Saturday, April 7, 2018

War is Certainly Hell (Birdsong Part Two, France 1916)

Faulks' style is never content to remain stuck in a single person's perspective for too long, and he is certainly right to do so.  War is a strange thing in that a person can walk through the exact same events and have an entirely different perspective. 

My self-critical brain stands up and says, "Yeah, but you can say that about life in general."  You could say that, but it seems to me to be even more true when we talk about soldiers in war.  The effect is  amped up like colors under blacklight.  That may actually be a more apt metaphor than I realize.  There is a concept in art that states that the viewer of any artistic piece brings all the psychological pieces of themselves to bear onto the piece.  When someone views, reads, or listens to a piece of art it acts as a sort of mirror so that the person isn't seeing the thing objectively.  They bring a massive amount of subjectivity independent of any creator's intention.  War, from what I've read, turns this (and everything in a human being) up to 11.

The second episode of the seven opens with a new character, Jack Firebrace.  He's a miner from back in England who joined up to dig tunnels from the English trenches into German territory.  From there they set a mine to punch a hole inside enemy territory.  The difficulties for Jack are to numerous to mention.  Each hole is only three feet wide, timbers that hold up the walls falter, explosions overhead destroy the structural integrity of the tunnel, and, as we discover in the opening scene, the ever present danger of discovery by German tunnelers coming from the other direction.

I've never in my reading experience had someone such write in such a way that I experienced full on claustrophobia in the middle of a quite open room.  Throughout the entire second part of the novel Faulks does a truly admirable job of making you feel like as if you are actually there, in a situation in a part of the world and a time that you never could have experienced on your own.  All great writing does this and Faulks is as much a master as Tolkien in world building.

As the perspective shifts between Jack and Stephen in the days leading up to the climatic big push you watch people come apart in vastly different ways including our protagonists.  Jack is dealing with issues from his wife and sickly son back home by throwing himself into his mining.  Helplessness can be ignored when you have something to do with your hands.  Stephen is given a group of men to command and begins to suspect that they are being led as lambs to the slaughter despite the reassurances of his superiors.  Stephen clearly uses the war to give his life some sort of meaning since Isabelle left him with their baby still in her womb, and how he deals with that comes out in some surprising ways, one of which I'll get to soon. 

The thing that sets this book apart is, of course, the details.  It's abundantly clear that Faulks had to do massive amounts of research including getting ahold of all the veterans from the war still alive.  There are so many things in this novel that he couldn't make up or simply intuit.  As someone who is addicted to trivia, it was a dream to find glorious tidbits on every page that both illumined and horrified me.  As a general pacifist unwilling to mobilize and authorize the deaths of hundreds of thousands of young men for a cause other than defense of our own country, it did the incredible job of both affirming and challenging my position. 

This is where "Birdsong" far excels as a war novel up against "Catch-22".  I was disgusted with "Catch-22" and may have even referred to it as an "abortion of a novel" so filled with nihilism and self congratulatory cleverness that swung at the load bearing pillars of virtue and nobility, laughing maniacally as the structure collapses on itself and wondering why nothing magically sprung up to take its place.  While "Catch-22" deals with many of the same issues but paints them as a pointless farce.  In "Birdsong" the characters actually struggle with the horrors of war and virtue.  There is a tension there that simply can't exist in "Catch-22".  This is specifically highlighted in the way each deals with prostitution that the soldiers use to "comfort" themselves.

In "Catch-22" the main characters engage the prostitutes mechanically, looking at them with efficient pragmatism.  When one soldier beats a prostitute the other characters concern and reason for stopping him and trying to smoothe things over is only so that they will be allowed back.  They take care of the problem with money, chocolates, and silk hosiery.  The women have as much function as an ATM further highlighting the pointlessness of existence and general ennui that is prevalent in much post-modernist writing.

In "Birdsong", Stephen knows that his company and the company of one of his fellow men of rank, Weir, is going to make the push and in all likelihood be fodder for the German guns.  It's so sure that when he looks through a pair of binoculars at the enemy position there is even a sign that says "Welcome, 29th British Infantry!" hanging over the German artillery position.   Stephen has known for some time that Weir was still a virgin and he decides that this is a travesty that he can rectify before they certainly die.

Wier protests once he realizes what Stephen is up to but relents once he is shoved into the whorehouse.  Stephen is all big talk, but his heart seems to be in the "right" place.  He thinks back to Isabelle and how the union with feminine flesh illuminated his life.  He can't imagine existence without having tasted that at least once.  Certainly it burned him, and crippled him in some ways, but to him it was light and nourishing light at that.  Weir lets out a bellow of rage and kicks open the door blaming Stephen for what happened.  Stephen freaks out, wondering what Weir has done but comes to find out that the rage was only due to the fact that his friend couldn't bring himself  do what Stephen expected.  The prostitute laughs and offers Stephen to take Weirs place.  He did pay for it after all.  Stephen ascents as long as its with a younger prostitute.  Once she touches Stephen his whole world shifts and he sees the darkness, the perversion of the situation.  It's not the warm, loving touch of Isabelle that he assumed was common to all woman.  He's disgusted as he wrestles with his conscience and makes a fumbling but polite exit.

That is ultimately what sets it apart; the struggle with conscience, the endurance of virtue in the darkest of circumstances, the seeing through of duty even when certain death is before you.  Those elements are often found in the most enduring stories of heroes.  The difference between the two is similar to the difference between Loki and Thor.  We can do without worshiping the cowardly trickster as a species.  We cannot do without tales of self sacrifice for the greater good, the denial of self for the others, or the wrestling with virtue because it is right. 

Naturally, and I half-expect this, the novel could take a terrible turn any minute now.  We are moving from the front line at Amiens and going to 1978 in the next part.  We shall see how that goes. 

Pax,

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