Difference between Gulf and other war novels
...men and the children are being separated. Children coming home from school find that their parents have just disappeared and women and men coming back from shopping or office come and see that their houses are locked up and their families gone. But the other two novels describe the suffering of a soldier more. For example when Figgis and Tom says taken from Gulf: “Why don’t they… surrender?” “Minefields in front, and death squads behind. Some of the guys tried it. They brought them back and shot them too. We had to watch them. God, Tom, this is a terrible place…” But another thing our group has noticed is that in Anne Frank’s Diary and also in Gulf, the characters are not in the war. They are giving side narration. But in Small Island characters like Gilbert are actually in the war and fighting. The thing, which makes Gulf unique, is that the writer had given every small detail of the problems a soldier might have while at a war. Like eating hygienic food. We can also see this in the narration of Gilbert. “This was war. There was hardship I was prepared for - bullet, bomb and casual death - but not for the torture of missing cow-foot stew, not for the persecution of living without curried shrimp or pepper pot soup. I was not ready; I was not trained to eat food that was prepared in a pan of boiling water, the sole purpose of which was to rid it of taste and texture. How the English built empires when their armies marched on nothing but mush should be one of wonders of the world. I thought it would be combat that would make me regret having volunteered, not boiled-up potatoes, and boiled-up vegetables - gray and limp on the plate like it had been eaten once before. Why the English come to cook everything by this ...