Appreciation
It paints an ironic picture of regimental life in the British Army and is a satire on the wasteful and perverse bureaucracy of modern warfare. The point of view of Guy, whose Roman Catholicism and Italian experience combine with his diffident personality to make him something of an outside observer in English society, enables Waugh to push the satire hard and remain in voice.
Underneath the comedy, the theme emerges ever more strongly. Guy Crouchback is a quintessentially English figure with his instinctive understanding of his culture, his hesitancy, courtesy and reluctance to make a scene. The novel reveals his discovery that the romantic worship of tradition and heroism — the aristocratic values which have supported him all his life — does not work in the modern world.
This is made explicit in the episode after which the trilogy is named, at the beginning of the third and final book. A splendid ceremonial sword, the "Sword of Stalingrad" is made "at the King's command", to be presented to the Soviet Union in recognition of the sacrifices that the Soviet people have made in the war against the Nazis (in reality, this was the jewelled sword commemorating the Battle of Stalingrad, commissioned by George VI). Before being sent to Moscow, it is put on display to the British public in Westminster Abbey; long queues of people "suffused with gratitude to their remote allies" come to worship it. Guy Crouchback is unmoved and chooses not to visit, as he is distinctly not impressed by Joseph Stalin: "he was not tempted to join them in their piety". Instead he goes for a surfeit of luxurious food for lunch on his 40th birthday and dwells neither on the past nor the future.
It is a resigned rather than an idealistic Guy who goes to Yugoslavia, and it is made clear that the future belongs not to idealism but to the cynical Trimmer or the empty American Padfield. We are never quite sure whether it is that Guy is powerless to resist the world's decline from a Golden Age of chivalry or whether the Golden Age was a romantic illusion.
Read more about this topic: Sword Of Honour
Famous quotes containing the word appreciation:
“The aim of life is appreciation; there is no sense in not appreciating things; and there is no sense in having more of them if you have less appreciation of them.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“We are tempted to say that his genius was feminine, not masculine. It was such a feminineness, however, as is rarest to find in woman, though not the appreciation of it; perhaps it is not to be found at all in woman, but is only the feminine in man.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He, who, in view of its inconsistencies, says of human nature the same that, in view of its contrasts, is said of the divine nature, that it is past finding out, thereby evinces a better appreciation of it than he who, by always representing it in a clear light, leaves it to be inferred that he clearly knows all about it.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)