Birdsong and All Quiet on the Western Front.

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Book Review

Birdsong and All Quiet on the Western Front

“Birdsong” by Sebastian Faulks and “All Quiet on the Western Front” by Erich Maria Remarque, are two books set during World War I. They each illustrate the traumas and horrors of war during that period of time. These two novels demonstrate how the burden of war irrevocably altered the lives of the characters.

The plot of “Bird Song” is complex. It is written in the third person and is set in France, during the early nineteen hundreds. The book describes a love affair between the main character Stephen Wraysford, an overseas textiles correspondent and Isabelle Azaire, the wife of a factory owner. They decide to elope together and Isabelle becomes pregnant with Stephen’s child. However, Isabelle becomes afraid that Stephen will not accept their child and decides to return home without revealing her pregnancy to him.

Several years after Isabelle’s sudden departure, Stephen is a member of the British Army which is stationed in France. During his time in France, he unexpectedly meets Isabelle and her sister Jeanne. To his disappointment, he discovers that Isabelle had fallen in love with a Prussian officer. However, meetings between Jeanne and Stephen become more frequent and they too fall in love. Sadly, Isabelle dies from an infection and sends her child, Francoise, to live with Jeanne. Stephen then realises that this child was the result of his affair with Isabelle.

 “All quiet on the western front” is set in Germany also during the First World War, but is written in the first person. The narrator is Paul Bäumer, a nineteen year old school boy. The book is about a group of young German soldiers who are convinced to enlist with the German Army by their school master, and how their lives are affected by participating in the war. These patriotic school boys entered the army with enthusiasm and the longing for adventure. He and his friends become separated by death. Gradually, one friend dies after another till only he himself is left. This book is an account of his life during the war.

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Both books highlight the extreme stresses that war imposes on its participants willing or otherwise. Each novel describes the pain and anger of each individual, when they either have to become savages in order to fight and save themselves or they witness the painful death of their comrades. In “all quiet on the western front” Bäumer and his companions witnessed a friend of theirs dying while fighting furiously for their own lives in a trench; “Leer groans and props himself on his arms, but he bleeds to death very quickly and no one can help him.” This suggests that ...

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