Stephen, one of the protagonists of Sebastian Faulks's novel Birdsong, is an English soldier fighting on the front lines during World War I. In the course of the narrative, he experiences various traumas, including witnessing the death of his closest friend and losing the love of his life.
At what point in the novel does Stephen have an epiphany? It happens in part 1, when Stephen pays a visit to a cathedral. He is not a religious person; but in the church, he foresees the terrible devastation that the war will bring, and he glimpses the personal tragedy he will face:
He saw a picture in his mind of a terrible piling up of the dead. It came from his contemplation of the church, but it had its own clarity: the row on row, the deep rotting earth hollowed out to hold them, while the efforts of the living, with all their works and wars and great buildings, were no more than the beat of a wing against the weight of time.
Stephen's epiphany in the church speaks to the human toll that a war takes. The presentiment of tragedy is sobering. Imagining or even expecting the "terrible piling up of the dead" and the knowledge that the dead could include one's own friends or, indeed, oneself, is enough to make a non-religious man walk into a church and begin to pray. Stephen prays to God:
Save all of us. Save me.
But in this moment of epiphany, Stephen seems to know that even God can not save humans from suffering at each others' hands.
Sunday, August 20, 2017
At what point in the book does Stephen have a epiphany?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Summarize the major research findings of "Toward an experimental ecology of human development."
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
Based on findings of prior research, the author, Bronfenbrenner proposes that methods for natural observation research have been applied in ...
-
Show that $\displaystyle a(t) = v(t) \frac{dV}{ds}$ of a particle that moves along a straight line with displacement $s(t)$, velocity $v(t)$...
-
Does the quote "a plague on both your houses" have any significance in the play of Romeo and Juliet?Mercutio utters this line -- "A plague o' both your houses!" -- after he has been killed by Tybalt. Tybalt came looking for R...
-
Determine $\displaystyle \frac{dy}{dx}$ of $y^5 + x^2y^3 = 1 + x^4 y$ by Implicit Differentiation. $\displaystyle \frac{d}{dx}(y^5) + ...
-
Find the indefinite integral $\displaystyle \int \sec^4 \left( \frac{x}{2} \right) dx$. Illustrate by graphing both the integrand and its an...
-
Determine the area of the region bounded by the hyperbola $9x^2 - 4y^2 = 36$ and the line $ x= 3$ By using vertical strips, Si...
-
The narrator of "Sonny's Blues" describes the neighborhood as "filled with a hidden menace which was its very breath of l...
No comments:
Post a Comment