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How Does Sheriff Present Disturbed Characters in.Doc
How does Sheriff present disturbed characters in ‘Journey’s End’. (NOT Stanhope)

Journey’s End is a play written by R.C. Sherriff based on his experience of WW1. He presents several of the characters in the play as being disturbed in different ways from his experience of people’s behaviour in the trenches. The most disturbed character in the play is easily Stanhope due to his ambitious drinking and his temper. However, there are still other characters that are disturbed during the play. Out of the characters I find that the most disturbed people after Stanhope is Hibbert and Trotter. The reasons why I think this are explained in the following paragraphs.

The first character that I see as being most disturbed after Stanhope is Trotter. Trotter is an officer in Captain Stanhope’s company and seems to be the most optimistic person in the play. He seems to constantly be upbeat compared to the other officers in the company. He tells Stanhope to ‘cheer up’ during a war and never seems looks on the dull side of life in the reader’s perspective. Sherriff suggests that he is disturbed as many soldiers go mad because of the war whilst he seems to be very happy and optimistic.

Another reason why it may seem he’s disturbed is the fact that he doesn’t have to drink to take his mind of the war. During WW1 all soldiers were given 2 ounces of rum daily to help get over the war. It shows that drinking during the war was very common. Sherriff must have added in this detail based on his experiences of WW1.In act 3 scene 2 both Stanhope and Hibbert have drunk ‘whisky on top of champagne’ to the point that they have become drunk. Trotter doesn’t seem to be a heavy drinker and seems to be surprised that Stanhope is drinking whisky after drinking champagne. In this case they drink to get over the war and to think about girls and legs but Trotter seems to be able to talk about this without much drink. This may suggest that he has no feelings about the war so he doesn’t need to

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