Birdsong

8a) Write about how Faulks tells the story in the first section of part two, beginning with the words ‘Jack firebrace lay forty-five feet… and ending in a rising melody under the scratch of a thick gramaphone needle’. Pages 121-139 (21 marks)

          Throughout the novel, Sebastian Faulks uses a variety of literary devices to ensure that the novel is gripping for the reader. At the very beginning of section two, Faulks ensures that he enlightens the reader into the time and place of which the next section entails, France 1916. This is a major aspect as to which helps to immediately paint a picture in the readers mind as to when it was set as it is clear that the story jumps in time. Anybody would recognise that 1916 was in fact during the first world war which, as previously said, already creates a certain atmosphere. Other than the Place and the time-frame, there is hardly any sort of form to the section at all. There is a lack of chapter headings or numbering which gives more of this mysterious feel. It enables the reader to evaluate the book themselves, involving them in the storyline. Faulks does make use of paragraphs with indentation and small line gaps or breaks in text which enables the reader to digest what was previously read. The effect of the small line gaps in text help to create a change in scene but nothing to major that there needs to be a change in section.

          Faulks has used the introductory paragraph to not only introduce a new character, but to also enlighten the reader as to the setting of the coming section. The reader is already enlightened into the idea that it is around the first world war and this is most definitely backed up by the descriptions used in the first paragraph. ‘Jack Firebrace lay forty-five feet underground with several hundred thousand tons of France above his face’. This immediately shows the reader of one of the many complex jobs used in the war, a tunneller. This sentence alone helps to show the severity of...