‘A Withering Fire that Mowed Them Down in Heaps’: Images of Death and Wounding

Abstract

In examining descriptions of dying in British literature, Garrett Stewart boldly suggests that death is the ultimate fiction, an event which can only be described by those who have not experienced it. Descriptions of death are thus much more dependent on cultural perceptions and the imagination of the writer than any other literary event.¹ Newspaper representations of death on the battlefield similarly must be, by their nature, fictional. While the act of dying is a fictional event for authors, the way that death was portrayed in the press reveals much about Edwardian perceptions of warfare. Depictions which showed warfare with all its horror, pain and destruction would conflict with the image of warfare as beneficial, healthy and desirable. If, however, the reality of death and wounding were denied, suppressed or glossed over, the impression of readers that war’s sporting, entertaining and adventurous qualities were not diminished by its horrors would be reinforced, and the positive images of war would remain. This does not necessarily demand a total rejection of the horrors of war, for the use of language can de-emphasize war’s realities while at the same time purporting to be ‘graphic’. Similarly, visual depictions of war can suggest the unpleasant side of battle while not contradicting its overall positive nature.