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One of the great World War I antiwar novels - honest, chilling, and brilliantly satiricalBased on the author's experiences on the Western Front, Richard Aldington's first novel, Deathof a Hero, finally joins the ranks of Penguin Classics. Our hero is George Winterbourne, who enlists in the British Expeditionary Army during the Great War and gets sent to France. After a rash of casualties leads to his promotion through the ranks, he grows increasingly cynical about the war and disillusioned by the hypocrisies of British society. Aldington's writing about Britain's ignorance of the tribulations of its soldiers is among the most biting ever published. Death of a Herovividly evokes the morally degrading nature of combat as it rushes toward its astounding finish.About the author-Richard Aldington (1892-1962) was known as a translator, critic, biographer, and poet of distinction. He joined the British Army in 1916 and was wounded in 1918.… (more)
User reviews
The first two parts are like a much more superficial "Way of all Flesh", excoriating the Victorians for their moral (especially sexual) cant and hypocrisy and in effect locating all the blame for the war therein. Here the writing lacks nuance and sometimes seems juvenile, with frequent resort to italics and other emphatic devices. There are occasional good descriptive passages, especially of nature, but in general it's an Angry Young Man polemic without any depth that cannot justify its 200+ pages.
The framing device of a narrator who gets to know the titular "hero" shortly before he dies is implausible and I'm not sure why Aldington didn't just go with omniscient third person.
I believe you could actually skip the first two parts of "Death of a Hero" entirely and just enjoy the third for what it is, a brilliant and horrifying rendition of life in the trenches.