Compare the chaos of war and the hospital to the order of Briony's farm animals in her room as a child, or the direction she commanded when rehearsing the play in the nursery.
Order has been restored and Briony is invisible. The men whom Briony attempts to lead to beds do not even "seem to be aware of her existence" confirming her subconscious fears of complete anonymity and lack of identity. Her failure as a nurse during those first days represents her inability to cope with a world in which she is not the puppeteer. is not in control of the situation like a writer always is, she fails. As soon as the war touches her life, i.e. When Briony does her best to handle the situation of the hundreds of wounded men who arrive at her hospital, she is determined not to fail. The last four pages of the section are a lengthy and detailed rejection letter from the magazine/journal where she sent in her story “Two Figures by a Fountain.” The letter is encouraging, and tells Briony to pursue her story and her craft more, and that they would like to see the story reworked and resubmitted as something more than in short-story form. It makes her feel even less like a person (293). And she realizes that all the nursing in the world would not make up for what she has done to her sister and Robbie Turner. She sees men and bodies as they are-material objects. She has to remove shrapnel from one man, sees another man whose face is completely gone, and talks to another man as he dies from missing part of his cranium and brain.īriony learns a lot about herself and humankind during these hours. Some soldiers are worse than others, and a lot of the narrative in this section is extremely graphic about the horrors of war. Removing bandages, cleaning and recovering wounds, helping soldiers to drink, cleaning bedpans. No one was prepared for this.īriony spends majority of the chapter passing on from one soldier to the next. A superior nurse then assures her that “procedure” can be let go. She has no control over the men, and panics. At one point, she leads a battalion of wounded soldiers to a vacant ward and tries to follow the procedures she has been taught. Despite these moments of self pity, Briony tries to fulfill her role as a nurse, the one she has trained for, but the scene is too chaotic for her.
Hundreds of wounded soldiers back from France are spread out all over the hospital lawn and steps.īriony attempts to carry a wounded soldier into the operating room and almost drops him. On their walk back to the hospital, they come on the horrifying scene they had been anticipating, dreading, and hoping would never come.
They enjoy their time away from the hospital and share laughs, getting to know more about one another. Briony and Fiona go to the park for lunch.
0 kommentar(er)
