Roland writes this in one of his letters from the trenches in France, followed by Brittain's response to it:
" 'I have sometimes wondered whether I should mind being killed after all, but on days like this I cannot help wanting passionately to live. Life is very attractive, if only as a toy to play with.'
A toy to play with! And to me it appeared a giant to contend with! " (Brittain pg. 199)
Roland, who before this was an optimistic intellectual, has since had his sense of life warped by the war. He now views it a small gift which, though still preferable to death, is only a minor phenomenon which he happens to be experiencing. In some way, he is dissociating himself from the war by viewing himself as a vessel through which Britain is fighting. To me, this is the most significant effect of the War. As their letters continue, they are consumed with death and the uncertainty of the future.
If there is anything psychologically tragic that the War caused in those who were a part of it, it was this inability to count on anything as permanent. Earlier on, in the story on the bottom half of page 167, Brittain describes how the conpany commanded ordered machine gun to be turned on the peaceful Saxons mending barbed wire above their trenches. That this was later described as "a smart piece of work" is evidence of the fact that human life went from being more precious than anything to being hardly worth considering. Roland and Vera deal with this indirectly, as they continually discuss a future in which Roland has died; they are forced to consider the ramifications of death even before it has come.
Comments
Jeff Drouin
Sun, 01/27/2013 - 15:38
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I'd like to expand upon your
I'd like to expand upon your comment that Roland is "dissociating himself from the war." What does his remark say about the integrity of the self? Given that multiplicity was a definitive aspect of the modern experience even before the War started, is there some special way in which the War achieves this effect of splitting?
Dissociation is also a psychological term (originating in Freudian psychoanalysis) to describe a defense mechanism (in response to a trauma) in which different parts of the mind no longer interact. For instance, in order to persevere through a traumatic event or memory, the empathy or the emotions in general might "dissociate" from the reasoning faculties, giving a person a very flat affect for the duration of the dissociative reaction. Do you think something like that might be happening here?
At any rate, you've made a number of very strong observations here, Will. Numbness toward life becomes an essential part of the experience of many serving in the conflict, as we'll see in other readings, especially Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises.
Will Boogert
Sun, 01/27/2013 - 17:25
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The pscyhological connotation
The pscyhological connotation is what I was going for when I said he was dissociating himself. When Roland writes, "I wonder if your metamorphosis has been as complete as my own. I feel a barbarian, a wild man of the woods, stiff, narrowed, practical, an incipient martinet perhaps," I think he is trying in one way to convince himself that he has adapted to the trenches well, and evolved into a good, natural soldier; and in another way, along the lines of Vera writing that "I had not yet realized...that only a process of complete adaptation, blotting out tastes and talents and even memories, made life sufferable for someone face to face with war at its worst", he is calling himself the "barbarian, a wild man of the woods" in order to make himself those things instead of Roland. I think her use of the word "adaptation" in this sense is synonymous with "dissociation". He becomes 'a soldier', something entirely separate from the "Roland" that exists in England.