journey's end historical context

Journey’s End

R.c. sherriff, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

Welcome to the LitCharts study guide on R.C. Sherriff's Journey’s End . Created by the original team behind SparkNotes, LitCharts are the world's best literature guides.

Journey’s End: Introduction

Journey’s end: plot summary, journey’s end: detailed summary & analysis, journey’s end: themes, journey’s end: quotes, journey’s end: characters, journey’s end: symbols, journey’s end: theme wheel, brief biography of r.c. sherriff.

Historical Context of Journey’s End

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• Full Title: Journey’s End
• When Published: Journey’s End was first produced on December 9th, 1928
• Literary Period: Modernism
• Genre: Drama, Realism
• Setting: A military dugout in the British trenches of St. Quentin, France during World War I.
• Climax: After days of mounting tension and anticipation, the Germans finally stage a massive attack on the British trenches, seriously overwhelming Stanhope’s infantry and fatally wounding Raleigh.
• Antagonist: The Germans are the most obvious antagonists in Journey’s End , but they hardly ever actually appear in the play. Because of this, the threat they pose—the sense of doom that hovers over the British dugout—becomes the true antagonistic force.

Extra Credit for Journey’s End

Rowing Club. R.C. Sherriff composed and staged his first play in order to raise money for Kingston Rowing Club so that the organization could purchase a new boat.

The Big Screen. Since it first premiered, Journey’s End has been staged many, many times. In 2018, though, it was adapted as a feature film for the first time.

Journey's End

By r.c. sherriff, journey's end study guide.

Set in a World War I dugout from March 18 to March 21, 1918, R.C. Sherriff 's 1928 play Journey's End follows Captain Stanhope as he deals with alcoholism and symptoms of PTSD while commanding a group of British army officers in the lead up to Operation Michael, a German attack on British trenches. The play ends with Stanhope's two closest officers dying in the line of duty.

The seventh drama written by Sheriff, Journey's End was initially rejected by many theaters due to an assumption that the public didn't want to watch plays about war, particularly plays with no leading lady. After its eventual premiere at London's Apollo Theatre, the play saw enormous success in Europe and America, and has been adapted for film and television. Revivals of the play have received the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Revival of A Play, and a Tony Award for Best Revival of a Play.

Journey’s End Questions and Answers

The Question and Answer section for Journey’s End is a great resource to ask questions, find answers, and discuss the novel.

How does Sherriff create tension in the duologue between Osborne and Stanhope at the end of Act 1?

Stanhope meets the revelation that Raleigh has joined his company with unease. The presence of Raleigh introduces a new conflict to the play that involves the themes of heroism, alcoholism, and PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder). Stanhope knows...

What are Trotter's quotes showing his emotions?

From the text:

Trotter (throwing his spoon with a clatter into the plate) : Oh, I say, but dam!

Trotter : Well, boys ! ’Ere we are for six days again. Six bloomin’ eternal days. {He makes a calculation on the table.)

Trotter comes down the steps,...

How Sherriff presents the true horrors of was through the character of Raleigh?

The difference between the fantasy of war and its true, horrific and demoralizing nature is one of the play's major themes. The theme is most overtly revealed through Raleigh's character arc. When Raleigh first arrives, his boyish excitement at...

Study Guide for Journey’s End

Journey's End study guide contains a biography of R. C. Sherriff, literature essays, quiz questions, major themes, characters, and a full summary and analysis.

• About Journey's End
• Journey's End Summary
• Character List

Essays for Journey’s End

Journey's End essays are academic essays for citation. These papers were written primarily by students and provide critical analysis of the play Journey's End by R. C. Sherriff.

• The Depiction of War in Journey’s End and Exposure
• How does Sherriff present Heroism in Journey's End?
• How Stanhope Generates Conflict in the Opening Act
• Comparison of the mental suffering created by war
• Human Decency in a World of Human Waste

Wikipedia Entries for Journey’s End

• Introduction
• Plot summary
• Productions (professional)
• Productions (amateur)
• Adaptations

• Museum life
• Theatre and Performance

Journey’s End: Remembering the First World War

At times of great social upheaval, the arts help society understand events, deal with complex emotions and recover from collective trauma. As we enter the final year of commemorations marking 100 years since the end of the First World, the conflict continues to have a significant presence on the UK stage. Recent years have seen revivals of productions such as Birdsong and War Horse and new works including Balletboyz’s Young Men .  Journey’s End is one of the most commonly revived plays of the First World War and will grace the silver screen in 2017.

Written by R C Sherriff in 1927, Journey’s End draws on the playwright’s experience of combat in the First World War.  Set in an officers’ dugout over a period of four days in 1918, it is a story of comradeship, fear and heroism.

At first, Sherriff struggled to secure a West End performance of the play with many potential producers concerned that audiences would not want to watch a production about war, not least one without a leading lady or any female characters. After much consideration, The Incorporated Stage Society, a private members society that mounted performances of new and experimental work, agreed to include two semi-staged performances of the play in its Winter programme.

Opening at the Apollo Theatre on 9 th December 1928 and starring a 21-year-old Laurence Olivier as Captain Stanhope, the play proved to be a critical success.  Reviews commended Sherriff’s unromanticised portrayal of the realities of war and its emotional power noting that the play was worthy of a longer public run.

In January 1929 the play transferred to the Savoy Theatre under producer Maurice Browne.  Sherriff was keen to use the original cast from the Stage Society performances but Olivier was already committed to star in a production of Beau Geste and so Colin Clive took over the role.  The play was warmly received by audiences with Winston Churchill pronouncing it “brilliant”. Standing ovations met the cast on opening night and demand for tickets resulted in the addition of three matinee performances a week.  The BBC broadcast a wireless version on Armistice night 1929 and at a special performance for 320 Victoria Cross holders, Sherriff was applauded for a number of minutes.

Journey’s End is without doubt one of the greatest plays exploring the First World War with a poignant anti-war message.  However, its anti-war message is complex.  Histories of the war written in the 1960s present the British commanders as foolish men, far from the front line who needlessly sacrificed the lives of brave men in military blunders, and this idea pervades in the anti-war sentiments presented in Theatre Workshop’s Oh! What a Lovely War! and television’s Blackadder Goes Forth .  Ultimately, it was Sherriff’s intention to produce a play which paid tribute to his brothers-in-arms and the virtues of duty, perseverance and comradeship which he experienced on the Western Front.

Whilst the war in Journey’s End reveals the tragedy of conflict for both sides, the play’s narrative reminds audiences that the deaths were not without purpose.  For audiences in 1929, the Great War was not only in living memory, but its legacy was still visible with many families mourning the loss of loved ones and dealing with both the mental and physical wounds of conflict.  For inter-war audiences, Journey’s End offered an act of remembrance where those left behind could commemorate the sacrifice of husbands, fathers, sons and comrades and look forward to a future of peace.  As the Manchester Guardian printed in its 1928 review “ Journey’s End should become an official play of all the peace societies in England.  It is worth many million pamphlets.”

The powerful anti-war message of Journey’s End still resonates with modern audiences in a time when conflict shows no sign of abating. David Grindley’s 2004 production at the Comedy Theatre, London juxtaposed the play’s strain of dark humour with heart-breaking tragedy.  75 years after the play opened at the Savoy Theatre, reviews of Grindley’s production note the lasting power of the piece, the impact of the intimate setting and the crafting of complicated, recognisable characters.  Rather than concluding with a traditional curtain call, the production ended with the cast standing silently before a memorial inscribed with the names of the fallen, encouraging the audience to not only congratulate the cast, but to remember the sacrifice of the brave, ordinary heroes of the First World War.

To explore the V&A Theatre and Performance Collections visit Search the Collections and Search the Archives .

Sherriff was applauded for a number of minutes

If you are thinking about the comparison of the previous and current version of it then first of all I would like to suggest now New version of the Microsoft is more compatible.

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I think it’s David Grindley not David Brindley

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A century on from the events it portrayed, Journey’s End is a reminder that war is hell – whoever you are

Reader in Victorian Studies, University of Hertfordshire

Disclosure statement

Andrew Maunder does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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March marks the 100th anniversary of Germany’s final offensive of World War I, which sent 74 divisions of German troops against the Allied lines over a 60-mile front, preceded by a five-hour artillery barrage of a million shells. More than half a million men died on both sides.

The days up to, and including, the start of the battle are portrayed in the recent film adaptation of R.C. Sherriff’s classic World War I play, Journey’s End – which premiered in 1928. Adapted by Simon Reade and directed by Saul Dibb, the movie has all the familiar features you’d expect of a piece about the “Great War”: a frontline dugout, mud everywhere and a foolhardy raid on a German trench during which seven men die.

As with many films of this oeuvre, there are brave young officers and there are good-humoured working-class soldiers – but it is left to a heavy-drinking army captain, Dennis Stanhope (played by Sam Claflin), a former captain of “rugger” at his private school, to reflect on the horror before leading his men out to die.

Despite its age, Journey’s End retains its appeal as evidence of what the war was “about”. It’s a fixture of GCSE syllabuses and is taught alongside the so-called trench poets – Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon – as an anti-war statement, and sometimes as a subversive and unusually “modern” reminder of the waste of life that war inevitably brings.

The idea that Journey’s End is anti-war – a “classic play about the futility and slaughter” of 1914-1918 as The Guardian’s Peter Bradshaw put it – appears a good deal in reviews of the latest film. It’s perhaps what we now expect of plays and films about the Great War. If such entertainments make us cry, so much the better.

But it’s doubtful whether Sherriff aimed to create a fully fledged pacifist drama. He originally planned to write a novel focusing on the relationship between Stanhope and a new young recruit, James Raleigh (played by Asa Butterfield) – a school friend who loves him. It’s an intense relationship which made it onto the stage and is symptomatic of how, throughout the play, it’s the interactions between the soldiers that primarily interest Sherriff.

The resulting play ran for 594 performances in the West End, 485 on Broadway and was a worldwide hit, including in Berlin. Sherriff had apparently found the “perfect pitch” at which to represent the “tragedy” of 1914–18 for 1920s audiences who were more used to drawing-room comedies than plays set in a grimy dugout.

Yet Sherriff’s fondness for small realistic details – his characters spend a lot of time eating meals – did not please everybody. There was criticism of his reluctance to tackle wider issues, as well as of his depiction of an army officer as an alcoholic.

Where the play scored, and has done so ever since, was in its ability to bring together, in an acceptable way, key elements of an emerging mythology: the idea of the “lost generation” of young men. It’s a piece which celebrates the heroism of young, well spoken, officers, often giving them a kind of film-star glamour.

But even here the dominant tone of Journey’s End the play is grief rather than anger at their loss. They’re young men for whom ideals of gentlemanly conduct, teamwork and good sportsmanship learned on the public school playing fields are the key. “Sticking it” as the dashing Stanhope comments, “it’s the only thing a decent man can do”.

A gentleman’s game?

This relentless focus on the young officers killed prematurely has long been recognised as the play’s strength but also as its Achilles heel. It’s an emphasis of which the makers of the new film seem to have been acutely aware and which they try to resolve by making the play’s two working-class characters, Mason (Toby Jones) and Trotter (Stephen Graham) more sensitive than Sherriff envisaged them.

Even in the socially stratified 1920s, the social composition of the play prompted raised eyebrows. In 1929 the left-leaning New Statesman hated Journey’s End calling it “an orgy of the public school spirit” and asked: “Was the war really only a slaughterhouse for athletes and a school for gentlemen?”

The Irish dramatist, Sean O’Casey complained that Sherriff had turned the conflict’s “bloodied vulgarity … into a pretty, pleasing picture” of polite young officers talking by candlelight. Journey’s End, as O’Casey saw it, was sickly, sentimental and “false”. The “yells of agony” had been “modulated down to a sweet pianissimo of middle-class pain”.

Possibly O’Casey was jealous – his own play about working-class combatants, The Silver Tassie , was nothing like as successful when it opened in London in October 1929. But he was right that Sherriff was not really concerned with the wider picture or the rights and wrongs of the war. Journey’s End extols the bravery of the young officers who died damaged but uncomplainingly, even gloriously, representatives of an older England of cricket and chivalry. There’s no room for anyone below the rank of lieutenant.

The new film, despite its power – and, as film critic Mark Kermode noted , its determination to be “cinematic” by opening things out – can’t but help retain this emphasis.

It’s fitting that a film about the 1918 spring offensive has been released now – but it’s perhaps a comment on our times that it’s this one. Perhaps our collective view of what some persist in calling the “Great War” might better have been served by a film adaptation of The Silver Tassie or Peter Whelan’s The Accrington Pals (1981) or Frank McGuinness’s Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme (1985). These were all plays created from a desire to democratise representations of the war experience.

Watching Journey’s End is still an intense experience, but it isn’t an anti-war play – it’s a piece by a fairly snobbish writer whose views were old-fashioned in 1929. The fact that for many people it still encapsulates what the war was like is in stranger still.

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Historical context of ‘Journey’s End’ | In Context

An introduction to R C Sherriff's 'Journey's End' and it's historical context of the first world war.

• Clip length: 4'03''
• Broadcast year: 2008
• English Literature | 20th-century texts | Journey's End by R C Sherriff | Themes

Licence: ERA Licence required

UK only Staff and students of licensed education establishments only Cannot be adapted

• Provider: BBC
• Channel: BBC Two
• Programme: In Context

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Journey's End

Writers: R. C. Sherriff

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Conflict in Context: Journey's End & The Spring Offensive

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Journey's End

R.C. Sherriff

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1928

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Journey’s End review – handsome first world war drama

T his taut, handsome historical drama about a British battalion in northern France is adapted from RC Sherriff’s 1928 play. With all the action confined to a few days in a trench circa 1918, it feels a little stagey in parts. That said, the film’s focus on characters rather than action offers a contrast to the sheer in-the-moment spectacle of a wartime feature such as Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk .

Journey’s End is an ensemble affair, with Toby Jones’s grumpy cook channelling Rowan Atkinson’s Blackadder, and Asa Butterfield ( The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas , Hugo ) as Raleigh, a bug-eyed recruit whose boyish wonderment is unable to protect him from the inevitable. Sam Claflin is particularly good as the boozy, brooding Captain Stanhope, whose intensity, belligerence and self-loathing flesh out what might in less capable hands have been a cliched, shell-shocked soldier.

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• First world war
• Asa Butterfield

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Journey´s End Context Revision

Subject: English

Age range: 14-16

Resource type: Assessment and revision

Last updated

6 December 2022

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Revision worksheet for the context of the play with opportunity to find evidence to match with the context.

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