Post Traumatic Stress Disorder
One of the key themes of the novel is the trauma suffered in war, and the way in which it is suffered decades after the war itself has ended. Faulks' does not shy away from depicting the Somme, and the action seen at Ypres, as brutal (it was a bloodbath, with thousands of allied losses) Seeing this much death impacted survivors more than any other aspect of their experience; lives are almost all destroyed even among the survivors, and at the time, little or no consideration was given to this. Consequently, veterans of the Somme were expected to return to their pre-war everyday lives as normal, as if nothing had happened to interrupt them. They were often unable to do this, haunted by the trauma of what they had seen.
Informing the Present with the Past
The basis of the plot that interweaves is the use of history to inform the present. This is done by having a present-day character learn about both the war, and her ancestor, through his own wartime experiences. The fact that Stephen's journals are written in a kind of code is a metaphor for the fact that history itself is almost always a code that needs to be deciphered in order for us to truly understand it and its relevance to more contemporary issues. This theme really does support the maxim that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Lost Love
Stephen is desperately in love with Isabelle but ultimately never gets to fulfill his feelings for her. He does, however, marry her sister Jeanne. Isabelle also feels the pain of lost love, forced to return to her abusive husband whilst yearning for the love she feels she has lost with Stephen.
Elizabeth is in many ways the continuation of Stephen and Isabelle's story; as her grandfather yearned to be with a woman who was already married to someone else, Elizabeth;s life has also recreated that situation, but unlike her grandfather it appears that she will eventually be able to end up with the one she loves as Robert appears to have left his wife to be with her at the end of the novel.
