Journey’s End and Blackadder both portray men trying to cope with realities of war. Compare and contrast the ways in which this is presented in b...

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Journey’s End is a play written in 1928, ten years after the war finally ended, it was based on the authors real life experiences and is very serious about the happenings of war. Blackadder however was written in 1989 and has a very sarcastic edge, making the viewer forget that the subject matter of the sitcom was a real event.
It soon becomes apparent to the reader that all of the men, in Journey’s End, are struggling to cope with the war, and that they all have their own way of coping, Trotter, an officer in the company, tries to find ways to make the time pass away quicker, ‘draw a hundred and forty-little circles’ each circle represents one of the hours that they have to spend there, he also breaks the hours down into minutes and announces ‘that doesn’t sound so bad’ when he calculates that they have already done twenty of them. To the reader however, this may seem odd as the number was large, ‘eight thousand six ‘undred and forty minutes’, it may seem that he is making the time longer rather than shorter. This is Trotters way of coping with the war, breaking it down into sections of time and ticking them off as it passes.
It is obvious that Captain Stanhope, the protagonist in Journey’s End struggles to cope with the realities of war from the beginning of the play when a minor character remarks ‘I never did see a youngster put away the whiskey he does’. This clearly shows that Stanhope is well known for his drinking and many of the men accept it as his way of coping with the war and the effects it has had on him. Osbourne, a man Stanhope calls ‘uncle’ defends him saying, ‘…the best company commander we’ve got’. Through this it becomes clear why the men have so easily accepted his drinking, because he has spent so long in th...

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...pe threatens to shoot him for deserting Hibbert breaks down because he has no way out. He spills all his pent up emotions, ‘I’ve hated and loathed it’, and even begins to cry. Although Hibbert does not really have neuralgia it is clear that he is having a mental breakdown during this scene, ‘every sound…makes me all — cold and sick’. This is one of the biggest emotional revelation in the play, with Hibbert telling Stanhope how he really feels about the war, showing just how much it has affected him because usually the men kept a stiff upper-lip and did not show any emotion at all.
There is also a mention of the war driving a man ‘mad’ in Blackadder, in the final scene of Blackadder when they are about to go over the top. Captain Blackadder says, ‘who would have noticed another madman around ‘ere’. The sombre mood of the sitcom at that point helps to illustrate the

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