Everyone Brave is Forgiven

by Chris Cleave

What was war, after all, but morale in helmets and jeeps? And what was morale if not one hundred million little conversations, the sum of which might leave men brave enough to advance?

turned out that the only difference between children and adults was that children were prepared to put twice the energy into the project of not being sad.

What are children if not eternally optimistic?

“What inspired you to volunteer as a schoolmistress, Mary?” Pride would not let her reply that she hadn’t volunteered for anything in particular—that she had simply volunteered, assuming the issue would be decided favourably, as it always had been until now, by influences unseen.

Allusion to storing priceless Art. As in the movie Woman in Gold.

Sometimes it was no longer altogether funny, this double act they played in which he was the boy to Alistair’s man of the world.

Describes Tom’s and Alistair’s relationship. A complimentary relationship with some tension between Alistair's cavalier sarcasm and Tom's constant rethinking almost every decision he makes.

He stood with his eyes closed for a full minute before he took another spoonful. He was absolutely uncertain.

Tom was ambivalent - as usual.

“I suppose all of us have to look at our job and ask how it now serves the cause. I suppose one is lucky if a simple answer presents itself.”

Purpose in life. This thinking leads to his decision to serve his country.

Alistair is conflicted about his role in defending England. As an artist, I believe he is a pacifist at heart.

I think the fear of going to war is less than the

shame of admitting that your country can get along quite well without whatever-it-is that you’ve been up to. In the end, of course, the conclusion of the man is the same as that of the military—that getting killed is the least one can do in the circumstances—except that the two parties reach the same conclusion by different routes.”

Alastair’s rationale for going to war. But he joins up because he does not think his career in art restoration is as valuable for the country during the war.

Alistair looked at his hands. “Well, the thing is, that someone shan’t be me.”

There will be a procedure for people who have signed up by mistake.

Tom is sure Alistairs made a mistake in signing up for the war effort.

Oh, thought Tom, so it finishes as quickly as this. All the things we make exceptional are merely borrowed from the mundane and must without warning be surrendered to it.

In reference to their relationship and perhaps all relationships?

“You’re made to be an educator,

Tom watched the scarlet and the purple light shift across his friend’s steady face.

Foreboding

“Her life is a carousel of torpid men and toffee éclairs.

Hilda description

“Tom won’t sign up and I admire it. He . . . well, it’s just not him.”

It’s just that you’re the way you are, and I’m the way I am.”

Huge differences in their characters.

it is quite ridiculous in any case. There is no actual fighting, is there?”

1939 - no fighting in England at this time. Unfortunately, the girls believed that the fighting would never get to them. Had they stayed in Pimlico, they might have been correct.

The first problem of war was that no one was any good at it yet.

Understatement.

Every wound Alistair drove into the wet sacking opened a corresponding rent in his morale.

he hated the flicker of warmth that hatred gave you.

On Malta, when Alistair saved his friend.

This such a description of man’s inhumanity

Now each man alone in his sodden clothes weighed the warmth of the things

Self indictment

In the back they would all be feeling the lifting of a burden.

All are relieved that Alistair went on to help. A Jesus moment.

The men sang and the truck drove directly over the top of the shell, the wheels passing to each side and missing it completely. It settled a little deeper in the cold mud as the vibrations diminished again.

This was so tense.

a hundred idiosyncrasies that might have originated in some long-forgotten instruction from the family, or arisen spontaneously from the coppery circuitry in Palmer’s internal machinery that gauged what was fitting. If Palmer were lost to them, along with the stock of method and lore of which he alone was the repository,

I really liked Palmer.

Naivety

“Notwithstanding your belief that they are just as intelligent as us.”

More prejudice

“He is only human, after all.”

Theology 101

Tom was slightly infuriating,

it would be nice if he were more daring about the whole thing,

someone her mother would not countenance nor Hilda even consider.

Rebellious

And here was what she wanted to know

here was what she wanted to know

—here was what she wanted to know:

This device is effective because it closely mirrors Mary’s scatterbrained and irritating thought process.

in a mist so thick as to have been almost a paste.

I wonder if this is the same weather system that Alistair and Dugan were experiencing.

She had tried to get them lost in the vapors

to decide that it was love,

worst thing—the worst, worst thing—was this having to decide.

the school

There was a lot of dust,

If the war so far was a phony one, this silence was real.

War

New word

The school was absolutely silent. How violent it was, this peace where children’s voices should be.

Beautifully described

New word

His efforts to disappear were to his credit, but unsupported by a pitiless physics that refused to let him vanish.

Good writing

Marion Richardson script