In Chapter 4 of Not So Quiet, the narrator, Smithy, invokes her mother and her mother’s rival in her thoughts in a fit of distress, mirroring Paul invoking his mother’s name in despair at the end of Chapter 7 of All Quiet on the Western Front. How does the tone difference in these two scenes affect the readers’ perception of the war and set the characters apart from classic hero/heroine archetypes?
In Chapter 5, the group of friends hold a going away party for the B.F., which ends in Skinny attacking Tosh for an unrevealed insult (later it is implied that Tosh accused Skinny of being a lesbian). Skinny gets discharged for refusing to say what the insult was when commanded by Mrs. Bitch. How does a modern perspective change the tone of this exchange compared to how it would have been read when originally published?
In Chapters 6 and 7, laughter is presented as an extreme expression of emotion from Tosh’s laughter at Chump’s antics, the sexual comments made by the German captives, and the humorous monologue, to Smithy’s laughter throughout her traumatic experience driving through the bombing and Tosh dying in her arms. How does the incessant laughter throughout Chapter 7 influence the speed of the action?
20 thoughts on “Bella’s Reading Questions for February 1”
1. I am really glad you brought this up because this comparison really stood out to me as I was reading! As a reader, the war feels somewhat more preventable through Nellie’s description because she communicates with her ignorant, upper-class mother who symbolzies all those in power who could have stopped the war and simply refused to send their children(the “if only thirty people had said no” mentality!) whereas pretty much everyone who interacts with Paul is powerless so the war feels like an insurmountable force. Both of their attitudes set them apart from the hero/heroine archetype, but I find Paul’s role especially interesting because the hero is always expected to have full belief in a side and stand up for what he believes in some dramatic fashion. A classic hero would believe in the war and die for patriotism, but there is another archetype of heroes who aggressively rebel against an authority force like the government, but Paul does not really fit either of these.
As a follow-up to that I am interested in seeing thoughts on the root causes of the tone differences. Neither protagonist tells their family the truth, but Paul’s is a desire to protect rather than a fear he will not be believed. While Paul’s thoughts are “Ah! Mother, Mother! Let us rise up and go out, back through the years, where the burden of all this misery lies on us no more, back to you and me alone, Mother!”(183), Nellie thinks “Oh come with me, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington. Let me show you the exhibits straight from the battlefield. This will be something original to tell your committees…Shut yours ears, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington, lest their groans and heart-rending cries linger as long in your memory as in the memory of the daughter you sent out to help win the War,”(90-91). There are several layers at the root cause between the contrast in their thoughts. Does anyone have thoughts on which difference between Paul and Nellie has the greatest effect on their attitudes towards withholding the truth from home? Is it gender or class? Nellie’s position as directly witnessing the horror but not fighting in it? Or is it as simple as Paul’s mother is a kinder person?
There are many factors that led to Paul and Nellie withholding the truth of the war from their families and neighbors. I believe in Paul’s case, it has more to do with his role as a soldier and his gender since he and many other young men fighting on the frontlines have to put up this facade that the war is glorious and that any negative attitude towards it would come off as unpatriotic and/or cowardly. For Nellie, I believe it has more to do with her gender. Back then, a woman behaving outside of what was expected of her would-be considered acting hysterically and would not be taken seriously.
1. In Chapter 4 of Not So Quiet, the narrator, Smithy, invokes her mother and her mother’s rival in her thoughts in a fit of distress, mirroring Paul invoking his mother’s name in despair at the end of Chapter 7 of All Quiet on the Western Front. How does the tone difference in these two scenes affect the readers’ perception of the war and set the characters apart from classic hero/heroine archetypes?
I really like this question! I think as a reader it’s very easy to judge the two women for not understanding the war, and although I hope I wouldn’t have their perceptions and reactions to war, I did feel that this part of the novel does an amazing job at putting the circumstance into perspective for a larger group of people.
3. I really like that you brought up the symbol of laughter in the novel. Despite all the horrors the women experience, they never lose their sense of humor. This is similar to the men in “All Quiet,” when Paul mentions that without laughter, they would have no sense of life anymore. The fact that Nellie is laughing hysterically at Tosh’s death is the bitter theme of the novel. She has to find the joke in the horror in order to stay sane and not let the actual truth sink in.
2. Also, great question about Skinny…reading this today is very different than how it would have been read at the time. It is interesting that the insinuation of Tosh calling Skinny a lesbian was considered an insult. As a result, Skinny is alienated from the rest of the group. What do you all think about this exchange?
This exchange was something I needed some time to think about because with so much going on, its importance sort of got lost among everything else for me. The main highlight I made in this section was “what the hell does it matter as long as they put up a decent performance behind the steering wheel and can keep their engines clean?”(126) and this question made me wonder how this quote applies today. One difference I would say we would have from the original audience is that modern audiences are more equipped to read this as a broader statement of accepting all sexualities and working to prevent discrimination. However, the original 1930s era audience lived in a culture which sufficated sexuality, especially anyone who identified as anything besides heterosexuality and could read this as in war everything goes out the window and we have to understand compromises are important. Tosh’s words “Her morals don’t affect me one way or the other”(125) are also interesting to me because it does not exactly read as they should accept Skinny and Frost no matter what, but rather that being immoral does not influence how good someone is at their job. However, Smith could also be hoping audiences will look deeper into the question of is moral vs. immoral a social construct, where is the line drawn? It may have needed to be ambiguous back in that time, but at least modern audiences can look at this and critique the overarching “morality” standards in addition to the unjust firing of competent drivers.
I really enjoyed the first question: Personally, these two scenes stand out because it’s two people who have experienced the horror of the war. But in All Quiet on the Western front Paul is a man, while in Not So Quiet, Nellie is a woman. Paul didn’t tell people the truth because he wanted to spare people the horrors of being in the war. While Nellie knows that she can’t tell the truth because no one would believe her, since she is a woman.
The second question was interesting as well. If this situation were to happen today, things would have ended differently. Being a lesbian or accusing someone of being a lesbian during the time of the war was widely unacceptable. Whereas today, while there are still improvements to be made, society is more accepting of others being who they truly are.
The third question took me a while to answer. I believe the laughter influences the tone of this chapter because laughter is so temporary. It only lasts for a few seconds, while here it lasts for a while. Making the reader uncomfortable and empathize with the characters more.
2. The fact that Mrs. Bitch got rid of two volunteers in a time of war simply because they refused to answer her question is absolutely ridiculous. When I was reading that part I was thinking to myself, is this really what she needs to be focusing on right now? From a modern perspective, the idea of them being gay or the suspicion of them being gay isn’t a problem. During this time period the morals surrounding sexuality and sex in general was worse than dealing with the morality and justifications of war. It didn’t matter if you wanted to serve your country, if you were gay you were scum. A good example would be Alan Turing who was a legendary codebreaker in WW2. His codebreaking machine was a turning point in WW2 for the British efforts. He was charged right after the war with homosexual acts and the punishment was a sentence of 12 months worth of injections of hormones that was essentially chemical castration. There is a wonderful movie about him starring Benedict Cumberbatch called, The Imitation Game.
1. In Not So Quiet, Nellie invites her mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington to look upon her workload; the dying sons they sent willingly to the battlefield. Her entire monologue is dripped in sarcasm and frustration. She points out the disgusting reality she experiences and insults what these two women want to believe of the war. Readers see the dying men and Nellie’s incensed language and, at least for me, begin to agree with her. Nellie is not the beautiful heroine of England doing her bit her mother wants her to be, but she is at least a hero.
Paul protects his mother from the front. He fears sharing the truth with her, frail as she is, and he laments that he cannot die with her. I think that readers suffer with Paul in this scene. He loves her deeply. Paul’s vulnerability in his internal thoughts contrasts with the expected nobility and fortitude of a hero, but it is easy to sympathize with.
1. I am really glad you brought this up because this comparison really stood out to me as I was reading! As a reader, the war feels somewhat more preventable through Nellie’s description because she communicates with her ignorant, upper-class mother who symbolzies all those in power who could have stopped the war and simply refused to send their children(the “if only thirty people had said no” mentality!) whereas pretty much everyone who interacts with Paul is powerless so the war feels like an insurmountable force. Both of their attitudes set them apart from the hero/heroine archetype, but I find Paul’s role especially interesting because the hero is always expected to have full belief in a side and stand up for what he believes in some dramatic fashion. A classic hero would believe in the war and die for patriotism, but there is another archetype of heroes who aggressively rebel against an authority force like the government, but Paul does not really fit either of these.
As a follow-up to that I am interested in seeing thoughts on the root causes of the tone differences. Neither protagonist tells their family the truth, but Paul’s is a desire to protect rather than a fear he will not be believed. While Paul’s thoughts are “Ah! Mother, Mother! Let us rise up and go out, back through the years, where the burden of all this misery lies on us no more, back to you and me alone, Mother!”(183), Nellie thinks “Oh come with me, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington. Let me show you the exhibits straight from the battlefield. This will be something original to tell your committees…Shut yours ears, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington, lest their groans and heart-rending cries linger as long in your memory as in the memory of the daughter you sent out to help win the War,”(90-91). There are several layers at the root cause between the contrast in their thoughts. Does anyone have thoughts on which difference between Paul and Nellie has the greatest effect on their attitudes towards withholding the truth from home? Is it gender or class? Nellie’s position as directly witnessing the horror but not fighting in it? Or is it as simple as Paul’s mother is a kinder person?
There are many factors that led to Paul and Nellie withholding the truth of the war from their families and neighbors. I believe in Paul’s case, it has more to do with his role as a soldier and his gender since he and many other young men fighting on the frontlines have to put up this facade that the war is glorious and that any negative attitude towards it would come off as unpatriotic and/or cowardly. For Nellie, I believe it has more to do with her gender. Back then, a woman behaving outside of what was expected of her would-be considered acting hysterically and would not be taken seriously.
1. In Chapter 4 of Not So Quiet, the narrator, Smithy, invokes her mother and her mother’s rival in her thoughts in a fit of distress, mirroring Paul invoking his mother’s name in despair at the end of Chapter 7 of All Quiet on the Western Front. How does the tone difference in these two scenes affect the readers’ perception of the war and set the characters apart from classic hero/heroine archetypes?
I really like this question! I think as a reader it’s very easy to judge the two women for not understanding the war, and although I hope I wouldn’t have their perceptions and reactions to war, I did feel that this part of the novel does an amazing job at putting the circumstance into perspective for a larger group of people.
3. I really like that you brought up the symbol of laughter in the novel. Despite all the horrors the women experience, they never lose their sense of humor. This is similar to the men in “All Quiet,” when Paul mentions that without laughter, they would have no sense of life anymore. The fact that Nellie is laughing hysterically at Tosh’s death is the bitter theme of the novel. She has to find the joke in the horror in order to stay sane and not let the actual truth sink in.
2. Also, great question about Skinny…reading this today is very different than how it would have been read at the time. It is interesting that the insinuation of Tosh calling Skinny a lesbian was considered an insult. As a result, Skinny is alienated from the rest of the group. What do you all think about this exchange?
This exchange was something I needed some time to think about because with so much going on, its importance sort of got lost among everything else for me. The main highlight I made in this section was “what the hell does it matter as long as they put up a decent performance behind the steering wheel and can keep their engines clean?”(126) and this question made me wonder how this quote applies today. One difference I would say we would have from the original audience is that modern audiences are more equipped to read this as a broader statement of accepting all sexualities and working to prevent discrimination. However, the original 1930s era audience lived in a culture which sufficated sexuality, especially anyone who identified as anything besides heterosexuality and could read this as in war everything goes out the window and we have to understand compromises are important. Tosh’s words “Her morals don’t affect me one way or the other”(125) are also interesting to me because it does not exactly read as they should accept Skinny and Frost no matter what, but rather that being immoral does not influence how good someone is at their job. However, Smith could also be hoping audiences will look deeper into the question of is moral vs. immoral a social construct, where is the line drawn? It may have needed to be ambiguous back in that time, but at least modern audiences can look at this and critique the overarching “morality” standards in addition to the unjust firing of competent drivers.
I really enjoyed the first question: Personally, these two scenes stand out because it’s two people who have experienced the horror of the war. But in All Quiet on the Western front Paul is a man, while in Not So Quiet, Nellie is a woman. Paul didn’t tell people the truth because he wanted to spare people the horrors of being in the war. While Nellie knows that she can’t tell the truth because no one would believe her, since she is a woman.
The second question was interesting as well. If this situation were to happen today, things would have ended differently. Being a lesbian or accusing someone of being a lesbian during the time of the war was widely unacceptable. Whereas today, while there are still improvements to be made, society is more accepting of others being who they truly are.
The third question took me a while to answer. I believe the laughter influences the tone of this chapter because laughter is so temporary. It only lasts for a few seconds, while here it lasts for a while. Making the reader uncomfortable and empathize with the characters more.
2. The fact that Mrs. Bitch got rid of two volunteers in a time of war simply because they refused to answer her question is absolutely ridiculous. When I was reading that part I was thinking to myself, is this really what she needs to be focusing on right now? From a modern perspective, the idea of them being gay or the suspicion of them being gay isn’t a problem. During this time period the morals surrounding sexuality and sex in general was worse than dealing with the morality and justifications of war. It didn’t matter if you wanted to serve your country, if you were gay you were scum. A good example would be Alan Turing who was a legendary codebreaker in WW2. His codebreaking machine was a turning point in WW2 for the British efforts. He was charged right after the war with homosexual acts and the punishment was a sentence of 12 months worth of injections of hormones that was essentially chemical castration. There is a wonderful movie about him starring Benedict Cumberbatch called, The Imitation Game.
1. In Not So Quiet, Nellie invites her mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawnington to look upon her workload; the dying sons they sent willingly to the battlefield. Her entire monologue is dripped in sarcasm and frustration. She points out the disgusting reality she experiences and insults what these two women want to believe of the war. Readers see the dying men and Nellie’s incensed language and, at least for me, begin to agree with her. Nellie is not the beautiful heroine of England doing her bit her mother wants her to be, but she is at least a hero.
Paul protects his mother from the front. He fears sharing the truth with her, frail as she is, and he laments that he cannot die with her. I think that readers suffer with Paul in this scene. He loves her deeply. Paul’s vulnerability in his internal thoughts contrasts with the expected nobility and fortitude of a hero, but it is easy to sympathize with.