Birdsong and All Quiet on the Western Front are works of fiction, the characters of both novels share similar experiences and similar transformations of relationships, faith and identity. These would have been extremely relatable to the millions of soldiers who fought in the trenches but are unfamiliar to contemporary readers who have profoundly different life experiences. Remarque was one of the few WWI survivors able to articulate the impacts of the trench experience on the soldier. His choice of present-tense, first-person narration and his effective use of irony invites the reader to enter the protagonist’s world and share his thoughts, feelings and recollections. In contrast, although Faulks uses imagery very effectively in Birdsong to portray the battle scenes and the scale of the slaughter, his characters are not so well drawn. The choice of a third-person narrator who gives an impersonal account of events positions the reader to feel detached from the various characters’ experiences. This is perhaps not surprising, given the fact that Faulks was not personally involved in the fighting but must rely on accounts of veterans over seventy-five years after WWI. As Faulks explains, “It was difficult for men who survived this holocaust to find words to describe what no living creature had seen before. Families and friends at home were sometimes reluctant to ask too much; sometimes they were disbelieving or uninterested.” (Faulks, 2014) . Ultimately, Remarque’s raw and impassioned style, his choice of first-person narrative and his ability to relate universal human truths combine to create a more effective exploration of how the experience of trench warfare transformed the solders’ lives, notably their relationships, their faith and their identity. Bibliography Crocq, M.-A. & Crocq, L., 2000. From shell shock and war neurosis to posttraumatic stress disorder: a history of psychotraumatology. [Online] Available at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3181586/ [Accessed 18 July 2021]. Faulks, S., 1994. Birdsong. London: Vintage Books.