Recommended Reads: Remembrance Day
- Krysta MacDonald
- Nov 11, 2017
- 3 min read
Updated: Dec 10, 2019
In Canada, where I live, today is Remembrance Day. It commemorates those who died in armed conflicts. While we pay particular attention to the world wars, we also acknowledge the other armed conflicts with which Canada has been involved, and our troops involved in peacekeeping missions.
So, what books are appropriate for a day like this, a day of solemnity?
Here are a few that I feel help us remember exactly what it is that we are, well, remembering.
Is there another epitome of wartime literature? The classic follows a young man who enlists in the German army in WWI. The youthful determination of being a soldier contrasts immediately with the brutal realities of war.
Hemingway's semi-autobiographical novel recreates the fear and intensity of his young experiences in WWI.
“If people bring so much courage to this world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.”
This is a heartbreaking Canadian classic, following young Robert Ross, a nineteen-year-old surrounded by the nightmarish brutality of trench warfare in WWI.
“I doubt we will ever be forgiven. All I hope is – they'll remember we were human beings.”
One of the best-titled books I've read, this warm celebration of writing takes a writer to a small, German-occupied island after WWII. The war itself is the setting for the story, not the focus, but the unique perspective on the German occupation is an interesting backdrop for this epistolary novel.
The first story I knew of war was Anne Frank's diary kept while she and her family were in hiding during WWII. Both tragic and uplifting, if you have not yet read this classic, you need to. Now.
I teach Elie Wiesel's famous memoir to my grade 12 students every year, and it is always a profound experience. Wiesel describes his experiences during WWII, from the ghetto to the train to the Nazi concentration camps. He struggles with life and death and faith and man's inhumanity and cruelty.
I read this when it first came out and I knew nothing about it. Wow. Told from a child's perspective, this "fable" distills the Holocaust into a world that a young Nazi boy cannot understand. There is a fence, a friendship, and a pair of striped pajamas.
“What exactly was the difference? He wondered to himself. And who decided which people wore the striped pajamas and which people wore the uniforms?”
One of my favourite books, one of the ones that made me bawl my eyes out (every single time I've read it!), The Book Thief is beautiful and haunting, a tale of the power of words through an unusual, yet poignant, narrator.
"It’s just a small story really, about among other things: a girl, some words, an accordionist, some fanatical Germans, a Jewish fist-fighter, and quite a lot of thievery. . . "
I teach it to my grade 12 students, and while it doesn't have a profound effect on all of them, I know it's moved quite a few of them. Hurt them. Torn out their hearts and stomped on them.
Books about war make us think, make us feel, make us remember. They should make us uncomfortable. They should hurt a little, but remind us of the humanity involved - not just statistics, but real stories.
What are some books that you think are effective representations of war? What books help us remember?
No Remembrance Day would be complete in Canada without a recitation of In Flanders' Fields, by Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae.
In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place: and in the sky The larks still bravely singing fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.
We are the dead: Short days ago, We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved: and now we lie In Flanders fields!
Take up our quarrel with the foe To you, from failing hands, we throw The torch: be yours to hold it high If ye break faith with us who die, We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields
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