Journey's End GCSE Student Guide

Andrew Maunder

• Publisher: Methuen Drama
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781474232302
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: British Drama
• Index: Literature

Written specifically for GCSE students by academics in the field, the Methuen Drama GCSE Guides conveniently gather indispensable resources and tips for successful understanding and writing all in one place, preparing students to approach their exams with confidence. Key features include a critical commentary of the play with extensive, clearly labelled analyses on themes, characters and context. They take studying drama even further with sections on dramatic technique, critical reception, related works, fascinating behind-the-scenes interviews with playwrights, directors or actors, and a helpful glossary of dramatic terms. Unmatched as a theatrical response to the First World War, R. C. Sherriff's Journey's End focuses on the experience of soldiers and the conditions in which they fought and died through a socially diverse regiment of English soldiers hiding in trenches in France. Carefully following the requirements of GCSE English Literature assessment objectives, these studies include expert advice on how to write about modern drama. With featured activities for group study and independent work, they are versatile and valuable to students and teachers alike.

CHAPTER ONE

The Play

Introduction

Journey’s End is a three-act play by R[obert] C[edric] Sherriff (1896–1975). It has an all-male cast. Its events take place in an officers’ dugout attached to the British trenches at St Quentin in Picardy, in northern France, in the days preceding the German army’s offensive of March 1918 in the last year of the First World War (1914–1918). Since its first staging in 1928, Journey’s End has become part of the canon of First World War literature and is regularly performed.¹ Claims for the play’s importance have appeared in a multitude of settings and it is read, taught and performed throughout the world, and its presence felt in many different locations.

Why is Journey’s End an important play? Answers to this question fluctuate wildly. There is Journey’s End, the anti-war play which has shown each new generation the sacrifices made in, and damage wrought by, the First World War. It is this Journey’s End, for example, which in the midst of the First World War Centenary beginning in 2014, prompts pleas for its relevance at time of ‘increasing awareness of the damage to young people who fight for their country, and survive’ (Oxford Times, 25 September 2014). There is another Journey’s End – the snobbish, reactionary play focused on public-school educated young men and which articulates numerous anxieties – fears of women, of the working-classes, of homosexuality disguised as male-bonding. Then there is the play which deals very movingly in universal, timeless issues, fundamental human emotions – love, selflessness, friendship, self-sacrifice, bravery. Whatever one’s take on it, what is certainly true is that these different views of Journey’s End set the terms for a critical debate that is still being played out and is certainly set to continue – and in which you, as a critic, are being invited to participate in this guide.

Reading a play

You will know that reading a play is not the same as reading a novel. In a useful book, Studying Plays (1998), Simon Shepherd and Mick Wallis make the point that a printed version of a play is always ‘a strange – incomplete – object’. They go on: ‘The business of reading a play is rather unsatisfactory because we continually have the sense that what we are looking at is only words on a page, and that those words have yet to come alive in the mouths of real human beings standing on a stage’ (1–2). This argument is as true for Journey’s End as much as for any play. When picking up our printed copy we need to use our imagination, we have to visualize. In particular, we need to pay attention to the following.

Stage directions (the words in italics indicating movement and physical response). Stage directions are important for giving information to the actor (and director) about when and how characters move. They can also suggest emotion and mood (anger, unhappiness, joy, hate, etc.). They can indicate power relations between characters. Do characters stand up or sit down in each other’s presence? Do they bow or salute each other? Stage directions can also indicate vital aspects of characters’ feelings towards each other. One way of acknowledging them is to have one person reading the stage directions when your group reads the play aloud. You should also think about how you – if asked to direct the play – would want actors to interpret particular gestures and lines.

Setting (where the events takes place). It is evident that R.C. Sherriff was also very interested in the ‘look’ of the play, not least how the environment, ‘a squalid cavern in the ground’ as he put it, impacts on the behaviour of his characters (No Leading Lady, 47). The choice of a dugout as the play’s setting was significant in another way. A dugout, Sherriff explained was ‘the perfect natural setting’ for a play. He continued:

It [the dugout that he remembered from serving in the army] was usually one of a chain of dugouts linked together by short tunnels, each with its own way up to the trench by a steep flight of steps. The tunnel to one side would lead to the dugout where some of the officers slept, the opposite one to … the place where the cook-batman prepared the meals. This made it easy to move the characters in and out as needed. An officer would go up the steps to take his turn of duty in the trenches: the one he relieved would come in for a meal, and then go off stage to the adjoining dugout for some sleep when he was no longer required. With a little simple planning you could bring the characters together and disperse them easily (35–6).

Dialogue (the words spoken by the characters). Dialogue has several functions. It helps the audience’s understanding of characters; their emotions and their situations. It also carries information about people and places. Finally, dialogue can help advance the story, for example when one character describes to another character something which has taken place offstage or in the past. This is sometimes called narrated action. In his autobiography called No Leading Lady (a reference to the fact that there are no women in Journey’s End), R.C. Sherriff stressed his attempts to write natural-sounding dialogue. He recalled that he wanted ‘to use the words that people spoke in everyday life, words and expressions that I would employ myself’ (No Leading Lady, 34). This needs qualifying, of course, because real speech – the way we talk in our everyday lives – is often rambling and disorganized. In a play every word has to count because space and time are limited.

The rest of this section contains a short summary of Journey’s End intended as a reference guide. It cannot tell you everything you need to know about the text, not least because, as we have noted, a play is comprised of different ingredients which work together to tell the story.

Things to do

As you read each scene of the play, you need to pay attention to what happens between the characters, but you also need to imagine yourself as a member of the audience looking at the scene. What do you see? What do the characters do? Becoming aware of how this happens will help you discuss more confidently what the scene contributes to the meaning of the play as a whole.

Overview

Act one

Place: A dugout in the British trenches at St Quentin in Picardy, northern France

Time: Monday 18 March 1918, evening

The play begins in medias res (Latin: in the middle of things) with the relief of this section of the Front Line by Captain Dennis Stanhope’s Company. Lieutenant Osborne arrives first to take over from Hardy, the ineffectual captain of the outgoing company. Sherriff quickly establishes the strange atmosphere of this part of the trenches – jolly but tense. Much of this section is expository – establishing characters, mood, relationships, letting the audience know what has happened previously, and what is going to happen, notably ‘the big German attack’ (10).² A ‘tattered map’ is produced and the audience learns that the men are responsible for ‘about two hundred yards of front line.’ They are also close to the Germans whom they can hear at night (11).

The opening exchange also conveys the sense of the trenches as a place of gossip and rumour. Through this, Sherriff builds up the audience’s expectations of what young Captain Stanhope will be like. The audience learns that Stanhope, described as ‘a boy’, is ‘[d]rinking like a fish, as usual’ but that his reputation for bravery and efficiency is unaffected (12–13). However, they learn, too, that he is under severe mental strain. Hardy tells of how, when last on leave, ‘all of a sudden he jumped up and knocked all the glasses off the table! Lost control of himself; and then he – sort of – came to – and cried’ (13).

The incompetent Hardy is anxious to get away before Stanhope has an opportunity to reprimand him about the poor state of the trenches. Hardy leaves and Mason, a cockney soldier servant acting as cook, arrives to prepare supper. Mason then exits and Lieutenant James Raleigh comes down the dugout steps. He is excited and although this is his first time in the trenches he is feeling lucky. Stanhope was his hero at school and, thanks to some string-pulling, he has secured a place in Stanhope’s Company. The audience learns of a further connection between the two men, that there is, or has been, a romantic relationship between Stanhope and Raleigh’s sister (who is never seen). Very often in a first scene a problem or complication develops which looks as if it is going to disrupt the characters’ lives. The war is one problem, of course, but Raleigh’s arrival is another. The order and sense of routine which Stanhope has established is going to be disturbed.

Captain Stanhope and Lieutenant Trotter arrive. Stanhope, who is twenty-one but seems much older, stares at Raleigh as though he cannot believe it. He treats the new arrival in an unfriendly way including the question, ‘How did you – get here?’ (23). He is suspicious about how Raleigh has turned up in his trench and states sarcastically that it is, ‘Rather a coincidence’ (23). This initial encounter sets up one of the main tensions between two of the play’s characters and the audience cannot help but notice it.

Mason then serves dinner – to the delight of Trotter who is obsessed with food. However, even he is annoyed by the absence of pepper intended as a ‘disinfectant’ for the strange yellow soup they are served. ‘I mean – after all – war’s bad enough with pepper – (noisy sip) – but war without pepper – it’s – bloody awful!’ (25). It is important to note the men’s concern with apparently trivial things not least because this is a recurrent detail. It contributes to (a) the sense that Sherriff is showing things as they were and (b) the strategies the men cling onto to retain a sense of normality. Meal-times round the table are an important feature of the play. They offer a break in the action but are also a mark of civilized values being continued even in the middle of a war zone. Eating together is a form of communion, of people coming together.

Lieutenant Hibbert comes down the stairs after guard duty. He refuses supper saying he is suffering from what he calls ‘beastly neuralgia’ and withdraws to his dugout (28). Stanhope is scathing and unsympathetic. Hibbert is described as, ‘Another little worm trying to wriggle home’ (29). Stanhope begins to drink whisky, a substance he uses as a form of anaesthetic. He confides in Osborne about his feelings concerning Raleigh’s arrival. In particular, he is worried that Raleigh will write to his sister and tell her about how Stanhope is faring. Accordingly he decides t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series page
• Title Page
• Contents
• 1 The Play
• 2 Behind the Scenes
• 3 Writing About the Play
• Bibliography
• Index
• Copyright