Throughout both Birdsong and Catch-22 the insignificance or rather anonymity of women is widely used and was considered to be normal in the time's modern day societies.
Susan R. Grayzel discusses how the average woman’s experience in World War One varied greatly on the way in which they were regarded in nationality, race, family status, and class , being displayed as helpless and passive to men in order to persuade them to join the military and fight wars. Although, once the men left for war and women remained, this completely changed. The typical jobs for men were taken over and the social invisibility was no longer.
Susan R. Grayzel, a writer of “woman and the first world war” explained that “women were both celebrated as heroes for taking…show more content… The modern novel was written in 1993 which was two years after the end of the First Iraq War. Set in France, the opening of the novel gives the setting of pre-war society, with the use of Romantic literacy to subtly refer to both life and death. For example, the description of the ‘Boulevard Du Cange’, situated in the city of Amiens, France, the original setting for the novel. Faulkes introduces the theme of tunnels and passageways when he describes the river: “the river Somme broke up in to small canals that were the picturesque feature of Saint-Leu”. The imagery of the river is idyllic and celebrates life, however also relates to the tunnels of the trenches where death is created. This can be related to Wilfred Owen’s Strange Meeting whereby he refers to a “profound dull tunnel”, also used to both describe life and death. Throughout Birdsong there is a large use of tunneling, which in Owen’s works refers to both death and rebirth. Steven Wraysford, the main character of the novel changes quite drastically throughout the novel for these reasons of birth and death. He begins considerate and turns into a very cold almost damaged man, becoming more reserved as the novel goes on unwilling to share his feelings with the rest of the men he forms bonds with. This is, however, how most men felt after the war although they were at a point where they wanted to feel love and