Paragraph Analysis - Birdsong:Part 2

"The second hand of his watch in slow motion. Twenty-nine past. The whistle in his mouth. His foot on the ladder. He swallowed hard and blew.
He clambered out and looked around him. It was for a moment completely quiet as the bombardement ended and the German guns also stopped. Skylarks wheeled and sang high in the cloudless sky. He felt alone, as though he had stumbled on this fresh world at the instant of its creation.
Then the artillery began to lay down the first barrage and the German machine guns resumed. To his left Stephen saw men trying to emerge from the trench but being smashed by bullets before they could stand. The gaps in the wire became jammed with bodies."
(Page 225-226)

In this section Faulks beautifully captures the emotions of Stephen, and the feeling and change of the world around him immediately before the attack. We are taken from slow motion, to completely still, to sudden action when the chaotic reality ensues.

At the beginning, time seems to slow down, and this is parallelled in the writing because of the short sentences and the absence of verbs in them. These 5 statements take us step by step through Stephen's pre-battle checklist, and give us an insight into his mind. Going through these simple things slowly and detached was probably a way to cope with the huge amount of stress and the nervousness he would have been feeling. We can tell he is under immense pressure because he swallows hard, as if he is steadying himself one last time before climbing into unfamiliar circumstances.

The second section uses longer, more complex sentences which is juxtaposed with the previous one. The way this paragraph decribes no mans land makes it feel as if time has slowed down even more, to a still and silent moment in time. This move from sharp, short phrases to longer descriptive sentences perhaps portrays how surreal the situation was for the soldiers, and their mixed emotions because of it. This paragraph in particular presents humans in a negative light, 'clambered' and 'stumbled' in contrast to the wheeling and singing of the skylarks, this becomes particularly apparent as the battle commences and we see fully the disaster that was the Battle of the Somme. The 'fresh world' the Stephen encounters could be understood as the calm before the storm perhaps, or taken ironically to suggest this mass slaughter that is about to happen is a whole new world, created by man. This is why the birdsong is so important, because it contrasts so awfully to the carnage about to take place beneath.

Finally, the last paragraph moves more quickly as it describes the beginnings of the battle. The verbs 'jammed' and 'smashed' denote action, however they are terribly negative, not at all the victorious triumph that was expected. This sudden jump from stillness to horrific action is a harrowing juxtaposition that highlights the ridiculousness and horror that this battle was.