
Reading Six
Weeks persuaded me to buy R.C. Sherriff's play Journey's
End, which I'd never read. I liked it especially because it is unique
to the circumstances of its war-British class differences, trench warfare, losses
by years of attrition. The entire thing takes place in an underground bunker. I
doubt that it could be "updated," for example, into a drama about the Vietnam
War. The concerns, the histories, the values of the soldiers involved are just
too different. I suspect that when it came out it was a shocker, but now it
seems like half the war movies we've seen since.
Lines I liked:
Osborne: "Where do the men sleep?"
Hardy: "I don't know. The sergeant-major sees to that."
--
Osborne: "It rather reminds you of bear-baiting -- or
cock-fighting -- to sit and watch a boy drink himself unconscious."
--
Osborne: "We are, generally, just waiting for something to
happen. When anything happens, it happens quickly. Then we just start waiting
again."
--
Stanhope: "There's not a man left who was here when I came."
(I suspect he kind of means himself, too -- he is physically present, but
spiritually with his dead comrades of the previous four years.)
Published on May 16, 2012 03:10