Birdsong

by

Sebastian Faulks

Jack Firebrace Character Analysis

A British miner. Jack digs many of the tunnels beneath the trenches during World War I, and he works closely with Stephen Wraysford. Jack is kind and hard-working, and sadly, his work in the tunnels during the war is little different than his life as a miner laying underground railroads in London. He is a man of deep faith in God, and his love for his son, John, gives him solace during the war. Jack also finds strength in his friendship with fellow soldier Arthur Shaw, and the tenderness with which Faulks depicts their friendship serves to disrupt traditional stereotypes of masculinity. Jack is devastated when John dies of diphtheria and Shaw is killed in the tunnels, but he manages to survive on their memories. He dies deep under the French soil when a German bomb blows up the British tunnel in the final attack of the war.

Jack Firebrace Quotes in Birdsong

The Birdsong quotes below are all either spoken by Jack Firebrace or refer to Jack Firebrace. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
History and the Future Theme Icon
).
Part Two: France 1916 Quotes

None of these men would admit that what they saw and what they did were beyond the boundaries of human behaviour. You would not believe, Jack thought, that the fellow with his cap pushed back, joking with his friend at the window of the butcher’s shop, had seen his other mate dying in a shellhole, gas frothing in his lungs. No one told; and Jack too joined the unspoken conspiracy that all was well, that no natural order had been violated. He blamed the NCOs, who blamed the officers; they swore at the staff officers, who blamed the generals.

Related Characters: Jack Firebrace
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:

In good humour, braving the barely understood the jeers of the washerwoman who stood by to take their clothes, the men queued naked for the baths that been set up in a long barn. Jack stood behind Shaw, admiring his huge back, with the muscles slabbed and spread out across his shoulder blades, so that his waist, though in fact substantial enough, looked like a nipped-in funnel by comparison, above the dimple of the coccyx and fatty swell of his hair-covered buttocks.

Related Characters: Jack Firebrace, Arthur Shaw
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:

“No one in England knows what this is like. If they could see the way these men live they would not believe their eyes. This is not a war, this is an exploration of how far men can be degraded. I am deeply curious to see how much further it can be taken; I want to know. I believe that it has barely started. I believe that far worse things than we have seen will be authorized and will be carried out by millions of boys and men like my Tipper and your Firebrace. There is no depth to which they can’t be driven.”

Related Characters: Stephen Wraysford (speaker), Jack Firebrace, Michael Weir, Tipper
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:

Jack tried not to imagine the weight of earth on top of them. He did not think of the roots of trees, stretching down through the soil. In any case they were too deep now. He had always survived in London by picturing the tunnel in which he worked as a railway compartment at night: the shutters were closed over a small space, you could not see anything, but outside a wide world of trees and fields beneath an open sky was whistling safely by in the darkness. When the space was no more than three feet wide and he had the earth pressing in his mouth and eyes, the illusion became difficult to sustain.

Related Characters: Jack Firebrace
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three: England 1978 Quotes

In the tunnel of the Underground, stalled in the darkness, Elizabeth Benson sighed in impatience. She wanted to be home to see if there were any letters or in case the telephone should ring. A winter coat was pressed in her face by the crush of passengers along the aisle of the carriage. Elizabeth pulled her small suitcase closer to her feet. She had returned from a two-day business trip to Germany that morning and had gone straight in to work from Heathrow without returning to her flat. With the lights out she could not see to read her paper. She closed her eyes and tried to let her imagination remove her from the still train and its tightfitting hole.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Benson, Jack Firebrace
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis:
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Jack Firebrace Quotes in Birdsong

The Birdsong quotes below are all either spoken by Jack Firebrace or refer to Jack Firebrace. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
History and the Future Theme Icon
).
Part Two: France 1916 Quotes

None of these men would admit that what they saw and what they did were beyond the boundaries of human behaviour. You would not believe, Jack thought, that the fellow with his cap pushed back, joking with his friend at the window of the butcher’s shop, had seen his other mate dying in a shellhole, gas frothing in his lungs. No one told; and Jack too joined the unspoken conspiracy that all was well, that no natural order had been violated. He blamed the NCOs, who blamed the officers; they swore at the staff officers, who blamed the generals.

Related Characters: Jack Firebrace
Page Number: 136
Explanation and Analysis:

In good humour, braving the barely understood the jeers of the washerwoman who stood by to take their clothes, the men queued naked for the baths that been set up in a long barn. Jack stood behind Shaw, admiring his huge back, with the muscles slabbed and spread out across his shoulder blades, so that his waist, though in fact substantial enough, looked like a nipped-in funnel by comparison, above the dimple of the coccyx and fatty swell of his hair-covered buttocks.

Related Characters: Jack Firebrace, Arthur Shaw
Page Number: 137
Explanation and Analysis:

“No one in England knows what this is like. If they could see the way these men live they would not believe their eyes. This is not a war, this is an exploration of how far men can be degraded. I am deeply curious to see how much further it can be taken; I want to know. I believe that it has barely started. I believe that far worse things than we have seen will be authorized and will be carried out by millions of boys and men like my Tipper and your Firebrace. There is no depth to which they can’t be driven.”

Related Characters: Stephen Wraysford (speaker), Jack Firebrace, Michael Weir, Tipper
Page Number: 145
Explanation and Analysis:

Jack tried not to imagine the weight of earth on top of them. He did not think of the roots of trees, stretching down through the soil. In any case they were too deep now. He had always survived in London by picturing the tunnel in which he worked as a railway compartment at night: the shutters were closed over a small space, you could not see anything, but outside a wide world of trees and fields beneath an open sky was whistling safely by in the darkness. When the space was no more than three feet wide and he had the earth pressing in his mouth and eyes, the illusion became difficult to sustain.

Related Characters: Jack Firebrace
Page Number: 161
Explanation and Analysis:
Part Three: England 1978 Quotes

In the tunnel of the Underground, stalled in the darkness, Elizabeth Benson sighed in impatience. She wanted to be home to see if there were any letters or in case the telephone should ring. A winter coat was pressed in her face by the crush of passengers along the aisle of the carriage. Elizabeth pulled her small suitcase closer to her feet. She had returned from a two-day business trip to Germany that morning and had gone straight in to work from Heathrow without returning to her flat. With the lights out she could not see to read her paper. She closed her eyes and tried to let her imagination remove her from the still train and its tightfitting hole.

Related Characters: Elizabeth Benson, Jack Firebrace
Page Number: 233
Explanation and Analysis: