How do Nella Last and Laurie Lee present their experiences of war? Intro: Introduce both texts and what they are about (no more than 4-5 sentences)

Body paragraphs: 1 paragraph per question, using a quote from each text in every paragraph

What are the similarities and differences between Lee and Last’s perspective on war? What tone do they write in?

Compare Lee’s presentation of the villagers with Nella Last’s account of the people in Barrow.

Consider the language that both authors use – do they use the same techniques and to what effect?

Conclusion:

Summarise your main points; what they have in common and what is different about them. Aim for around 3-4 sentences.

This is an essay question due tomorrow, thanks

Laurie Lee’s memoirs are little known in the United States, though in English schools his first two volumes occupy about the same place thaD. Salinger’s “Catcher in the Rye” has filled here. “A Moment of War,” the third volume of Lee’s story, had a substantial run on the British bestseller list last year--five decades after the first volume appeared.

Lee’s prose has much the same kind of spare elegance and direct, heart-wrenching clarity of Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address; and both Lincoln and Lee are dealing with that most painful of all types conflict: civil war. This book is Lee’s account of his efforts to join the International Brigade in Spain in December of 1937.

Lee was born in 1914 in a village in Somerset. He has recounted the story of his adolescence in “Cider With Rosie,” a memoir of gentle humor and great charm. At 19, he walked out of Somerset with little money and a fiddle to confront the world, going first to London, where he managed to earn enough money to get himself to Vigo, Spain. From there, he walked across Spain in the blazing July that saw the beginnings of the Spanish Civil War. His account of that was called “As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning,” published in 1969; he recorded the life he found in the villages of Spain, for it was in those that he spent most of his time, detailing indelibly the life and tone of a country poised on the brink of disaster. Now, almost a quarter of a century later, comes this memoir of the look and taste and feel of that disaster.

I don’t know of any book that captures as clear-eyed and desolating a view of the realities of war. Christopher Isherwood in his “Berlin Stories” referred to himself as a camera, but Lee is far more genuinely just that. Lee is a poet (he has published verse along with his newspaper writings and memoirs), and he writes with the care of a poet who must weigh each word to find the precise one that will be the most telling and the most true. The language is always simple, direct and unornamented. In the entire work, there is not one cliche, no easy, borrowed phrase. Each word rings as true as though newly minted for this one purpose, fresh and clear as a winter morning.

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hine was able to receive a high school and college education.