The General (novel)

The General (novel)

C. S. Forester's book "The General" is a short novel about an ordinary British Army officer in the Great War, or World War I.

Forester is best known for his famous series of Horatio Hornblower novels which he began in 1937; few of his other works are well-known: "The General" (1936) and "The African Queen" (1935) are exceptions and remain popular.

"The General" follows the career of Herbert Curzon from the time he joins the army as a subaltern through his experiences in the Second Boer War to the happy day he is given a regiment of his own to command. Curzon is unexceptional in every way, an officer like any other officer, and it is the very ordinariness of Forester's character that serves to give the novel power.

As the Great War begins Curzon takes his part as a major of an unfashionable cavalry regiment. He is given a temporary promotion to battalion command and then quickly a brigade command. At the battle of Ypres, he manages to keep his head about him and upon the death of his brigadier becomes a general. Curzon returns to England while his unit is in Belgium, and is promoted again through odd intrigues. He is promoted again and again, eventually being placed in command of a hundred thousand men, and orders attacks that condemn many of them to pointless mutilation and inevitable death amongst the shells and the gas and the machine guns.

Yet Curzon—General Sir Herbert Curzon by this time—is not a brutal man or an uncaring one: simply a brave and honest but stubborn and unimaginative leader. For Forester, the tale of Herbert Curzon's almost inevitable rise to high command, the senseless slaughters he directs, and his eventual retirement to the life of an aged cripple in a wheelchair, is not about Curzon himself—it is about the attitudes and mores of the British Army and of British society more generally, the attitudes that (in Forester's view) led to the appalling casualties and the horrors of the First World War.

For Forester, to understand Herbert Curzon's simple courage and determination to do his duty is to understand how men like Curzon, who were not by nature evil, were led to order the cream of their country's manhood to sacrifice themselves in the pointless bloody slaughter of the Somme or Verdun or Gallipoli.

"The General" has been widely praised as being an excellent and very realistic account of the mindset of the British Officer Corps in times of war, and as such many veterans are surprised to learn that the author himself never actually served in the armed forces. In fact, a persistent, yet unsubstantiated, rumor states that Adolf Hitler was so impressed with the novel that he made it required reading for his top field commanders and general staff in the hopes that it would allow prominent German officers to be able to understand how their British counterparts thought. This rumor is referred to as fact by Forester in a foreword to a later edition of the novel.


Wikimedia Foundation. 2010.

Игры ⚽ Нужен реферат?

Look at other dictionaries:

  • The General — may refer to:* The General (locomotive), a locomotive stolen in the Great Locomotive Chase of the American Civil War * The General (1927 film), a Buster Keaton film about the train chase * The General (1998 film), a John Boorman drama about… …   Wikipedia

  • The Collectors (novel) — The Collectors is a thriller by David Baldacci. It was released in 2006 by Warner Books. Plot The Speaker of the House and the head of the rare books collection in Washington are both found dead. The Speaker has been killed by a sniper at a party …   Wikipedia

  • The Oracle (novel) — The Oracle , with the United States title The Oracle Betrayed , is a young adult fantasy novel by Catherine Fisher, first published in 2003. The Oracle is the first of the Oracle Prophecies Trilogy . The others are The Archon (2004) and The… …   Wikipedia

  • The Idiot (novel) — Infobox Book name = The Idiot title orig = Идиот Идіотъ in original, pre 1920s spelling] translator = image caption = Pevear and Volokhonsky translation of The Idiot author = Fyodor Dostoevsky illustrator = cover artist = country = Russia… …   Wikipedia

  • The Castle (novel) — This article is about the German novel by Franz Kafka. For other uses, see The Castle (disambiguation). K. redirects here. For the chronological list of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart compositions, see Köchel catalogue. For other uses, see K… …   Wikipedia

  • The Fall (novel) — infobox Book | name = The Fall title orig = La Chute translator = Justin O Brien image caption = Vintage International s 1991 reissue of Justin O Brien s translation of The Fall . author = Albert Camus illustrator = cover artist = country =… …   Wikipedia

  • The Gambler (novel) — Infobox Book | name = The Gambler title orig = Igrok translator = image caption = Everyman Library edition of The Gambler author = Fyodor Dostoevsky illustrator = cover artist = country = Russia language = Russian language series = genre = Novel… …   Wikipedia

  • The Coronation (novel) — This article is about the Boris Akunin novel. For the 17th century play, see The Coronation (play). The Coronation   …   Wikipedia

  • The American (novel) — For other uses, see The American (disambiguation). The American   Author(s) Henry James …   Wikipedia

  • The Citadel (novel) — infobox Book | name = The Citadel bgcolour = silver author = A. J. Cronin country = UK language = English genre = Novel publisher = Gollancz UK Little, Brown USA release date = 1937 media type = Print (Hardback Paperback) pages = 446 pp. (UK… …   Wikipedia

Share the article and excerpts

Direct link
Do a right-click on the link above
and select “Copy Link”