The Novel Birdsong, Which Excites by Its Romantic and Realistic Combination

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Love and war, passion and blood are the most amazing combination in the literature. Reading the novels about passionate love affairs during the war time, when the atmosphere of danger and killing flies in the air is exiting and interesting. Sebastian Faulks is one of the male writers who managed to create the excellent novel, where love is great but not melodramatic, where relations develops stream, but at the end no dramatic and tears are introduced. Male authors usually write about battles in the war novels, but Sebastian Faulks managed to combine, war and love, introduced it during different times and supporting by the beautiful landscape created the novel, Birdsong, which excites by its romantic and realistic combination.

The style of the story is rather unusual, as the author uses some different narrative techniques, including narrator monologue, direct speech and dramatic irony (Wheeler 23). The narration is from the third person, and the reader may interfere in the mind of all characters and see their thoughts, and feel their emotions. The horrors of the war are introduced by the narrator through the language, which is mostly fact descriptive, that emotional. The whole picture is understood from the words, not from the imagery. There are several main characters in the story, Isabelle, Jeanne, Weir and Jack, but still, the whole events come through Stephen and the conclusions, which the author wants to show the reader, also come through Stephen. This is the reason, why Stephen is called compelling character (Wheeler 23)

Analyzing the plot of the story, first thing which attracts attention is the structure of the text. The whole novel is organized according to three time periods: before the war, the war time, and after the war. Within this three big and conditional periods, the other seven may be derived, which introduce the before time periods, the years during the World War I and the years after the war end. Being specific, France in 1910, 1916, 1917 and 1918, 1978 and 1978 years is introduced to the reader. This years division represents the reader with different life periods and events in the life of the main character. Every new period is characterized by different events, which puts some new corrections in the life of the main character and people who surround him. The significance of the novel structure is also defined by the insertions of Stephens granddaughter, who has found his dairy and wants to get to know what has happened.

Slowly turning to the main character, Stephen Wraysford is the Englishmen, who came to France in 1910 in business. The changes in the character of Stephen Wraysford may be noticed, if to consider different periods in the novel. First, Stephen is a simple man, who comes to France in business, falling in love with the textile factory owner, Isabelle, the member of the family he had come in. The all-consuming passion, which develops between them is so stream, and with the same power, the relations finish. Appearing in the story in 1916, Stephen has changed, as the war has come and war is the time where no any quarters or forgiving are acceptable. Stephen becomes battle-hardened officer, who has to cope with the current time and to take up the mask of cynical fatalism. The author of the novel made his best and showed not only the battles, but the consequences, to which these battles and war in general leads, what changes in the behavior and mind occur.

One of the main destinations of the novel is that [Faulks] prose is precise and visceral, allowing the horror of what he describes to emerge unmelodramatically from the language (Rennison 66). In other words, the events are reproduced in the readers minds not through the pictures, which the author shows, but through the language. All the details are given and the reader has nothing to contrive. As the example, the following episode may be taken, when the author describes the soldier, who suffers from shell-shock:

Tippers face appeared to have lost all its circulation. The whites of his eyes, only a few inches from Stephens face, bore no red tracery of blood vessels; there was only a brown circle with a dilated pupil floating in an area of white which was enlarged by the spasmodic opening of the eye (Faulks 140).

The quote description is the detailed expression of the face of the soldier, where no approximate and uncertain images exist. The language in the novel is structured in such a way that the reader understands everything immediately, without creating some thing in the mind. It may be noted that such language structure is attributable to the male part of writers.

As it was mentioned above, there are two main themes in the novel, war and love, which interconnect with each other. The passionate love binds with war events, which in both ways prevent and support the relations. The first love affair, which is introduced in the novel is Stephen and Isabelles relations, who escape from the usual life and experience a few stolen years of happiness (Lesher 205). Falling in love for the second time, Stephen gets married with Jeanne Fourmentier, who is Isabelles sister. By this fact, the author wanted to show the curve and twisting ways of life, which the war may give to the peoples destinies. Being passionately loved by Isabelle, and Stephens feelings were also deep, the fate brings the situation in such a way that Isabelles sister becomes the wife and the supporter through the life to Stephen.

The plot of the story is exciting and curly. The structure of the novel organization supports this twisting. Moreover, the novel is organized a little non chronological, with some insertions, which respond to the other time. Stephens granddaughter finds the dairy of her grandfather and founds out the situation when Stephen has promised Jack, when he was dying, to care about his dynasty, the descendant. After being acknowledged about this, Stephens granddaughter decides to keep this promise and tells about her pregnancy to her mother, who surprisingly supports her. Reading the parts about death and understanding that the new life is so close, the change of world outlook occurs. The understanding comes that people are worried about so many things, which are not very important, as life and death should be of the main consideration in peoples life. The war is the only way to give people the opportunity to overestimate the life priorities and to change them. The war novels are created for people to experience the war events in unreal world, wishing never been faced with the war in reality.

Thinking about death people begin to think about real aim in the life, about things, which have been done, and the analysis of the past life occurs. The same happens with Stephen. Having appeared in the war, knowing the cost of love and life, Stephen thinks over all his previous considerations and begins to look differently on the life. The cost of friendship became understood and the relations under the pressure (Clark and Phillips 98). One of the main ideas of the story is that most of soldiers, being wounded want to dye, they do not want to see the horrors of the war, but Stephen has the different opinion. He wants to live, as being on the war, he has understood a real value of life. He wants to survive, in order to enjoy the whole life in future. From day to day, the determination to survive arises in Stephens mind, and does not want to live the previous life, the new life should be started, as the philosophical changes have occurred.

In conclusion, male authors usually write about battles in the war novels, but Sebastian Faulks managed to combine, war and love, introduced it during different times and supporting by the beautiful landscape created the novel, Birdsong, which excites by its romantic and realistic combination. Having come through the war, people change, and this change usually occurs on the philosophical level, inside people, and their understanding of life and its aim is also changed dramatically. The love novel about war is great contribution to the world literature treasury, as reading the story people begin to understand the same notions, which people understood being on the war.

Works Cited

Clark, Giles and Angus Phillips. Inside book publishing. New York: Taylor & Francis, 2008. Print.

Faulks, Sebastian. Birdsong. London: Vintage, 2005. Print.

Lesher, Linda Parent. The best novels of the nineties: a readers guide. North Carolina: McFarland, 2000. Print.

Rennison, Nick. Contemporary British novelists. London: Routledge, 2005. Print.

Wheeler, Pat. Sebastian Faulkss Birdsong: a readers guide. Continuum International Publishing Group, 2002. Print.

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The Novel Birdsong, Which Excites by Its Romantic and Realistic Combination

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