When the audience sees the set for the first time, they can start to feel the mood of the play. The set is quite dim, as the stage directions state, “flames of candles,” and, “gloomy tunnels,” showing the brooding atmosphere in the dark, dank trenches. Another source of tension made apparent through stage directions is sound effects. The stage directions describe, “Earth walls deaden the sounds of war,” as the shelling and machine gun fire were a constant reminder for the soldiers of the doom that hung over them. Tension is further created from the fact that there is the same set for the entirety of the play, giving no escape for the audience, which is the same feeling soldiers would have had when living in the trenches.
Sherriff gives a lot of detail about the conditions in the trenches, which were appalling, and so this is a way to recreate the tension in the play. One of the mentions of the conditions is when Hardy is, “drying a sock over a candle flame,” and this shows the inadequate conditions the soldiers had to put up with – they didn’t even have dry clothes most of the time and this is how soldiers got diseases like trench foot.
From living in close proximity with each other constantly, the soldiers had to make an effort to make friends with the people around them, who they may not have normally chosen to spend time with. For the officers, Stanhope, Osborne, Trotter, Hibbert and Raleigh the situation is no different.
Stanhope is the Officer in charge of the company, and much of the tension is centred on him because of his drink problem, and the fact that he is in charge. Early on in the play, Osborne and Hardy talk about Stanhope’s drink problem. Hardy says, “I never did see a youngster put away the whisky like he does.” Because of his drink problem, Stanhope sometimes gets violent, and the audience can see this when Hardy says, “he jumped up and knocked all the glasses off the table.“ All of the men notice Stanhope’s drink problem, and Osborne says, “Because he’s stuck it till his nerves have got battered to bits, he’s called a drunkard,” this shows that Stanhope drinks to get over his nerves and to relieve the tension and fear of fighting.
Similarly, most of the other Officers have some sort of way of getting away from the fear and tension. Osborne reads a book and recites, “How doth the little crocodile improve his shining tail,” which is from ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’ and the audience can see that Osborne reads to take his mind off the War. The significance of ‘Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland’ is that it is also set in a surreal landscape.
Secondly, when Stanhope is talking about Trotter, he says bluntly, “He’s no imagination,” and this is Trotter’s way of keeping his thoughts away from the suffering. Raleigh doesn’t have a way of coping because he doesn’t really see the horror of war until the final scene. When he and Osborne are preparing to go on a raid, Osborne tells him to, “Forget all about it for six minutes,” because Osborne doesn’t want to think much about it but Raleigh, who hasn’t yet lost his innocence, thinks it will be almost easy and he isn’t prepared for the outcome of the raid.
There is a very tense scene when Stanhope argues with Raleigh after the death of Osborne. Raleigh says, “How can I sit and eat that when Osborne’s lying out there?” because he has lost the innocence he had and can’t think of anything apart from the death of Osborne. Stanhope tells him that he only had the meal and had a drink with the other Officers to try to take his mind off the incredible tension that the death creates for everyone. Stanhope is annoyed that Raleigh has made him think about Osborne and shouts at Raleigh, “Oh, get out!” Here, Raleigh epitomises all of the young soldiers who signed up to fight in a glorious war, only to find out the grim reality of it.
On the other hand, the play can’t be just tense for the duration of the play, and this is where the character, Mason, the officers’ cook, comes in. In one scene he brings a cup of tea and says, “it’s a bit oniony, but that’s only because of the saucepan,” Mason is put in as a bit of light relief because the audience would find it boring if it was all the same level of tension. The tension has to come in ‘peaks and troughs’ where it builds up to a climax in each scene and then resolves itself.
Hibbert, who wants to leave the trenches because of his fear of dying, has a very heated argument with Stanhope. When he tries to leave to go down the line to the field hospital, Stanhope stands in his way and holds a gun to his head and says, “it’s going off and it’s going to shoot you,” and this creates so much stress that Hibbert starts to cry. It is at this point that Stanhope shows Hibbert how to cope with the stress and tells him how he can’t cope very well himself and has to drink to relieve himself. Stanhope’s character is paralleled with Hibbert’s at this point because of the fact that they are both scared of dying in battle.
By far the most tense and dramatic scene is the final battle scene. When Raleigh is mortally wounded, and put on the table in the dug out, the two soldiers show their compassion for one another by calling each other by their first names, “Dennis”, and, “Jimmy.” After Raleigh finally dies on the table, and Stanhope has to leave to go back in to the trenches to fight, a shell lands on the roof of the dug-out and the stage directions state, “the shock stabs out the candle flame,” this being an obvious symbol for the death of the soldiers and the end of the play.
In conclusion, Sherriff writes from experience and mixes the depressing atmosphere and conditions with the ever-changing relationships of the characters to help recreate a realistic idea of the tension and fear that soldiers lived through in the First World War.