Form and structure for Birdsong

Characters are terminally dull and muted

Gripping and interesting

No pretended to hope, heroics glamour

Break up momentum of war passages

Dual sense of history and continuation

Metaphor, adjectives and parentheic digressions

Reader knows what will happen

Dramatic irony

Section serves to humanize the characters

Driven by sex

Visual and physical description

War scenes without a plot

True ambivalence unbiased nature of war

Concrete nouns and active verbs

Mid war trench life

Blood, iron, mud and agony