Journey's End - Futility
- Created by: RobynBraun1
- Created on: 30-03-22 14:49
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- Futility - Journey's End
- Futility of Death
- Alice in Wonderland (Act 2, Scene 2)
- "Little crocodile ... welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws."
- Futility of the hierarchy: the higher ranked soldiers are supposed to be there to make their side stronger, but they are instead feeding off of their soldiers' deaths.
- 'Hanging on the old barbed wire'.
- Linking to the raid - it makes the Colonel happy, but was it worth it? Has it helped towards the war effort? Or has Osborne died for nothing?
- Crocodile is hungry - hunger is a constant thing that is never ending. The crocodile will never not be hungry - the war will never end?
- Futility of the hierarchy: the higher ranked soldiers are supposed to be there to make their side stronger, but they are instead feeding off of their soldiers' deaths.
- "Little crocodile ... welcomes little fishes in with gently smiling jaws."
- 'Charge of the Light Brigade': going into the jaws of death (heroic imagery)
- Here, they are going into the jaws of a crocodile, and they are fish - not heroes.
- Alice in Wonderland (Act 2, Scene 2)
- Futility in the eyes of the soldiers
- Earwig (Act 1, Page 15)
- "Running round and round."
- War is cyclical and never-ending.
- In terms of perspective: the soldiers may think they are getting somewhere, but those higher up can tell that they aren't getting anywhere - link to the hierarchy of war.
- Sherriff was a part of the hierarchy, he was an officer.
- Futility of the hierarchy: the higher ranked soldiers are supposed to be there to make their side stronger, but they are instead feeding off of their soldiers' deaths.
- 'Hanging on the old barbed wire'.
- Futility of the hierarchy: the higher ranked soldiers are supposed to be there to make their side stronger, but they are instead feeding off of their soldiers' deaths.
- Sherriff was a part of the hierarchy, he was an officer.
- Earwig is fuelled by alcohol - representative of Stanhope?
- Soldiers in a repetitive cycle - they are constantly in the trenches, switching around - bug doing circles in the dugout is symbolic of the soldiers.
- 'We're here because we're here'
- "Running round and round."
- Trotter's Chart (Act 2, Scene 1)
- Sherriff himself did this in war.
- Trotter tries to secure a small amount of agency over the way the time moves, which he otherwise can’t control - he colours in the circles every hour.
- Without counting down the remaining hours and displaying them on a piece of paper, the time left in the trenches feels “eternal.”
- Trotter’s chart comes to represent not only his desire to control his own circumstances, but also the elaborate ways in which these men invent ways of coping with their terror and helplessness during war.
- Earwig (Act 1, Page 15)
- Structure and Form
- Tragic play with no denouement
- Name of the play: 'Journey's End' - the audience never find out the end for Stanhope.
- Stanhope as a tragic hero
- Very much differs from Aristotle's definition of a 'tragic hero'.
- E.g. has the hamartia of alcoholism, but could it have been brought on by the external pressures of war rather than a personal flaw? - Makes the play more tragic.
- Very much differs from Aristotle's definition of a 'tragic hero'.
- It's futile trying to understand the character of Stanhope or the form of the play based on our previous knowledge of tragedy, just like it's futile trying to understand this war through our knowledge of previous wars.
- First mechanised war - tanks, gas. 225,000 dead in St Quentin's battle alone - microcosm of the war.
- Tragic play with no denouement
- Futility of Death
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