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What techniques does Louis de Bernières use to portray the effects of war so powerfully?

In his novel, Louis de Bernières uses various techniques to portray very powerfully the effects of war. One of them is using contrasts that portray the difference between what people believe war is like and what it really is. Contrasts such as the change in Carlo’s opinion about war: thinking “how wonderful is war” at the beginning and hating it at the end. Contrasts like the one used when Carlo tells Francesco’s mother about his death, saying  “he died on a fine day” and “he died very quickly from a bullet through the heart” when then we can read the horrible and awful truth about his painful and “slow journey into death”. These contrasts are made more evident because of the incredible amount of detail given throughout the novel that makes the reader see what war was like for the people who lived it. This detail is given by using descriptive and emotive language that makes the reader perceive what the characters and the people who were involved in the war felt and went through. Bernières also uses these details to portray things in a different way than “film and painting might suggest”, emphasising the sense of reading what war really was like. This detail would have been very difficult to give if the writer had not focused on certain individuals such as Pelagia, Carlo or Mandras and portrayed how war affected them in different ways.

Louis de Bernières uses contrasting views of war, mainly from people who have lived the war and people who haven’t, to make an impact and show the readers how different the reality is from what they might think war is like. A good example of this is how Carlo changes as he participates in battles and operations. When he first talks about war and the Army he talks about no civilian being able to “comprehend the joy of being a soldier”. He is delighted to be in the Army and says he found his family there. At the beginning, when they are not sent to fight, they just had fun together. They had water-fights, they “could piss together on the wheels of the Colonel’s car”, they would tease each other and “laugh and make nothing of it”. They were “new and beautiful”, “loved each other more than brothers” and “would never again feel so invincible and immortal”. However, “war is wonderful, until someone is killed”. As soon as Carlo starts to see the horrors of war - death, pain, utter destruction of the soul, “troops maddened and gangrenous”, bodies severed from souls – he starts to hate it and realises he “had gone into the war a romantic, and had come out of it desolate, dismal and forlorn”. Another good example of these contrasts is the two versions of Francesco’s death given by Carlo. In this case Carlo has to hide the horror of Francesco’s death and make up a glorious one so that his family doesn’t have to undergo the suffering Carlo himself has when Francesco died.  He tells Francesco’s family that “he died very quickly of a bullet through the heart”, that “he died with a smile on his lips” and that “he was buried with full military honours” when he really “took two hours to die”, “his agony must have been indescribable” and was buried by Carlo. This contrast has a great impact for the reader who clearly sees the difference between the glorious death Carlo invents and the real horror of a soldier’s death. These contrasts could not have been so effectively made if the author had not portrayed such a detailed image of war.

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De Bernières gives a detailed view of the war from the inside as well as from the outside. He describes many of the battles and many of the massacres, bringing them to life for the readers to experience what those people went through. For example, he portrays Corelli’s men’s execution in a very different way than “film and painting might suggest” and gives details such as the soldiers not being “lined up against the wall” or many of them being “left on their knees, praying, weeping, or pleading”, using descriptive language. Another example is Carlo’s account of what happened ...

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