Return of the Brute
Encyclopedia
Return of the Brute is a novel written by Irish writer Liam O'Flaherty
and published in 1929.
. The squad is led by Corporal Williams, an obtuse NCO, and consists of nine infantrymen, one of whom, William Gunn, is plagued by PTS and mentally unbalanced. The novel focuses on the last hours of this group of doomed individuals, which will be killed or wounded in a fruitless attempt to occupy a section of the enemy front line. Gunn will go crazy, turning into the Brute of the title, and will kill the other two surviving soldiers in the bleak ending of the novel.
Umberto Rossi praised the book as one of the few World War I novels which did not censor the traumatic and brutal experience of front infantrymen, showing combat in the trenches for what it was with a remarkable expressionistic style; it can be thus considered a forerunner of such late-modern writers as Cormac McCarthy
and William T. Vollmann
.
Liam O'Flaherty
Liam O'Flaherty was a significant Irish novelist and short story writer and a major figure in the Irish literary renaissance, born August 28, 1896, died September 7, 1984.-Biography:...
and published in 1929.
Plot
Based on the author's experience as an Irish Guardsman in W.W.I, this short novel tells the story of a squad of British soldiers in an unidentified area of the Western FrontWestern Front (World War I)
Following the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the German Army opened the Western Front by first invading Luxembourg and Belgium, then gaining military control of important industrial regions in France. The tide of the advance was dramatically turned with the Battle of the Marne...
. The squad is led by Corporal Williams, an obtuse NCO, and consists of nine infantrymen, one of whom, William Gunn, is plagued by PTS and mentally unbalanced. The novel focuses on the last hours of this group of doomed individuals, which will be killed or wounded in a fruitless attempt to occupy a section of the enemy front line. Gunn will go crazy, turning into the Brute of the title, and will kill the other two surviving soldiers in the bleak ending of the novel.
Criticism
David Trotter, in The Cambridge Companion to The Literature of the First World War, maintains that O'Flaherty's book--which, unlike most British war novels, was written by an author of proletarian origin--is interesting inasmuch as it "intended to do justice to the brute's point of view" (35), where brute stands for working class soldiers.Umberto Rossi praised the book as one of the few World War I novels which did not censor the traumatic and brutal experience of front infantrymen, showing combat in the trenches for what it was with a remarkable expressionistic style; it can be thus considered a forerunner of such late-modern writers as Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy
Cormac McCarthy is an American novelist and playwright. He has written ten novels, spanning the Southern Gothic, Western, and modernist genres. He received the Pulitzer Prize and the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for Fiction for The Road...
and William T. Vollmann
William T. Vollmann
William Tanner Vollmann is an American novelist, journalist, short story writer, essayist and winner of the National Book Award...
.