Testament Of Youth Summary

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As a source of history, Testament of Youth provides the reader with a firsthand account of a generation deeply affected by war. World War I was the first all out, brutal war the world had experienced. It had such a detrimental and lasting impact on Vera Brittain that she wrote Testament of Youth to educate generations to follow on the senseless waste of human lives caused by war. In Testament of Youth, Brittain reveals how the gender roles of the 1900’s created various differences in experience between men and women. Testament of Youth is an argument against war through Brittain’s firsthand account of the tragedies and loss that it created in hopes that history does not repeat itself.
The gender roles displayed in Testament of Youth showed that women had gained more independence than they had before, but still had more constraints than men. The independence they gained was not given willingly; …show more content…

They are celebrating the fact that it’s over, but it is not a cause for celebration to her. To her no one should be celebrating because it is a period of mourning.
At this point, Brittain comes to the realization that war is harmful to the men who fight in it, the people they leave behind and civilization as a whole. She states,
“…the organ swelling forth into a final triumphant burst in the song of victory, after the solemn and mournful dirge over the dead, I thought with what mockery and irony the jubilant celebrations which we hail the coming of peace will fall upon the ears of those to whom their best will never return, upon whose sorrow victory is built, who have paid with their mourning for the others’ joy.”
To Brittain it’s ironic to call it peace if it was gained through bloodshed and violence. The costs of war are too high. Brittains view of war after it is over has completely changed her. This change in her is comparable to the views of Siegfried Sassoon that the war was “futile, meaningless, and a tragic

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