Discussion Questions

April 5, 2016

  1. Is the difficulty for us today to adequately understand the  WWI period and experience due to what Winter argues is the "banalization of violence"?  Is it due to other things, or do you agree at all that we can't adequately understand the WWI experience?  Is Winter's argument for the banalization of violence accurate for today?
  2. What does Winter mean when he says that the story of WWI is "idealism betrayed"?
  3. In looking at the casualty figures from our first class, do you think that you view them differently than you did at the beginning of the term?  If so, how and why?  What accounts for a difference, if there is one?
  4. Why has McCrae's poem seemingly become the defining poem of WWI in terms of the dead and remembrance, at least in Canada?
  5. Look carefully at each of the Images of Remembrance.  What do they tell us about the memory and commemoration of the war on the western front today?  In those images, how do the cemeteries of the different countries compare.  What are the unique or defining features of those cemeteries?
  6. Of all the images, which did you find the most powerful, and why?
  7. What are the defining features of a Commonwealth cemetery
  8. How is the German cemetery different?  Does it evoke a different feel or sense of the past in any way?  If so, how and why?
  9. Look carefully graves and organization of the commonwealth cemeteries in Images of Remembrance.  What anomalies can you see in the organization or headstones in those cemeteries and what might account for them?
  10. What is the work of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission?  Why was it created?
  11. According to the historian David Beckett, “the collective memory of war…can be can be interpreted as a shared myth….”    What do you think is the “shared myth” to which he refers?
  12. Is there a myth of the dead apparent in the cemeteries and the poem by McCrae?  What is the message of that poem?
  13. How did what was available to the public regarding the war in the 1920s and 1930s shape their and subsequent generations' views of the war?
  14. How does war shape participants, according to Eaton, and how does that have an impact on those participants following the war?
  15. What does Eaton's interpretation tell us about the experiences of war for the soldier?  What does it tell us about the aftermath of war, and how does that fit with what you have previously read?

** Note:  For the cemeteries the "F" and "B" refer to the countries in the index where they are found.