In his novel about the seige of Krishnapur J. G. Farrell relates how Mr Hopkins, the Collector, while returning from a nightly tour of inspection notices the Padre digging graves and decides to help him, so he takes the spade himself and makes the Padre lie down on the path near three shrouded corpses who were to be buried.
“Then for an hour or more the Collector dug steadily by himself. At first he thought: ‘This is easy. The working classes make a fuss about nothing.’ But he had never used a spade in his life before and soon his hands became blistered and painful. He was invaded by a great sadness, then. The sadness emanated from the three silent figures sewen up in bedding and he thought again of his death statistics, but was not comforted ... And as he dug, he wept. He saw Harri’s animated face, and numberless dead men, and the hatred on the faces of the sepoy’s ... and it suddendly seemed to him that he could see clearly the basis of all conflict and misery, something mysterious which grows in men at the same time as hair and teeth and brains and which reveals its presence by the utter and atrocious inflexibility of all human habits and beliefs, even including his own.”
This is fine piece of dramatic, poignant writting. Relating the story of the deperate siege of Krishnapur from the side of the British colonial residents. It portrays the characters with their hopes, illusions, and foibles with incisive wit and tenderness. Above all it reveals the theatrical lunacy of war and the transience of life, even for those who for a time survive the death and destruction of the seige.
J. G. Farrell had both the ability and capability of being a good historian, however he elected not to undertake such a career, stating that history did not offer a proper understanding of what people felt and thought. His historical novels give unsentimental yet touching views of various characters during the inevitable decline of the British Empire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Siege_of_Krishnapur
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