A Long Long Way: The Gas Attack

A Long Long Way: The Gas Attack

After reading Chapter Four of Barry's A Long Long Way (in which Willie Dunne's regiment face the detrimental effects of the chemical warfare released by the German opposition), I was set an essay task to explore the presentation of the gas attack through a close-reading of a selected extract. This exercise gave me the opportunity to focus on the linguistic and structural decisions of Barry and, in turn, produce an essay that was detailed and specific in conjunction with the points that I made.

Explore the presentation of the gas attack. Consider: the presentation of nature, the presentation of the gas, and the men’s reactions to the gas.

Throughout Chapter four, Barry depicts sheer annihilation through the German gas-attack whilst simultaneously characterising its sinister aestheticism. There is also a sense of constant rising tension as the gas becomes ubiquitous and silently destroys even the microscopic elements of nature, despite the ambivalence it elicits within the British soldiers in terms of warfare during World War One.

Turning our attention to the beginning of the extract, Barry establishes the serenity of nature prior to the attack to intensify its mutilation. Initially, he alludes to notions of abundance and regeneration when he describes a flower having ‘a hundred tiny blooms on it’ (‘bloom’ evoking the idea that nature is beginning a new cycle) and there being ‘millions of caterpillars’. His use of quantifiers is important here as it is made explicit that nature is readily flourishing despite the conditions in which it must do so (i.e. The battlefield), and so the mass destruction of war through the gas-attack is emphasised as one of utter bleakness; an unrelenting and unknowing ‘path of cloud’ in which ‘the grass died’ and the ‘birds [were] silenced’. The silent attack of the gas on nature is perhaps epitomised at the end of the second section in the extract, where ‘the caterpillars foamed on the yellow flowers’. Barry establishes a tone here that culminates with such simplicity and seeming harmlessness (through the simple structure of the sentence) whilst injecting dreadful undertones of the forthcoming horror that the men are about the endure (the past participle ‘foamed’ jars the serenity of nature). Nature’s state of composure in the face of annihilation provides a great contrast to the ‘horrible laments’ that arise from the soldiers as they are confronted with the gas and so Barry successfully intensifies the deadly effects of the attack.

As referenced previously by the ‘yellow flowers’, Barry presents both nature and the gas inextricably through his recurring motif, the colour yellow. The extract begins with nature’s blossoming domineering the atmosphere as we encounter the ‘yellow world’, eliciting notions of clarity and optimism. This interpretation is soon shifted as the ‘yellow-tinged cloud’ appears ‘like a sea fog’. The specific description of the colour being described as ‘tinged’ perhaps highlights its artificiality in the face of nature whilst its ‘sea fog’ appearance evokes an image of obscurity, and therefore we can interpret the deception of warfare as it tries to disguise itself in the ‘yellow world’ created by nature. Barry’s deliberate choice to make the gas appear “masked” explains why Christy Moran ‘strain[s] to see and…understand’ what exactly is approaching the trench, thus amplifying the ruthless use of gas warfare. The inability to differentiate between the beautiful (i.e. Nature) and the evil (i.e. The gas) could be registered as subtle anti-war commentary on Barry’s behalf, ultimately commenting on the irreversible defacement of God’s world as a consequence of the “Great War” and, in particular, its inhumane corruption such as that of the gas-attack. This collapse of traditional boundaries between natural and physical elements additionally emphasises the confusion of the soldiers, like Christy Moran, as the corruption of the constructs of the earth through warfare has placed them at a disadvantage in discerning the immediate danger of the gas.

The ambiguity surrounding the gas is explored primarily through the characters of Christy Moran and Captain Pasley in this extract. However, when the final realisation occurs, Barry presents the men’s reactions as horrific and almost feral. The sheer violence of the attack is underlined through the imagery of the men ‘tearing off their uniforms and writhing on the ground, and howling’. The tripartite structure of the active verbs ‘tearing’, ‘writhing’, and ‘howling’ creates chaos within the sentence as well as enhancing the extent to which the men are being completely stripped of their humanity and so their instinctual response is to behave in such an animalistic manner. Chemical weaponry was initially developed and used by the German enemy during the height of World War One, and it seems that Barry uses this awareness of context to try and convey how the war was becoming utterly impersonal and so the reactions of the men lack human action and affectation.

The men’s reactions are overarchingly juxtaposed with the tranquillity and aestheticism of the gas, creating a horrendous and unsettling atmosphere for readers. Several indications are made regarding the weaponry as it’s described as not ‘too threatening’ and ‘beautiful in a way’. Barry also uses some more stylised and almost lyrical language such as ‘the yellow seemed to boil about…and then rise again with the march of the main body of smoke’, highlighting the poised visions of warfare, which may have been perceived as a primary emotion evoked among soldiers when experiencing such a phenomenon (prior to the eventual terror). The depiction of beauty seems to implicitly focalise the sinister and deadly qualities of the gas as something entirely duplicitous in its nature. Barry then perhaps forces us to empathise with the situations that the soldiers were placed in as it was never truly certain what they may encounter, much like the arbitrary gas-attack.

With the attack advancing, the gas’ beauty seems to undergo a sort of “mutation” when Barry uses personification to illustrate its vulgarity at the end of the extract, when it is described as ‘slipping down…like dozens and dozens of slithering fingers’. The use of sibilance and voiceless sounds and unpleasant sensory imagery summoned through the adjective choice ‘slithering’ provide a contrast to the gutteral sounds used to describe the gas initially (‘it was beautiful in a way, the yellow seemed to boil about, and sink into whatever craters it was offered’), and so we can conclude that Barry may be subtly underlining just how cunning it has become. The ‘fingers’ described in the simile also bring to mind notions of suffocation and invasion, which are paralleled to the detrimental effects of the gas. Alternatively, the evidence could be read through disregarding the simile and we are left with a sequence: the gas is moving down the parapet along with ‘dozens and dozens of slithering fingers’. Barry’s ambiguity here, or ability to create a double entendre, enables readers to comprehend the magnitude of death experienced that was the dismal reality for soldiers. In light of this view, a somewhat melancholic tone is drawn from this chapter, a sense of feeling that succeeds the initial beauty of the gas.

 Finally, towards the end of the extract, Captain Pasley’s instinct to ‘hold [the] position’ contrasts with Christy Moran’s desire to ‘fall back’ as there is ‘something deathly and wrong’ about the gas, and so we start to discern a disparity about the duties different men felt they had to fulfil in times of attack. Whilst Pasley may seem resilient to some readers as he remained in the same position whilst his ‘face had turned the colour of a sliced potato’, others may resonate with Moran’s implied reaction towards Pasley’s decision as one of complete ridiculousness (‘you will on your fuck, sir, begging your flaming pardon. Come on’). Given Pasley’s superior rank to Moran, Barry may be alluding to the idea that these men felt that they had more responsibility and so were expected to behave like “patriotic martyrs”. Moran’s attitudes seem to embody the attitudes of many other men during the war, as soldiers who were disbelieving and cynical (as we see in previous chapters as well as in chapter four). Barry, therefore, may have used the gas attack in this way to highlight that not all soldiers were stereotypical patriots that were willing to remain courageous in the face of German warfare, and so his account of the gas attack seems more authentic as the realistic reactions of men are conveyed.

In conclusion, this extract brilliantly exhibits both the primary and secondary consequences of each of the three elements in the gas attack: the aesthetic movement of the gas soon turns to one of asphyxiation and horror, nature initially presents the flourishing world which is quickly and silently destroyed, and the men’s reactions turn from utter confusion to mass panic. Barry seems to teach us that modern warfare, during the time of World War One, was intended to be deceptive and appear as something foreign to the men that had to encounter and endure it. What we then learn is that the experiences of the soldiers should never be undermined and the reactions of men never questioned; it may be argued that Moran’s instinct to escape is as equally justified as Pasley’s decision to stay put in the trench as the horrors of modern chemical warfare arguably destabilise notions of duty and morality and, as readers, we are left grappling with the aspects that constitute “good” leadership.