How Does Sherriff Describe The Reality Of War

How does R.C. Sherriff successfully manage to describe the horrific effects of war on different soldiers? People think they know everything about war just because they have seen dozens of war themed movies and plays. A movie always portrays the soldiers and commanders as unbreakable men who die as heroes or go back to their countries, unharmed and unaffected but this play shows the reality of war and how it breaks or makes a soldier. There is a big misconception about the idea of war, it is not fun and it is not an action genre movie. War is a short word but it contains so many tragedies and mysteries that only people who have experienced it can describe and that is why the play ‘Journey’s End’ which is written by R.C. Sherriff is the
Stanhope was introduced in the play as an alcoholic when Hardy addresses his drinking issue and asks Osbourne if Stanhope has been “drinking like a fish, as usual” referring alcohol as something Stanhope won’t be alive without; a simile is used to describe how Stanhope drinks alcohol like water. A bit later in the play, Hardy confirms that he is talking about alcohol when he says, “I never did see a youngster put away the whiskey he does” which shows that Stanhope did not drink alcohol like normal young men; he drank it to the point of intoxication where he couldn’t remember anything. Raleigh however, introduced us to the old Stanhope who loathed alcohol to the point where “he caught some chaps in a study room with a bottle of whiskey… He gave them a dozen each with a cricket stump,” Raleigh shows us Stanhope’s strong hate for alcohol before he became a commander at war, he would hate seeing people drink alcohol so much that he punished them himself but after his experience in war, he had to use the thing he hated the most to keep himself sane. Raleigh accused Stanhope of drinking and having fun after Osbourne was dead, Stanhope’s outburst in this scene was very dramatic, he gets furious because of the accusation and says, “To forget you little fool- to forget! D’you understand? To forget!” The dash was used by R.C. Sherriff to show how Stanhope was so angry that he did
Before joining the company, Raleigh was an enthusiastic boy who was also lost in the misconception of war. All Raleigh cared about was his role model Stanhope and during the war, he even starts to question his relationship with Stanhope. When Raleigh first arrives and meets Osbourne, he says that he is “keen to get out here” which shows the excitement he has to be a courageous soldier. Raleigh was very inexperienced and that made him very naïve, he “only left school at the end of last summer term” Not long later, Raleigh is sent to fight with Osbourne and that is where his glorious ideas change and he starts to sink back to reality. He turns from naïve to responsible after Osborne’s death, the change in his personality is stated by Hibbert when he tells Stanhope and Trotter that Raleigh “liked being up there with the men better than down here with us.” Stanhope and the other officers were downstairs drinking, laughing and forgetting the horrible things that happened in war but Raleigh was downstairs with the soldiers. He wanted to take the responsibility and fight in the front line and live like them instead of drinking and enjoying his time. The night Osborne dies, Stanhope asks Raleigh why he did not eat with the commanders, where Raleigh replies with, “I didn’t think you –er–“ the play writer used dashes most of the time when Raleigh was speaking to show how Raleigh