Research the world of the First World War estaminet. “But he liked the bolts to be loosened on his concerns like any other soldier” (p. Then a gruesome moment in the line conveys just how unexpected death could be in the trenches. Willie’s willie at last sees action and, unscathed, lives to see another day. Delighted for the younger man, he pleads with Willie to stay alive until then.Ī short but interesting chapter. He has been given home leave for a few days. His own anguish, however, tells of the compassion struggling to be expressed within him.Ī few weeks later, rotated back behind the lines again, Christy Moran has good news for Willie. He reflects that the youth would be better shot dead on the spot. Willie responds to the incident with cold despair he has become hardened by the war. The young man is tormented for hours as they wait for the medical corps to arrive. He is struck by his own uselessness in the face of this violence. Willie wants to ignore the incident at first but then attends to the young man. He is shot in the eye: blood gruesomely jets from the wound. One day he is drinking tea in a corner of the trench when a soldier new to the front, a Private Byrne, carelessly lifts his head above the line of the parapet. Willie’s company finds itself rotated back into the front line again. O’Hara, it transpires, contracts a sexually transmitted disease from his tryst with the prostitute. As he writes, a wish to confess about his night with the prostitute weighs on him. He continues to have trouble ending his letters satisfactorily. Though this is a longer letter, it has the same structure as his previous missive: Willie writes in careful detail telling of his life at the front, and ends with an outpouring of passionate declarations of love for her. He tells her he is now in a quiet sector of the front, though the weather is now icy. Willie, still working in the support trenches, writes a long letter to Gretta. They make their way back to their billet through the city night. As they leave Willie notices a rash on the thigh of the woman O’Hara has slept with. He falls asleep and, when he awakens with a headache, O’Hara tells him it is time to go. Willie gives himself to the woman with wonder and lust, and thus loses his virginity. He is at first abashed by the woman’s approach: O’Hara, less naïve than his friend, quickly begins to have sex with the woman he entered with. Willie, extremely drunk, finds that he is being propositioned by a prostitute. He and O’Hara dance with two women who lead them both down into a basement. Willie’s head spins as he drinks away memories of Captain Pasley and Gretta. Willie and Pete O’Hara decide to hit the town and are guided to a well-liked estaminet for private soldiers. Willie’s battalion is on rotation from the front and, billeted in the French city of Amiens, he is finally given a few days of free time behind the lines. Onwards we must go, however, if we’re to get this book completed by exam-time. Historical context, too, which still I’m somewhat shaky on, as the previous post admitted, and am currently trying to rectify by reading Diarmaid Ferriter’s fascinating history, ‘A Nation, and Not a Rabble’. Certainly I’d like to write something about Barry’s narration: its use of dialect, its lyricism, and thinking more broadly about omniscient and free indirect narration. I’m hoping to take a breather soon enough so that we can reflect on some aspects of the novel.
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