Explore the ways Peter Whelan presents the complacency of the home front in The Accrington Pals to create dramatic effect. Compare and contrast the ways Birdsong and The Accrington Pals present the complacency of the ho

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Luke-Anthony Bailey

Explore the ways Peter Whelan presents the complacency of the home front in ‘The Accrington Pals” to create dramatic effect. Compare and contrast the ways ‘Birdsong and ‘The Accrington Pals’ present the complacency of the home front and say how far you agree with the view that ‘The Accrington Pals” is a far more believable in its portrayal of the complacency of the home front.

Both Faulks and Whelan intended to present the complacency of the home front in their respective texts, Birdsong and The Accrington Pals. The First World War marked a change in warfare, it impacted all elements of society. The home front was lulled into complacency by the higher command this is shown in both of the texts. It was not a war that could ‘be fought and concluded swiftly in a traditional way.’ However, initially the soldiers enlisted with an idealistic view, which was further indulged by the home fronts complacency.

In ‘The Accrington Pals’, Whelan high-lights how naïve the boys were to join up to the war even if they were fighting for their country and what was meant to be a just cause, this naivety is also portrayed by Birdsong’s Ellis who has joined the army for the hope of achieving an ‘M.C.’

The government strung together an idea of pals’ battalions, where friends and family from the same town could fight side by side for their nation. These pals’ battalions meant well but did not have a positive effect on towns later on when the whole regiments were destroyed; it was proven disaster for their home towns.  This great loss is emphasised in Birdsong after the Battle of the Somme. The death is illustrated to the audience as ‘dead towns without their life or purpose, without the sound of fathers and their children....’

Whelan also puts across how foolish the home front seemed in the First World War. Many of the soldiers joined up to the army because they would be receiving a decent income; this proved to be a great incentive. In the play the regiment are tracked from England, to Egypt to France. Whelan shows the devastation of the regiment at the battle of Somme where only a little number of soldiers ceased to exist after the first few hours of the battle.

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The play shows how the population of the men who went to war rapidly diminished, within a few battles. In Birdsong explains that ‘800 men in the battalion who had gone over the parapet, 155 answered their names.’ This puts the audience in a state of shock, due to the magnitude of death. The brutality of war is shown in the effect that it had on the home front, they will be ‘like dead towns without their life or purpose.’ The effect on the home front was a long term horror; the horror felt by the men on the frontline ...

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