The Reality of War Exposed in Journeys End by R.C Sheriff
In the play “Journey’s end” R.C Sherrif recreates the tremendous
stress and fear by the men at the front in the First World War. In
this essay I am going to focus on two characters, who show stress and
fear. The two characters the essay will focus on are Stanhope, who is
the captain and Hibbert who is an officer. A couple of background
realities about the war are that it started in 1914 and a numerous
countries were changed like Germany and England. This war was
dissimilar to other wars that were formerly fought because they used
more up to date weapons such as gas bombs and machine guns. It was
estimated that nine million people died. R.C Sherriff was once himself
in the World War one, as an officer in the East Surrey Regiment. He
was injured in the battle of Passchendael in 1917. Journeys end is
based upon his past experiences in the war - reflecting the way he and
his comrades lived and fought and repeating some of its events. R.C
Sherriff wrote other play, a few novels and quite a few film scripts.
R.C Sherriff is best remembered for Journey’s End.
R.C Sherriff reconstructs the war in Journey’s end by making the
audience feel as if they are there in the war with the characters. The
play is based in the officers dug out, which was where the most action
took place. In order to make the audience feel as if they were there
in the war R.C Sherriff made notes in the stage directions like for
example “the red and green glow of German alarm rockets comes faintly
through the dugout door” in this example the stage which the play
would be carried out would have been pitch black and red green
flashing lights and loud bangs which represents the war, it makes it
as if the audience feel as if they were there. The audience would feel
like they involved with the characters because of personal things they
were saying, for example an argument.
The dug out which is shown in most scenes...