rlier. The extent of the contrast strongly suggests to the reader what happened to men in the trenches and how severely they could have been changed. It seemed that even if the men came home physically sound, the horror of the situation left their minds scarred forever. When in war, Jim describes himself as a ‘dangerous innocent’. He carries a gun, which could kill a man in a second, which makes him dangerous. He does not have the clearest idea of what brought him to war, what he is fighting for, nor why he must kill men he has never set eyes on, which makes him innocent. This strangely innocent situation has been foreshadowed through the title of the novella. ‘Fly away peter’ is a line from a children’s nursery rhyme, a symbol of the upmost innocence.World War One was not Australia’s war. Australia had no arguments with the common enemy, she was not involved in the happenings of Europe, which seemed a world away at that time. Why then, did Australia, a newly developing country, send a sizeable percentage of her male population to fight another’s war? It seems absurd. To the British though, shown though their responses to the Australian army, Australia’s participation seemed obligatory. During the war, British soldiers looked down upon the Australian soldiers. After the war, Australia received very little from the British, despite the amount sacrificed. Surviving Australian soldiers were sent home, with a considerable lack of treatment. The sudden lack of medical resources left many ongoing injuries scantily treated, and many of the mentally wounded were not treated at all, but left to live with the war in their minds forever. Men that left their wives and children to go to war, returned different, changed men. The sudden lack of males (one male to five females after the war) reduced the number of births and because of the lack of skilled women, many fatherless families depended on social ...
