Love and Hate Theme Analysis

From the passion of young lovers to the deadly animosity of war, Birdsong is an intimate look at the many forms of love and hate. The characters within Sebastian Faulks’ novel are overwhelmingly driven by these two conflicting emotions, each in different ways and to very different ends, and Englishman Stephen Wraysford is one such example. As a young man before World War I, Stephen is motivated by his forbidden love for Isabelle Azaire, the wife of a French textile manufacturer he has been tasked to observe by his British employer. Later, entrenched in the gruesome violence of the Great War (World War I), Stephen’s hate for his German enemy—and for the very troops he commands—compels him to stay alive and keep fighting through unimaginable odds. The men Stephen fights with and against are likewise motivated by their emotions; however, unlike Stephen, the troops are guided by love for their country, love for their families, and love for each other. While it is hate that keeps Stephen alive, he is ultimately saved by an act of love, through which Faulks effectively argues the power and triumph of love over hate.

Many of the characters in Birdsong are motivated by hate, through which Faulks highlights the power of this negative emotion on human behavior. When Isabelle runs away with Stephen, her decision to leave is in large part due to her dislike for her husband, not merely her love for Stephen. Isabelle’s husband, René, is a cruel man, and when she fails to become pregnant on account of his own impotence, he begins to beat her. As Isabelle’s disdain for René grows, so does her “passion” for Stephen, and this is evidence of the effects of hate on Isabelle’s behavior. As Isabelle leaves René, she questions, “Why should I trust you when you have given me so little reason even to like you?” Isabelle admits that she requires very little in terms of love, and that she “could be happy in the simplest way,” but René’s poor treatment of her cements her decision to go with Stephen, even though she is not entirely trusting of his love, either. Later, as a captain in the British army during the Great War, Stephen is motivated not by love or comradery, but by a “pitiful contempt” for the men in his charge. He views the war as “an exploration of how far men can be degraded,” and the actions of his troops satisfy his morbid curiosity, without which Stephen claims he would “walk into enemy lines and let himself be killed,” or “blow his own head off with one of these grenades.” Like Isabelle, Stephen’s actions are in large part driven by his hate. Stephen is further fueled by hate when he is trapped deep underground with a dying Jack Firebrace after a German bomb destroys their trench. Stephen attempts to provoke Jack with negativity, yelling, “Jack, can you hear me? I want to tell you about the Germans and how much I hate them. I’m going to tell you why you’ve got to live.” Stephen’s hate sustains him in the destroyed tunnel; however, Jack dies unmoved by his contempt.

Of course, Stephen’s hate cannot continue to sustain him either, and after he is rescued by German soldiers after six days trapped under the French soil, both Stephen and his enemy surrender in a spontaneous act of love—a crucial turning point in Stephen’s character. As Stephen is saved by Levi, a German officer whose own brother was killed in the very same mine collapse, Faulks writes, “Levi looked at this wild-eyed figure, half-demented, his brother’s killer. For no reason he could tell, he found that he had opened his own arms in turn, and the two men fell upon each other’s shoulders, weeping at the bitter strangeness of their human lives.” Until the moment they meet, Stephen and Levi are prepared to continue fighting and kill the enemy should he be found on the other side of the dirt. Face to face, however, both men react differently. Exhausted and mutually defeated after years of war and violence, the men are unable to continue their blind hate and instead embrace each other, through which Faulks argues the definitive power of love over even the strongest of hate.

Love is the driving force behind the plot and many of the characters within Birdsong, and in this way Faulks highlights the power of love in shaping and influencing human behavior. When Isabelle and her sister, Jeanne, are first introduced as young girls in the French city of Rouen, the narrator remarks that Isabelle “loved Jeanne as she loved no one else.” Jeanne returns this intense love and devotes most of her life to taking care of her sister. Jeanne even raises Isabelle’s daughter, Françoise, as her own after Isabelle dies of the flu. Many of Jeanne’s actions are in direct response to her love for Isabelle, highlighting the motivating nature of love. Furthermore, because of Isabelle, Stephen quits his job in London and delays his return to England, deciding instead to live in St.-Rémy-de-Provence, a commune in Southern France near Isabelle’s family, so that he and Isabelle can be together. Like Jeanne, Stephen’s own actions are driven by his love for Isabelle, again reflecting the powerful and positive influence of love on human behavior. Lastly, in the trenches of World War I, British miner and trench digger Jack Firebrace finds solace in love during the darkest days of war. Jack’s love for his son, John, gives him the strength to keep digging day and night, and after John dies from diphtheria, Jack turns to the love he feels for fellow miner, Arthur Shaw. In Firebrace’s “strange alternate life” of the war, Shaw is “the only person in the world to him,” and they both rely on their love for each other to endure the hardships of war, further supporting Faulks’ argument of the influence of love. Through the representation of love and hate within Birdsong, Faulks implies that even the violence of war is no match for the enduring power of love.