Their aching bodies scream under the stress of their heavy packs, and Jack twice falls asleep.

When Jack and his company must march a considerable distance to their billet to rest, they can barely manage the walk. Throughout much of Birdsong, nature is compared, often beautifully, to the offensiveness of battle, and this implies nature’s indifference to the actions of men and war. In this way, Faulks highlights the greatest tragedy of war-the potential ugliness of human nature and the loss of one’s innocence and morality. As British officer Stephen Wraysford discovers, there are “no boundaries the men will not cross, and no limits to what they will endure.” Much like the natural world, the soldiers carry on through the war despite its depravity, and often in complete disregard to the cruelty of men. The serene and pastoral setting of the French battlefield is a cruel reminder of nature’s disregard for war and the cruelty of men, and when Faulks juxtaposes the natural world against the human nature-and by extension, the morality-of the men fighting the war, he comes to a disheartening conclusion. Birds, a symbol of optimism in the darkness of war, are heard singing over battlefields, and Jack Firebrace and the other English miners use small yellow canaries to test deadly gas levels deep beneath the soil of the World War I trenches. Sebastian Faulks’ Birdsong is infused with signs of nature and elements of the natural world.

Birdsong faulks