Rene is employed by a textile factory, and lives an outwardly happy, middle class existence with his much younger wife. Both Rene and Isabelle are unhappy in their marriage, however, and soon Stephen and Isabelle engage in an affair.
This domestic discord is set against the political discord of unhappy industrial workers, who eventually go on strike. Isabelle eventually reveals the relationship with Stephen to her husband. The nastier Azaire is, the more he drives his wife into Stephen's arms, and very soon Isabelle confronts him and admits that she and Stephen are having a serious relationship.
Azaire orders Stephen to leave, but Isabelle goes with him, and they flee to the south of France. Isabelle discovers that she is pregnant but does not tell Stephen; instead, she runs home to her sister Jeanne, who involves her father in the situation. Isabelle's father goes behind her back and comes to an arrangement with Azaire that he will take her back, so that she is not dishonored by having a child out of marriage.
She goes along with the arrangement but always regrets it and never falls out of love with Stephen. Stephen recounts what happens at the Battle of the Somme, and at Ypres which the British soldiers jocularly call "Wipers" the following year. Stephen fares badly emotionally during the war; he does not have many friends, except for Captain Michael Weir and the men they are leading.
He seems distant, and does not take his allocated home leave because he wants to remain at the helm of the battalion. It is during this part of the novel that we first meet Royal Engineer Jack Firebrace, one of the crew of men responsible for digging the British trenches at the Front.
He also plants mines under the German trenches. Stephen is injured during a battle and feels lonelier than ever, writing to Isabelle but never receiving a response. Explore the various parallels drawn between desire and death, love and war, in the novel. In what ways are the love scenes similar to some of the battle scenes? How does the body take on different meanings [pp. Start earning points for buying books! Uplift Native American Stories. Share: Share on Facebook. Add to Cart.
We hope they will enrich your understanding of this overpowering and harrowing novel, a Tolstoyan epic of love, war, and redemption. While there he plunges into a love affair with the young wife of his host, a passion so imperative and consuming that it changes him forever.
Several years later, with the outbreak of World War I, he finds himself again in the fields of Picardy, this time as a soldier on the Western Front. A strange, occasionally bitter man, Stephen is possessed of an inexplicable will to survive. He struggles through the hideously bloody battles of the Marne, Verdun, and the Somme in the last named, thirty thousand British soldiers were killed in the first half hour alone , camps for weeks at a time in the verminous trenches, and hunkers in underground tunnels as he watches many of the companions he has grown to love perish.
In spite of everything, Stephen manages to find hope and meaning in the blasted world he inhabits. Questions and Topics for Discussion 1. By this time he had become a feature writer on the Sunday Telegraph and in moved to the new national daily paper the Independent as its literary editor. In he gave up journalism to concentrate on writing.
It has so far sold more than , copies in Britain. In January a television and bookshop poll among British readers placed it in their top fifty books of the century. He has since published a nonfiction book, The Fatal Englishman: Three Short Lives , which was also a bestseller, and is nearing the end of a new novel. He married in , and he and his wife have three small children.
They spent in France but are now back in London. Learn More About Birdsong print. Related Books and Guides. Arch of Triumph. Erich Maria Remarque. The Flight Portfolio. Julie Orringer.
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