In the reading for this week, I was especially struck by how Brittain deals with the grief of Roland's death and her brother Edward's death. What struck me so much was the difference in style right after these events happen. After Roland's death, Brittain's style suddenly changes. Instead of writing in the past tense as she has been, she writes in the present tense: “I am back on night duty”; “I am buying some small accessories for my uniform in a big Victoria Street store”; “It is Wednesday, and I am walking up the Brixton Road” (Brittain 240). These strategies make the time dilate, and they make the reader feel like time is going very slowly, but in actuality each paragraph or two is a full day. This technique was very effective because it shows how the time one experiences after a loved one's death feels so strange, and that you are going through the motions of life without fully feeling them. Brittain shows this very well here through her techniques and focus on the small things like walking, buying stuff for her uniform, or when she is working. 

However, to contrast that with Edward's death, nothing in her style changes after her brother dies. She is obviously distraught and upset, but it does not actually effect the style of her writing in the same way Roland's does. I am interested in this because after Edward dies, she explains that she is a machine: “My only hope now was to become a complete automaton, working mechanically and no longer even pretending to be animated by ideals” (450); “Having become, at last, the complete automaton, moving like a sleep-walker thought the calm atmosphere of Millbank, I was no longer capable of either enthusiasm or fear” (458). She also states that Roland's death was different because, since it was at the beginning of the war, they had more consolation letters sent to respond to and thus were forced to face death more often. Both of these ideas seem to me to show more of the style that she used when describing the days after Roland’s death, and yet they are not employed here. Does anyone have any thoughts on this?