"Facts are mere accessories to the truth, and we do not invite to our hearth the guest who can only remind us that on such a day we suffered calamity. Still less welcome is he who would make a Roman holiday of our misfortunes. Exaggeration of what was monstrous is quickly recognised as a sign of egotism, and that contrarious symptom of the same disease which pretends that what is accepted as monstrous was really little more than normal is equally unwelcome."

from A SUBALTERN ON THE SOMME in 1916: Mark VII (Max Plowman)
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(Tolkien as Post World War I Novelist)

There is also a matter of "the polarization of consciousness - what [Fussell] calls 'the gross dichotomizing' - imposed by the war - the habit of reading the world and all experience as a struggle between our side and 'the enemy'"
Fussell writes "'We' are all here on this side: 'the enemy' is over there. 'We' are individuals with names and personal identities; 'he' is a mere collective entity. We are visible; he is invisible. We are normal; he is grotesque. Our appurtenances are natural; his, bizarre. He is not as good as we are . . . Nevertheless, he threatens us and must be destroyed . . ."

Fussell, Paul, The Great War and Modern Memory (London, 1977), gets quoted in
Brogan, Hugh, "Tolkien's Great War", Children and Their Books: A Celebration of the Work of Iona and Peter Opie, (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989)
[permalink][comment] - posted by Mez @ 10/18/2002 03:37:00 am