As I was reading the assignment for this Thursday, I came across this line on page 236, at the very end of Chapter V Part 7, "....walking up and down the promenade, watching the grey sea tossing rough with white surf-crested waves, and wondering still what kind of crossing he had had or was having." I found the end of this line, which I have italicized here, to be especially interesting because it made me think of the crossing of the river Styx, which separated the world of the living from the world of the dead in Greek mythology. As Roland had just died, his soul would therefore be crossing into the afterlife, unbeknownst to Vera at the time, as she waited for his arrival.
I think Brittain chose her words very carefully in this section, and while I merely intend to make an observation, I wanted to see if anyone else noticed anything similar or equally interesting in regards to the deaths of Roland and the other men in Vera's life.
Comments
Jeff Drouin
Wed, 01/30/2013 - 09:16
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What an excellent observation
What an excellent observation, Olivia. Thank you for posting it. I think you're right. The emotional intensity of that passage always struck me as being ominous because we always know that death could suddenly be around the corner for any of the men on the front. The coincidence that she happened to be pondering the English Channel crossing while we don't know yet that Roland was crossing into the afterlife, as it were, is a poignant example of how literary writers in the early Twentieth Century draw upon the classical tradition to highlight the sheer unreality and jarringness of modern experience, and especially of the war. Her classical education at Oxford, though incomplete at the time, informs her sensibility here.