Great war and modern memory. The Great War and Modern Memory (豆瓣) 2022-12-08
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Cold Sassy Tree is a novel by Olive Ann Burns that was published in 1984. The story is set in the small town of Cold Sassy, Georgia in 1906 and follows the life of 14-year-old Will Tweedy as he navigates the complexities of growing up and coming of age.
At the start of the novel, Will's grandfather, E. Rucker Blakeson, passes away suddenly, leaving Will to deal with the grief and confusion that comes with such a loss. However, Blakeson's death is not the only event that Will must face during the course of the novel. Soon after, Blockson's widow, Miss Love Simpson, announces that she will be marrying a man named Rucker Lattimore, much to the shock and dismay of the community.
As the novel progresses, Will becomes increasingly involved in the lives of Miss Love and Rucker, and he begins to learn about the complexities of relationships and the importance of being true to oneself. Along the way, he also confronts his own feelings about love, loss, and growing up, as he grapples with the changes taking place in his own life.
One of the themes that emerges in Cold Sassy Tree is the idea of tradition and change. Throughout the novel, Will and the other characters in the story are confronted with the challenge of balancing the traditions and values of their small town with the changes and progress that are taking place in the world around them. This is particularly evident in the relationship between Miss Love and Rucker, as their unconventional marriage defies the expectations and norms of the community.
Another theme that is explored in the novel is the power of love and the importance of family. Despite the challenges and obstacles that Will and the other characters face, the bond of family remains strong, and love ultimately triumphs over adversity. This is demonstrated in the way that Will's family comes together to support one another during difficult times, and in the way that Miss Love and Rucker's love for each other helps them to overcome the obstacles that they face.
In conclusion, Cold Sassy Tree is a poignant and thought-provoking novel that deals with themes of tradition, change, love, and family. Its depiction of the struggles and triumphs of growing up and coming of age will resonate with readers of all ages, and its engaging and well-developed characters will leave a lasting impression.
The Great War and Modern Memory by Paul Fussell
That by itself was a huge reorientation of my thinking. For many, the unreality of their role in the war felt just like the pretense behind acting in a play, the three acts naturally fell to training in the first act, time at the front for the second, and return home the hoped for third act. He was also realistic. Yeah, how dare they. For this special edition, the author has prepared a new afterword and a suggested further reading list.
The uneloquent Sir Douglas' attempt to offer some words of inspiration to the BEF during the German Spring Offensive of 1918 which resulted in the catastrophic rout of the British army along a considerable front earns him a comparison to Hitler, for example. Ethnic and nationalistic strife was acute, but had been managed through a series of recent conflicts in the Balkans. There are various arguments going on in here, but the main thrust is that much of how we think about the modern world — indeed our whole contemporary mindset — has its origin in ideas that came about as an attempt to respond to the unprecedented scale and irony of the 1914-18 conflict. This masterful book, published in 1975, provides a rewarding set of explorations in the way our experience of the war has been captured by literature and thereby filtered into our collective memory and understanding of it. It focuses on the 1914-1918 experience of the British Army on the Western Front. Fussell of course also deals with the War Poets like Sassoon and This is a wonderful, deep book which looks at the literature of the Great War, and the cultural imprint of that war which still echoes today in so many ways. The past is always present in his way of thinking: The culture of the past … is not only the memory of mankind, but our own buried life.
. It's both a wonderful and achingly sad introduction to the poets and writers who emerged or didn't from World War I, as well as an eye-opening description of how that conflict shaped modern life. If you want a book that confirms practically every bias exhibited by what "everyone knows" about the First World War, The Great War and Modern Memory is the way to go -- in part, in fact, it is responsible for crafting what "everyone knows," so thoroughly influential has it been. It is difficult to think of a scholarly work in recent years that has more deeply engaged the reader at both the intellectual and emotional level. Fussell has given me a detailed introduction to new authors whom I knew of, but had not read, like Edmund Blunden.
He has elsewhere made it clear in an essay included in his Thank God for the Atom Bomb collection, though I can't remember its name that he thinks authors who respond to their critics in depth are idiots, so I guess it was never meant to be, but an ounce of humility might have been nice. In many ways the victory of irony has meant the death of genuine moral reflection, because it makes it seem as though nothing high-minded in the world can actually exist or be aspired to. As he begins to talk about Woodard, he decides to exit the interview early. This time before starting, I committed finishing it within a two-eek period and was successful. He explores the British experience on the western Front from 1914 to 1918, focusing on the various literary means by which it has been remembered, conventionalized and mythologized. Fussell is nothing if not an engaging writer, and the analyses he provides of Graves, Blunden et al.
The Great War and Modern Memory Summary & Study Guide
There is the use of sunrise and sunset to denote beginnings and endings. Neville Leslie Woodroffe, 1st Battalion Irish Guards the regiment in which Rudyard Kipling lost two sons, and whose official history he wrote. I have known of this book for years, and finally picked it up after my reading of Into the Silence reacquainted me with the WW1 experiences of young British men. Retrieved January 23, 2019. So, he fixed his eyes on the trench wall in front of him. One of the best books I've read on WWI. Fussell uses Sassoon memoirs.
Retrieved 23 February 2012. The British lost about a million people in the war. An important contribution to our understanding of how we came to make World War I part of our minds. But as the author says, homosexual acts were barred, but mass slaughter was encouraged. This is the first time I've truly understood war, and I see how it had to be done through literature. They had to make everyone think that the soldier was going off to have fun somewhere when he went to training, and different circumstances are looked at.
The Great War and Modern Memory Quotes by Paul Fussell
A friend called this read to mind today, and I got to thinking about historiography and its pleasures, the mental laziness of accepting the nonce-words bandied about instead of seeking out the contemporaneous views and language. Fussell's landmark study of WWI remains as original and gripping today as ever before: a literate, literary, and illuminating account of the Great War, the one that changed a generation, ushered in the modern era, and revolutionized how we see the world. All but the most peasant level of soldiers were surprisingly steeped in classical literature and Victorian romantic and pastoral traditions. That by itself was a huge reorientation of my thinking. Haig's Somme offensive, which cost the British 420,000 men and achieved nothing, is the archetype of the pointless slaughter of the war. The pointless bloodbath that actually ensued was so different from the glorious image hoped for, and so horrifying, that it led to the widespread emergence of "irony" among those who were forced to confront the grim reality. And the dedications to fellow soldiers that I would have just taken as being the sorts of things soldiers say to each other — that we will always be closer than brothers and so on — clearly often had much deeper meanings than I'd suspected.
The Great War and Modern Memory PDF Details Author: Book Format: Paperback Original Title: The Great War and Modern Memory Number Of Pages: 414 pages First Published in: January 1st 1975 Latest Edition: June 12th 2013 Language: English Awards: National Book Award for Arts and Letters 1976 , National Book Critics Circle Award 1975 Genres: Formats: audible mp3, ePUB Android , kindle, and audiobook. The 100,000-strong force of British Regulars ferried across the channel in August 1914 to protect Belgium and assist the French was all used up by early November. Retrieved June 30, 2022. Fussell considers only Sassoon's George Sherston series and does so in terms of the "us-them" dichotomy of the combat situation and its mental residue. Yet, we remain surrounded by war.
