Those who did think about the ‘other’ world, like Stephen, seemed to resent the people for being naïve of what is going on around them. The men can’t see flesh the way they used to; they have been exposed to what a human’s body is like beneath the skin too many times. They find themselves unable to see things for their natural beauty any more. “The daughter’s body was no more than animal matter, less dear, less valuable than the flesh of men he had seen die”, it is not surprising that the men feel an extreme sense of worth/value towards those killed in the war. Not only had the men lost respect for other human life, but also they themselves felt as though they had been dehumanised. They were able to end another life with no feeling of remorse what so ever and therefore had lost any fear of death. Stephen himself is shocked at how much the war has hardened him; “He was surprised at his own brutality.”
Many men feel bitterness and anger because of the ignorance of the people back at home. There is clear tension between the home front and front line, “I wish a great bombardment would smash down along Piccadilly into Whitehall and kill the whole lot of them…Particularly my family. Particularly them.” Some of the letters we are shown written by the men are not as sentimental as one would have expected them to be. Many men had become rather distant from their family, maybe because they did not want them to be exposed to what they had been, or because they despised them for not being able to understand what life is really like on the front line. We are shown a rather disturbing scene, when Weir arrives home. Weir is in need of someone to open up to, someone to help relieve him of such painful memories. He seems to be in search for some stability, and so naturally tries to turn to his father. We are shown how ones own father cannot be co-operative or make an effort to understand their own son and what has or is happening to him. The only form of contact between father and son is a “pat on the back of the left bicep”. The men are left to deal with and confront the world on their own. They are left trying to find a reason to live, feeling desperate to make sense of their existence in any manner, be it through cards. Some men believed that for there to be sense, there must be a reason for what they have been through. They are unable to accept the pure randomness of the world they are living in. “It was not his death that mattered; it was the way the world had been dislocated. It was not all the tens of thousands of deaths that mattered; it was the way they had proved that you could be human yet act in a way that was beyond nature.”
We see Stephen being given a choice between life on this chaotic world or leaving it all behind him and resting in peace. He decided to stay, as he felt his experiences were unfulfilled, he felt human experience is more rewarding than peace. He had a curiosity of life, wanted to see what torturous situations it would through at him. He wanted to witness what extraordinary things ordinary men were capable of doing. The choices left in these men’s existence have come down to simple ones, very black and white situations, “…there was only violent death or life to choose between; finer distinctions such as love, preference or kindness, were redundant.” Life would never be the same again for those who did survive the war. Some even began to believe that it would be worse for them to survive with these memories, than die there and then. The soldiers could only take each day as it came, not being able to look beyond the next day, as each day was so unpredictable. “At the moment it seemed to Stephen to be the other way about: that this was the new reality, the world in which they were condemned to live, and that the pattern of the seasons, of night and day, was gone.” Some may even have to continue their lives with a feeling of constant guilt if they were to survive. “What have we done,” the men seem to naturally take responsibility for what really were their actions, but not their control. It is not surprising that they felt anger towards the futility of these actions, to the commands made by the officers and their mottoes; “when in doubt go forward”.
