1 / 18

The Crater

The Crater. Li; I can identify the key features of a text I am studying. Understanding Questions. Why would the men blacken their faces? (5) Why was Lieutenant McKinnon frightened? (9) Quote a phrase or sentence from paragraph 10 which shows the brutality of the raid

leeperez
Download Presentation

The Crater

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript

  1. The Crater Li; I can identify the key features of a text I am studying

  2. Understanding Questions • Why would the men blacken their faces? (5) • Why was Lieutenant McKinnon frightened? (9) • Quote a phrase or sentence from paragraph 10 which shows the brutality of the raid • What happened to Wright? (10) How does Sergeant Smith react? • Why does Smith and McKinnon go back out? • As the men head back to the trench what do they hear? 7) In your own words explain what happens in paragraph 27 8) What are the differences between Smith and McKinnon?

  3. Summary of the crater • Lieutenant McKinnon has been ordered to complete a small raid on the German trenches in the middle of the night. • As they complete the attack McKinnon realises that he is afraid and also how unreal the war can seem. • Several men are injured or killed and McKinnon realises that one of his men (Morrison) has fallen into a slime-filled crater. • He decides, with Sergeant Smith and Harris, to rescue Morrison • McKinnon has to rescue Morrison by overhanging the trench and using his gun to fish him out, however Morrison is dead • The three men walk him back to the British trench • McKinnon falls asleep but is plagued by nightmares

  4. Structure of the story

  5. Structure of the story They find Morrison and McKinnon attempts to rescue him Morrison dies but McKinnon and the other men walk him back to the British trench They attack the trenches and fight brutally. Several men are injured and killed. They decided to rescue Morrison McKinnon falls into an uneasy sleep McKinnon prepares his men to attack the German trenches

  6. Key incident • Interestingly, when the troop finally attacks the enemy German trenches, the descriptions are brief and the entire raid seems to be over in an instant. This helps to convey the confusion of the experience on Mackinnon. • It is the experience of losing one of his men to the crater that is transformative for MacKinnon

  7. Mackinnon – THE FACTS • Young and inexperienced • Thoughtful and sensitive • Despite his own fear he acts with dignity • Hides his inner doubts • He reflects on the nature of God • Rescues Morrison – shows him to be a man of courage and integrity • The event changes McKinnon – more reckless • He is plagued by what happens

  8. Sergeant smith– looking deeper • His teeth grinned whitely beneath his moustache as he adjusted the equipment of one of the privates and joked, ‘Tomorrow you might get home, lad.’ • And yet Smith himself had been invalided home and come back. ‘I missed your stink, lads,’ he had said when he appeared among them again, large and buoyant and happy. And everyone knew that this was his place where he would stay till he was killed or till the war ended. • ‘The bloody idiot,’ said Sergeant Smith looking down at him. ‘He could have got us all killed.’ Still, it had been like Piccadilly right enough. Full of light. It hadn’t been so bad. Nothing was as bad as you feared.

  9. mackinnon– looking deeper • He kept thinking how similar it all was to a play in which he had once taken part, and how the jokes before the performance had the same nervous high-pitched quality, as they prepared to go out into the darkness. • On hands and knees he squirmed forward, the others behind him. This was his first raid and he thought, ‘I am frightened.’ • ‘Dead?’ There was a long pause. ‘Well, take him in anyway. We’re not leaving him here. We’ll take him in. At least he didn’t die in that bloody lake.’ • To hell with them,’ he shouted. ‘This time we’ll bloody well walk. I don’t care how light it is.’ And they did so and managed to get him back into the dugout. • But he fell asleep before he could get any himself, seeing page after page of comics set before him, like red windows, and in one there was a greenish monster and in another a woman dancing with a fat officer.

  10. Sergeant smith– THE FACTS • Pragmatic face of war (focuses on getting the job done) • War is a game/job and he is willing to play his part • He chooses to be in the war and enjoys the company of his men • He is a counterpoint to MacKinnon and shows that there is different ways to react to the same situation • His resilience makes him more suited to the war

  11. morrison • He is a symbol – we never learn about his character • He symbolises the degrading/dehumanising aspects of war • He has become less than human – at times he is turned into a monster/creature • Our view of him is filtered through MacKinnon’s mind

  12. Morrison – Looking deeper • It was a monster of the deep, it was a sight so terrible that he nearly fell. • And it seemed to be emerging from the deep, setting its feet against the side of the crater, all green, all mottled, like a disease. It climbed as if up a mountainside in the stench. • It was like a body which might have come from space, green and illuminated and slimy. And over it poured the merciless moonlight.

  13. setting As the story continues and Mackinnon turns back to rescue Morrison, it is the landscape which seems to become the real enemy rather than the German soldiers. The fear Mackinnon feels is different from being out in the open on a battlefield. It is an older fear. The fear of being buried in the earth. The craters take on a sinister, malevolent presence. They are filled with green slimy water and to Mackinnon, their reflective surfaces look like dead moons. While Mackinnon will dream about green monsters, Smith’s memory of the evening will be walking back under stars so bright they remind him of the lights of Piccadilly Circus in London.

  14. Themes • The futility and destructiveness of war

  15. futility and destructiveness of war • Just as the landscape is scarred by craters, Mackinnon’s nightmares demonstrate the damage inflicted on the human psyche. While Mackinnon has no physical scars, mentally he is plagued by the horrors he has seen. • In contrast, Smith takes an almost matter of fact approach to the events and has found some way to successfully function under these conditions

  16. futility and destructiveness of war • The story deals with the death of just one soldier but it can be seen to represent the millions who were slaughtered in the conflict. Crichton Smith emphasises not only the destructiveness of war but also needless loss of life that occurred during these trench raids. • These operations were ordered by distant generals and had very little impact on the outcome of the conflict.

  17. futility and destructiveness of war • In the end and despite their courageous efforts, Morrison is saved from the crater only to immediately die. • This reinforces the idea that war is futile and life and death are arbitrary. Men are killed or survive through luck or chance. We would have expected that Morrison ought to survive after such a herculean attempt was made to save him, just as we would have expected that walking back across no man’s land in bright starlight would expose the others to almost certain death. • In war then, the usual codes and rules that we live by are subverted, creating a chaotic, terrifying and unfamiliar reality.

More Related