The book, Diary of a Dead Officer, contains the diary of a British officer and war poet in World War 1, Arthur Graeme West. In West’s diary he describes his time in the war, in which he develops an intense abhorrence to army life. West was born in 1891, enlisted into a battalion in 1915, and died in 1917. West writes down his feelings when he starts to question some of his core beliefs about patriotism, religion and the reason for war in the first place. West believes he is the smarter man in his group, in just about every passage he questions his beliefs, or someone else 's beliefs. West keeps his more darker accounts, fighting, death and loss, of the war for his poems that he wrote. His poems being the only written account in which he shows vulnerability. Arthur Graeme West uses his diary of the war for a place to write down his many thoughts when he starts to question the core beliefs he is supposed to have for the war and his country. What is the point of even having war? Why should he have to fight just because he lives in Britain? Is there even any point of religion? In, Diary of a dead Officer, West shares his true feelings that would be intensely questioned if said out loud.
West enlisted as a private in the Public Schools Battalion, a battalion made up of exclusively
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The Diary of a Dead Officer is a book of the diary of World War 1, British officer, Arthur Graeme West. It follows his accounts of the war from the moment he sighed up, to when he died during a training exercise. West’s diary is an interesting one has it west was a very intellectual man who, most of the time, thought that his reasoning for something was the better one. The struggles seen in his Diary are ones of religious questioning and the question of, why would a man like West join the War at all? The answer being patriotism. It made him do the thing he hated the most, fighting. The Diary of a Dead Officer provided excellent insight into the mind of a soldier who is constantly