Essay Questions

Prior claims that writing, and being a first person narrator, ensures immortality for the writer. Do you agree?

Prior's claim is both untrue, and true, at the same time. The men who were writing felt that they were physically protected by the act of reporting what they saw; the accounts needed to be given, so it would be impossible for them to be killed since they were busily engaged in poetry writing and diary keeping so that every detail of their time in France could be preserved accurately. This was not the case, but merely a delusion that kept them from feeling so terrified every day. However, the claim is also true in the sense that the writings of those men who used what they saw and experienced as the basis for journals and poems lived on after they did, and brought them fame. Wilfred Owen was killed alongside the majority of the 2nd Manchester Regiment, and his poetry is still studied today, enabling him to be remembered by the whole world, whereas if he had survived the war without writing anything about his experiences, only his own family and friends would remember him once he actually died. The case of Siegfried Sassoon is slightly different in that he was already well known, but certainly his wartime service, and his graphic poems recounting this, lived on long after his death in the 1960s. The premise in the novel too is that Prior, although a fictional character, lives on as one of the war's diarists, the extracts from his diary that are included in the book allowing his words to be heard by future generations, despite the fact he was killed in battle.

Do you think Prior would have accepted the job in London that Manning found for him had he known he would be killed in action?

Prior was initially pleased that he had turned down the opportunity to stay in London and work at the War Office, even when he was biletted in Amiens, and the weather was terrible, food was scarce, men were dropping like flies in battle, and he was in charge of men who were scared to death. Conditions were horrible, yet there was no place on earth he would rather have been at the time than with his regiment, leading the men under him. He voices this realization as they are waiting instructions on what their movements will be next. He did not seem to consider the possibility of his death. The reaction of most people would be to wish that they had taken the job instead if they had known that returning to France would result in their death on the battlefield; however, Prior would likely have felt guilty, as though he had deserted the men who needed him. He was already plagued by nightmares about men who had been killed on his watch, and these would doubtlessly have become worse. He also, despite being a "temporary gentleman", and genuinely liking Captain Manning, had a certain lack of respect for the upper classes, and would probably have felt that by taking the safer way out of the war by using his connections, he was becoming just like them, and starting to have the qualities that he so despised in them as well.

Prior tells Dr Rivers that the medical board do not even ask about his shell shock because they do not recognize it as a condition. Why do you think this is, and were they right to view it this way?

The medical board did not acknowledge the legitimacy of shell shock, which would be called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder today, because they realized that if they did so many hundreds of men would no longer be viewed as fit for duty, and they chose to sweep the issue under the rug instead to avoid having to admit that it existed. Given that the board members had not fought in France, and some of them had never undertaken any kind of military service whatsoever, they had no concept of what it was like as a non-military regular civilian to bayonet people, to see their comrades heads blown away, or to see on a daily basis the endless stream of injured come back to camp. The board tended to view shell shock as a type of cowardice, so that it was not until a man developed mental issues, such as hallucinations, or in the case of one of Rivers' patients, fear-induced physical paralysis, that they were seen as a hindrance to the unit and were sent back home for treatment. It is easy to understand their actions as they feared the very realistic possibility of running out of soldiers, but it does not seem like the right thing to do, as it is clearly going to be traumatic for men who are little more than boys, with no life experience, to have to kill, see their friends killed, and have to endure all of this in the inhuman conditions of the front line in France. It's also possible that earlier intervention in the men with shell shock could have avoided the larger problems that occurred later.