Journeys End Courseowkr

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Explain the ways in which R.C. Sherriff conveys a sense of the horror of war in Journey's End with detailed reference to three extracts from the play. How could a film director enhance this sense of horror on the screen?

Journeys End, the seventh most famous play written by R.C Sherriff in 1929, set in Saint-Quentin, France, in 1918, gives us brief glimpse into the experiences of the officers of a British Army infantry company in World War I by showing us 6 days in a dugout of the front line. It is about a 21 year old Captain Stanhope, and after having spent nearly three years in the trenches without any significant leave, has taken to drinking heavily to control his nerves and to ease the stress of trench warfare.

    The play brings us through many different themes and genre's throughout, from death, to love and friendship, comadeship, to 'class', and the scarring effects of war, and to the horror's of war.

   What interests me is that the play stays only on the single set of what is the dugouts. They are dark, underground rooms where the officers of a British company eat, sleep and talk about what is going on in the trenches just outside, yet you can still, yourself, experience what the war was like. You are not faced with your usual heroic commander who saves the day in the end, instead there is Stanhope, a heavy drinker, affected by three years of war. And the play doesn't have courageous battle scenes and huge explosions, or a valiant death bed scene.  Instead, the horror's of war are portrayed through the waiting and the suspense of not knowing what's going to happen next, the characters trying to find security and comfort in anyway possible, the way they

would do anything to get out of there.

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       Fear and cowardice is shown a lot in this play, which is very different from your usual courageous soldiers, ready for battle. The authenticity of the play is what makes it original. It actually shows what really went on in the trenches.

   A particular, during act two, the audience experience a one of the soliders, Hibbert, trying to get out of the war but pretending that he had neuralgia. Hibbert is becoming effected from the war, and is generally scared of having to go up and fight. By now in the play, the men are ...

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