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The First Casualty-Ben Elton
73
Characters
Inspector Kingsley: Kingsley lost his brother in battle and now faces losing his wife and son who are left disgraced after Kingsley declares his objection to the war. Although Kingsley never changes his oppinion of the illogicality of war, he becomes more aware of the suffering the soldiers have to endure.
Abercrombie: Could be partly based on Siegfried Sassoon due to him being a soldier and poet who became an anti-war activist.
Summary of Plot
Characters...
Nurse Murray: Feminist who was a former suffragette who turned to support the military on the outbreak of war. Murray has a brief but intimate affair with Kingsley.
Captain Shannon: Kingsley's psychopathic minder who's mentality has been exacerbated due to his experiences at war. Shannon displays a disregard for womens emotions and demonstrates a lack of respect towards females. He has to be stopped from raping a teenage girl by Kingsley. We could possibly compare Shannon to Prior.
Stamford: Stamford falls in love with Abercrombie and is the last known person to visit him before his death.
The First Casualty-Ben Elton
Viscount Abercrombie is a dedicated soldier and war poet is shot dead whilst recovering from shell shock inside a military hospital.
Douglas Kingsley, an inspector in the Majesty's Metropolitan Police in London, declares that the war offends his sense of logic. He finds himself hauled before a judge where he is scrutinized and branded a coward, even by his wife, Agnes.
He is thrown into prison where his fellow inmates resent him for throwing them behind bars. However Kingsley secretly gets sent to Flanders to investigate the murder of abercrombie. Kingsley discoveres that Abercrombie was in fact a homosexual and had changing views on the war which he conveyed through his poetry.
The novel was generally well received, although questions were raised regarding historical accuracy of some details.
Themes
Horrors of war
mental illness
Article in the independent-"the pages are filled with period detail but the tone is often disastrously wrong"
"Elton cannot abandon the cartoon techniques which served him well in Black Adder".
Thanks For Watching
:)
class divisions
Homosexualtiy