The fear of exposure is what makes Stanhope negative towards Raleigh’s presence. Stanhope doesn’t want his family finding out that he can’t cope, as he wouldn’t feel like a real man. He knows he has a problem with drinking, and that he would never be accepted back into his hometown if he was exposed and, in his eyes, Raleigh poses a threat to this, ‘exposure’, making Stanhope paranoid. It shows that Stanhope is ashamed of the character the war has made him become. I think that R.C Sheriff shapes this scene brilliantly; he starts off with all the soldiers joking around, so you are expecting a happy scene but it all turns. In this scene we see what Stanhope really thinks of Raleigh for the first time and the author keeps the audience in suspense very well for a long time.
In Act Three Scene Two all the solders sit round and celebrate the capture of the German solder, just after Osbourne has died. Raleigh feels upset, and doesn’t see how they can all sit round the table and celebrate when Osbourne is lying ‘out there, dead’.
The scene starts off with the setting, R.C Sheriff mentions the dugout being lit with a lot more candles than usual, this is to show respect for Osbourne, Stanhope is once again, drunk, just like he always is and they are all sitting enjoying a celebratory meal, but without Raleigh. Stanhope asks Mason to bring some whisky, even after they have had champagne; he obviously just wants to get drunk to forget everything, he is running away from his problems.
Stanhope then goes up to see Raleigh, “I Thought I told you to come down to dinner at eight o’clock” he said and Raleigh apologized. Stanhope treats Raleigh as if he is a young child and tells him off for eating with the men and eating their rations, and not coming down for dinner, he makes him sit down. Raleigh confront Stanhope about how he feels “im awfully sorry Dennis, if-if I annoyed you by coming to your company” and Stanhope says he resents Raleigh being a fool; this must have put Raleigh down. Raleigh seems really shocked that Stanhope can sit and smoke cigars and drink Champagne, he only shows his real emotions when Raleigh says how he feels, Stanhope is shocked at this and explains, “The one man I could trust-my best friend-and you don’t think I care”. This is the first time we see any real emotion from Stanhope and then he gets furious at Raleigh and tells him to get out. R.C Sheriff uses a lot of hyphens in Raleigh’s speech to show the audience he is nervous and they are also used in Stanhope’s speech to show that he is blurting out what he feels instead of using prepared sentences. The scene ends on a big climax.
Raleigh can’t cope with the death of Osbourne very well, but the rest of the officers can, it is Raleigh’s first experience like this but all the other men have to live with it on a day-to-day basis, it was so traumatising. R.C Sheriff shows the trauma soldiers went through in the wars exceptionally well. Raleigh thinks that they should grieve for Osbourne, but to be able to survive in the war you needed to move on straight away as there were too many people dying and it would be impossible to survive if you grieved all the time. Stanhope doesn’t express his feelings because he feels he needs to be strong for him and his men to succeed. The audience really feels for Raleigh, he is so young and naive toward the war, he expected to go out there and come back a hero and he is finding it hard to accept the fact that it isn’t what he thought it would be.
Both Raleigh and Stanhope are pushing each other away when they need each other the most, Stanhope gets drunk so Raleigh gets angry at him because he doesn’t understand how Stanhope works yet, because before Stanhope went to war Raleigh probably knew him as a person who is highly respected and very strong, but now he has seen how extremely weak he is.
Act Three Scene Three is the final scene of the play, and is the most dramatic. It starts off with Mason waking up Stanhope, the English were expecting an attack this day and it really did come to them.
First of all Corporal Ross got hit, and then Stanhope found out that Raleigh had been hit badly in the back and his spine was broken. Stanhope asks for him to be brought down to the dugout and the sergeant major is surprised at this, but Stanhope obviously knew he wasn’t going to survive and wanted to talk to him. When Raleigh is brought in, he says hello, and Stanhope says “Well, Jimmy”, and smiles. This is the first time in the whole play that R.C Sheriff lets Stanhope call Raleigh by his first name Jimmy, what Stanhope called him when he looked after him when he was a young boy. This gets the audience ready for Raleigh to be looked after by Stanhope. At first Raleigh doesn’t realise what has gone on, he think he just got a knock in the back and the pain will go off if he gets up and walks around a bit, this must have killed Stanhope inside the fact that Raleigh didn’t actually realise he was dying but he was strong enough not to show it. He was looking after Raleigh, just like he did when he was younger. He stays with him in his last moments of life and comforts him, just like father and son; Stanhope is like a father figure to Raleigh in the last scene, as he is very considerate towards Raleigh, he doesn’t tell Raleigh what is really going on as he doesn’t want to scare him and is protecting him from the truth; “Steady, old boy. Just lie there quietly for a bit…….….It’s all right, old chap; its just the shock-numbed them”. There was lots of silences in the stage directions, this shows that Stanhope and Raleigh didn’t have much to talk about, it should have been the time when Stanhope apologized to Raleigh and when Raleigh spoke, he spoke uneasily, he was obviously un comfy being with Stanhope. Raleigh asks for some water with some tealeaves in and some candles and a blanket, as he feels cold, although he feels cold because of the shock and that he is dying. Stanhope leaves to get the things that Raleigh asked for, and when he returned Raleigh had tragically passed away.
Even though Raleigh and Stanhope have had a rocky relationship throughout the play they still managed to be so close in Raleigh’s last moments of life. Although Stanhope may have been able to do this as he knew Raleigh was going to die and that he knew how the ways of him coping wouldn’t get back to his family now and no longer ‘resented’ Raleigh being there to see it. There is a huge contrast between the beginning and the end of their relationship where Stanhope was very short tempered with Raleigh and nervous around him to the end where he comforted him when Raleigh was scared. Before when Stanhope was scared, Raleigh didn’t comfort him because he didn’t realise he was scared, Raleigh just bugged him, where as when Raleigh was scared Stanhope realised and helped him.
R.C Sheriff has portrayed the emotions of the solders in the script and their body language so well that the reader feels the emotions of the solders. He has also included a good set of characters, which I think all work exceptionally well together and are what make the play as tremendous as it is.
R.C Sheriff is likely to of been one of the characters in the play, maybe Stanhope or likely experienced highly similar things to what he has expressed in ‘Journey’s End’, as he has written about it extremely passionately that the audience feel the emotions of the soldiers so deeply, this is what makes the play as grand as it is.
Karla Paine
