Week 7 Discussion

150-200 word response. This week, we turn our attention in quite a few directions, but our discussion questions ask you to think specifically about the Battle of the Somme and also about our memoirs for the week, Goodbye to All That and RH Tawney's essay, "The Attack." 

1. What do you think is the meaning of Robert Graves' title Goodbye to All That? What is the 'all that' that he is referring to?
2. How do RH Tawney and Robert Graves' accounts of the Battle of the Somme compare? Can you find any passages about actual combat in Graves's classic memoir as vivid as Tawney's account of his experience in the Battle of the Somme?  What makes Tawney's account so powerful?
3. Reflect on the following passage from "The Attack." How do you interpret RH Tawney's account of his emotions during his participation in the Battle of the Somme?

"Now I knew it was all right. I shouldn't be frightened and I shouldn't lose my head. Imagine the joy of that discovery! I felt quite happy and self-possessed. It wasn't courage. That, I imagine, is the quality of facing danger which one knows to be danger, of making one's spirit triumph over the bestial desire to live in this body. But I knew that I was in no danger. I knew I shouldn't be hurt; knew it positively, much more positively than I know most things I'm paid for knowing."

REQUIRED BOOKS: double check questions for which books to use!

Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of AugustMichael Howard, 

The First World WarGabriel Chevallier, 

Fear: A Novel of World War I

Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising

Louis Barthas, Poilu: The World War I Notebooks of Corporal Louis Barthas, Barrelmaker 1914-1918

Robert Graves, Good-bye to All That

Ernst Jünger, Storm of Steel