Stanhope And Raleigh Character Analysis

Sherriff has shown the audience the negative ways and the terrible conditions war can affect Stanhope and all of his troops. The way that Sherriff showed us of how war is a very abominable place is through all the the structure and techniques are used in this play are to show the way in which war affects soldiers and the changes Stanhope goes through during the war. As Stanhope enters the play he is considered to be the best company’s commander that the company have, but by the pressure and stress of war it has changed him into another person, which has led him to alcohols and this way it would take the fear of war away from him. Before the start of the play Sheriff then unfolds the character of Stanhope by using Raleigh as a device to depict

At the start where Raleigh joined the company the relationship between himself and Stanhope as we can see gets off to a bad start and eventually gets even worse throughout the play. The biggest temper outburst for Stanhope was when Raleigh is going to send a letter back home, it happened because he was scared that Raleigh would tell his sister about how much he has changed and the drinking problem is one of the reasons that Stanhope had fear that Raleigh is going to tell his sister, which is shown in the line “Don’t Dennis me! Stanhope’s my name! You’re not at school! Go and inspect your rifles!”. It happened in the scene which Raleigh enters with his letter and Stanhope immediately tells Raleigh of his ‘censoring letters policy’ that Stanhope has to censor all letters, when in fact he doesn’t, he is just checking that Raleigh is not telling his sister of any changes. The real anger within Stanhope is unleashed and the relationship takes a turn for the worse, and the stress within Stanhope, which he didn’t want Raleigh to witness, is then shown and we find that there is no trust between them. But nearing the end Raleigh is hit by a bullet fragment from the raid and was swiftly brought down by the soldiers to Osborne’s bed, at this part Sherriff uses foreshadowing to make the audience know that Raleigh is going to die. Stanhope looks at Raleigh and says, ‘ Well, Jimmy you got one quickly’, at this part Sherriff