Recognition

Just a quick note to say thank you to Mark Grimsley for the recognition of ours and other blogs from English 340 at SFU. He cross-posted from Blog Them Out of the Stone Age to History News Network.
Cheers!

The General + Google = Bad Idea

So it has been mentioned a number of times in class the dangers of using Google (or Wikipedia, Yahoo, etc...). Since we began this project, we've been looking for anything that has to do with Forester that is not H.Hornblower-related. Just for fun, let's check out some of the garbage I found. It all seems to take a rather simplistic view of the novel, especially in light of our project here and our class discussions.

• on the Harry Potter fan site, MuggleNet, a review of The General
• PlanetPapers, an essay-writing service (that "does not condone plagiarism"), offers a paper on The General
• of course, Wikipedia's entry on The General
  

Enjoy!

The War Mania - Canadian Style!

In another class, I am reading the literature of Stephen Leacock, a Canadian humourist writing in the early 20th century. In his Moonbeams From the Larger Lunacy he has a short story titled "The War Mania of Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks," which I found online here.

It is interesting to contrast this story with The General; they have very different perspectives on the War. In "War Mania," Mr. Jinks and Mr. Blinks act out battles as they ought to be fought, using bits of bread, olives, and table utensils while sitting comfortably in a men's club. However, in this story Leacock shares the same succint writing style as Forester and their involved play almost captures some of the same horror of the war that Forester addresses.

Medical Photo

I've added another picture from the New York Times "Mid-Week Pictorial Series" (this one from November 1, 1917). In response to the class presentation we had on the 14th about medical developments of the war, I've posted this picture. I think it's the only one I have that is medically-related. Notice the unsanitary conditions these men are working in? I don't know if it scanned well enough, but if you look closely, I think you can see that this man has had a bullet/shrapnel/something go right through his shoulder. My guess is that there were few of these types of pictures published in the Pictorial Series because the family at home would not want to think about men being injured, especially in reading a popular magazine. It is alright to look at the destruction to the landscape, the weapons used to create that destruction, the day-to-day life of the soldiers, and so on, but we don't want to see the concrete, often deadly, results of the war.

Remembrance Day 2005

Since we have been exploring the historical aspects of The General I thought I would share my Remembrance Day 2005 experience with you (it ties in, I promise!).

Every year, the concert band that I belong to provides music for the Remembrance Day ceremony in Maple Ridge. We play hymn tunes, marches, anthems, etc. This year, probably due to my reading of The General and Parade's End, I was overly conscious of the sound of the ceremony. Every year there are the gun salutes, the yelled military orders, the flyover, and, in the last two years, a cannon. You can imagine the noise. The difference this year was that the 4 rifles and 4 muskets were shot from within the bandstand where we were performing. And the cannon was set up in a tent directly behind the bandstand. I found myself very conscious of the closeness of the noise; we were all literally crammed in together much, as I imagined, like we were in a trench (hiding from the pouring rain and wind, as it were). Anyway, the smoke was thick and smelled disgusting, and the noise had my ears ringing for a couple hours afterwards. From all of this, I got an (admittedly trivial) idea of the reality that Madox Ford and Forester were trying to portray in their constant use of auditory sensation in their novels (ex. Forester's "crackling" is an honest word to use to describe the guns).

Stoicism can be Dangerous!

I've found this article on the BBC website that says "traditional British stoicism is a public health problem in terms of Alzheimer's disease." I think it adds another dimension to the Curzon we see at the beginning of The General, "when the memory of the war is fading" (4).

Curzon's Stoicism on the Battlefield

I can see your point on Curzon's stoicism in his relationship to Emily, Candice. I'd like to add on to it in a discussion of his stoicism on the battlefield because I think that we can see a certain amount of disconnect there as well.

As Curzon heads out to battle, he is having memories, both his own and of England's national identity, surface: “that very summer in England” (41), the memory of which “brought back that nightmare feeling of unreality again” (41); "the Houses of Parliament” (42); “Malplaquet or Waterloo” (43). All three of these memories take Curzon out of the battle situation and back home to England. All three memories remind Curzon of the familiar way of life. The unfamiliar territory Curzon now finds himself in disconnects him from his reality and he is unable to fight. In battle, “he stared mesmerized until he suddenly awoke to the realization that bullets were crackling all around him” (43). It is as if his stoic nature is at battle not only with the war experience but also in how Curzon resonds to this experience; it manifests itself with re-memory, suggesting both a disconnect with his current location and a disconnect with (supressed) emotion.

As a quick digression, it should be noted that I am assuming a connection between memory and emotion becuase I think that the act of memory triggers a memory of the emotion involved with that memory. Despite all outward attemps at stoicism, it has to be entirely impossible for someone to go through life with absolutely no inward reflections of emotion. To pick up from before, then: for Curzon, the memories of England seem to operate as longing for home, and in longing for the familiar ways of home Curzon reveals an emotional disconnect with his current situation on the front.

But while other soldiers are unable to remain stoic in battle, Curzon does (despite his momentary "mesmorization"). He expresses no outward emotion in his disconnect, and he does not dive for cover. He certainly wants to maintain his sense of patriotic duty “at all costs” (42). In the end, Curzon supresses his emotions/memories and maintains what he knows: his patriotic duty and his stoic nature. We do see, though, how his stoic nature conflicts with the war experience and disconnects him from it. Indeed for Curzon, the war and the unfamiliar welling up of memory is "a nightmare feeling of unreality."

WWI Music Website

Here's another website that may be of interest: it lists song lyrics from the first world war, and has a list specifically of songs sung in trenches. Sarah Matheson's class presentation from a couple weeks ago concluded that music acted as an outlet for feelings and emotions about the war, and it's interesting to see in these lyrics the frustration and fear in particular that was present.

The question is: would Curzon be singing any of these songs? If they do act as an outlet for emotion, I don't think we would hear the stoic Curzon in a rousing rendition of "Forward Joe Soaps Army."

Trench photos

Here are a couple more pictures from the Mid-Week Pictorial. The first is captioned "British troops constructing trenches in a flooded area near Blangy in France" and is from Vol. VII no.2 (March 14,1918). The second photo is "A British wiring party under the leadership of an officer setting out on the perilous duty of repairing wire defenses" and is from Vol. VI no. 26 (February 28, 1918).

Presentation Follow-Up

I gave my class presentation yesterday and I thought I would post some follow-up thoughts, since they could be relevent to our discussion.

My idea was that the New York Times "Mid-Week Pictorial" Series would help us with a better understanding of the literature of our course (or in the case of our blog, in reading The General), specifically in addressing the portions of the texts that take place on the front lines of WWI (i.e. trenches). The reason for this is two-fold. First, I think that photography can add a dimension of reality to the images we get in the text. Take, for example, this passage from The General, chapter XVI, P. 161:

"The road they were on had ceased to be a road at the crossroads, where the red-hatted military policeman had stopped the cars. A vague indication of a trench had grown up around them as they progressed, and soon it was quite definitely a trench, floored with mud, in which they sank ankle deep - the warm weather had not dried it - crumbling and slipshod in appearance for lack of revetting. They floundered in single file along the trench..."

I enjoy the realism in Forester's text (in the setting and characterization especially), and I think the above passage embraces that and is effective on its own. My argument for photography is that it gives us, as an audience almost 100 years removed from WWI, a more rounded view of what it was really like on the front lines. We can look at a picture of the trenches, of the damage to the landscape, of the injured soldiers, and "get it," so to speak. Having this background knowledge makes us more attuned to the literary imagery in the texts we're reading. An example I gave in class responded to the picture of trenchfoot that was passed around. We've talked about trenchfoot before, but as I watched people's reactions to the photo, they appeared to be much more horrified when they actually saw what it looked like (let's call it the "cringe factor").

The other thought I had was that photography reminds us to question the texts. When looking at a primary source, such as the Mid-Week Pictorials, one must ask questions. Was this photo a set-up? Was it taken by an agency or individual? Where/who published it? What does the caption suggest? and so on... For me, it gives a gentle reminder to question the text. What perspective is Curzon coming from? What does his class have to do with his position in the War? How is his experience different from the War experience we get from Owen, Graves, Sassoon?

Do you guys agree/disagree? I'm curious what you have thought about the imagery in The General and how it contributes to the overall novel.

The New York Times "Mid-Week Pictorial" Series

I have attached a page out of my private collection of The New York Times Mid-Week Pictorial series that ran in that newspaper during WWI. I don't have much information on this series, other than that it began during WWI and continued into the 1920's due to popular demand. This particular page is from Vol.III, No. 24, August 17, 1916 (page 11). While it is a decidedly American publication (especially after the U.S. entered the War; it became a propoganda machine), there are many photos and articles about the British contribution to the war, so I think that it is worth while including a few here. I'll update as our discussion continues.

I thought this would be a good spread to begin with, partly because it is from the earliest edition that I have, but also because it gives us a great image to start with as we begin our discussion of The General. Is it just me, or do any of you see Curzon in that superior officer in the top picture? :)

One last note: please forgive me if the images are unclear or if the text is unreadable. The papers are pretty fragile due to their age and are difficult to scan. I'll try my best!