The Atonement of Ashley Morden – by Fred Bodsworth
by atlanticqueen
Posted to WritersAndGenres on 2003-04-09 18:46:00
Parent message is 406278
This war novel – to be precise, this passionately anti-war novel – offers both less and more than on eusually expects of a war novel. Although it does deal with the Second World War, it does so symbolically, and with only a limited phase of it, which thematically is more a strength than a weakness, for the author is more concerned with “this world gone mad with destructive power,” – a destructive power emanating from that war, the offspring of modern science and man’s uncontrolled aggressive instinct – than he is with the ‘history’ and action of that particular war…
As Bodsworth portrays it war polarizes mankind into groups bent on national survival rather than on human betterment, and it debases, defiles, and brutalizes those who participate by freeing their primitive agressive and destructive impulses and instincts from the normal restraints of civilization; indeed, even giving sanction and opportunity for the expression of man’s lust for battle and his lust for sex…
from the introduction to The Atonement of Ashley Morden