Character Analysis (AQA A-Level English Literature A): Revision Notes
Character Analysis
Understanding the characters in Strange Meeting is essential for appreciating Susan Hill's exploration of WWI's psychological impact. The novel focuses primarily on two officers whose relationship forms the emotional core of the narrative, whilst minor characters illuminate different aspects of war's devastating effects on individuals and society.
Character analysis in Strange Meeting requires understanding not just individual personalities, but how characters function symbolically to represent broader themes about war's impact on the human psyche. Pay attention to how Hill uses character relationships to explore trauma, alienation, and the soldier-civilian divide.
Main characters
John George Glover Hilliard
John Hilliard serves as the novel's protagonist and primary perspective character. At the story's opening, he is a young British officer recovering from a wound, but his deeper injuries are psychological. Hill uses Hilliard to explore the lasting trauma experienced by soldiers who survived the trenches.
Key character traits
Hilliard is fundamentally withdrawn and emotionally numb. The war has left him unable to express his feelings or form meaningful connections with others. When he visits home, the painful emotional distance between him and his family becomes evident. His relatives simply cannot comprehend the horrors he has witnessed and endured, creating an unbridgeable gap between his wartime reality and their civilian lives.
Hilliard embodies the concept of the psychological casualties of trench warfare. Before the novel even begins, he has already suffered through nightmarish experiences that haunt him. He carries overwhelming guilt and experiences internal collapse, struggling daily with the mental scars of battle. This makes him the perfect vehicle for Hill's exploration of trauma and its lasting effects.
As a traumatised veteran, Hilliard represents what contemporary readers would recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder, though the condition wasn't understood in these terms during WWI. Hill's narrative technique emphasises Hilliard's introspective and quietly sensitive nature. Much of the novel follows his internal observations, his anxieties, and his attempts to process and understand his own responses to trauma. This introspection reveals a thoughtful individual crushed by circumstances beyond his control.
Despite his emotional damage, Hilliard proves deeply loyal. His developing care for Barton demonstrates that war has forced him to suppress a natural capacity for tenderness rather than destroying it entirely. This loyalty becomes central to the novel's emotional development.
Narrative function
Hilliard functions as the story's psychological centre. Through his perspective, readers experience the mental anguish and isolation of traumatised soldiers. He embodies the concept of the broken generation – young men permanently altered by the trenches, unable to return to normal life.
Hill's use of Hilliard as the perspective character is crucial to the novel's impact. By experiencing events through his traumatised consciousness, readers gain intimate access to the psychological reality of war that official histories and propaganda concealed.
His growing attachment to Barton creates the novel's emotional arc, providing structure and meaning to the narrative. This relationship offers Hilliard brief hope and connection before the story's tragic conclusion.
David Barton
David Barton arrives as a newly commissioned officer assigned to work alongside Hilliard. He represents everything Hilliard has lost: innocence, hope, and openness.
Key character traits
Barton is immediately warm, outgoing, and hopeful. Other soldiers naturally like him, and his positive demeanour stands in sharp contrast to Hilliard's emotional withdrawal. He embodies innocence as it enters the war – still untainted by the worst horrors of combat.
His character is idealistic and trusting. When the story begins, Barton has not yet faced the full brutality of sustained battle. His naivety is not foolishness but rather represents the state all soldiers possessed before the war destroyed their illusions.
Barton's emotional openness shines through his letters and diary entries, which reveal generosity, humour, warmth, and curiosity about the world around him. He approaches life with engagement rather than Hilliard's protective emotional distance.
Character Contrast: Barton's Symbolic Role
Critics frequently interpret Barton as a symbolic figure who brings light into Hilliard's dark inner world. Consider these symbolic associations:
- Sunlight: Barton's warmth and positivity illuminate the darkness
- Spring: He represents renewal and new life amidst death
- Youth: His innocence contrasts with veteran cynicism
- Hope: He offers possibility in a landscape of despair
These associations work together to position Barton as everything the war seeks to destroy, making his eventual death all the more devastating.
Narrative function
Barton serves as Hilliard's emotional opposite and complement. Where Hilliard is closed off and damaged, Barton remains open and whole. This contrast highlights what the war has stolen from veterans like Hilliard.
He represents youth and potential destroyed by war. Barton embodies all the possibilities and promise that conflict systematically eliminates.
Barton's eventual death delivers the novel's devastating conclusion and completes its anti-heroic message. There is no glory or meaning in his loss – only waste and tragedy. This refusal to romanticise death is central to Hill's anti-war stance and sets Strange Meeting apart from more traditional war narratives.
Minor characters
The novel's supporting characters serve specific purposes in exploring different facets of war's impact on individuals and society.
Constance Hilliard
Constance is John Hilliard's mother, representing the civilian world he has left behind.
Character significance
Though well-meaning, Constance cannot understand John's emotional state. She wants to help her son but lacks any framework for comprehending his trauma. This failure is not her fault but rather demonstrates the experiential gap between soldiers and civilians.
She symbolises the generational and experiential divide that separates those who fought from those who remained home. Her polite, restrained manner contrasts sharply with the violence her son carries inside him, emphasising how completely war has changed him.
The soldier-civilian divide that Constance represents was a widespread phenomenon in WWI. Soldiers often reported feeling completely alienated from family members who, despite their best intentions, simply could not comprehend the reality of trench warfare. This gap contributed to the long-term psychological isolation many veterans experienced.
Her interactions with John underscore his alienation from home and former life. What should be comfort and refuge instead feels foreign and unreachable to him.
Captain Franklin
Captain Franklin serves as an Adjutant – a senior administrative figure whom John distrusts.
Key characteristics
Franklin is unemotional and severe. Barton describes him in his diary as someone with "a head to lose but a heart? I wonder," suggesting his cold, unfeeling nature. This emotionless quality makes him particularly disturbing to younger officers.
He represents rigid authority within the impersonal and sometimes callous military system. His character embodies how institutional structures can become detached from the human cost of their decisions.
The younger officers dislike him, with John believing that Franklin "has it in for us." This antagonism reflects broader tensions between different levels of military hierarchy.
Narrative function
Franklin illustrates the novel's recurring critique of military hierarchy. He represents authority divorced from compassion or genuine concern for those under his command.
He provides a counterpoint to the emotional warmth shared between John and Barton, demonstrating how military structures can crush human connection.
Coulter
Coulter is a soldier and familiar presence to Hilliard, newly assigned as his batman (personal servant).
Key characteristics
Coulter is disturbingly young and enthusiastic, displaying eagerness that becomes uncomfortable. He claims he "can't wait to get a bayonet stuck into a German," revealing a naïve, even disturbing excitement about violence.
He represents the naïve aggression commonly found in inexperienced recruits who have not yet faced combat's reality.
Demonstrating War's Reality: Coulter's Arc
Coulter's character arc, though brief, perfectly illustrates Hill's anti-war message:
- Initial state: Eager, excited about violence, full of bravado
- Reality: Sent on a raid into no-man's land
- Outcome: Swift, meaningless death – no glory, just violence
- Effect: His youthful enthusiasm is extinguished instantly
This trajectory shows how quickly war destroys the illusions recruits bring with them.
Narrative function
His death during a raid demonstrates how quickly youthful bravado is extinguished by actual combat. There is nothing glorious about his end – just swift, meaningless violence.
He provides contrast with Hilliard's hardened, traumatised perspective. Where Coulter is eager, Hilliard knows the terrible truth awaiting him.
Harris
Harris appears as a shell-shocked patient in the military hospital where Hilliard recovers.
Key characteristics
Harris is terrified and withdrawn, hiding in a corner and barely speaking. His behaviour reflects acute psychological breakdown.
He embodies severe shell shock, displaying symptoms that contemporary readers would recognise as post-traumatic stress disorder. Historical figures like Myers and Showalter documented such cases throughout WWI.
Harris represents the extreme end of psychological damage that war can inflict. His character serves as a warning about where Hilliard's own trauma might lead if left unaddressed. The fact that even medical facilities cannot protect him from death reinforces the novel's sense of war's inescapable reach.
Narrative function
His sudden death when a shell hits the hospital room reinforces war's relentless reach. Even in supposed safety, violence can strike without warning.
Harris serves as a stark reminder of human mental fragility under bombardment. He represents what any soldier might become when psychological defences finally collapse.
Colonel Garrett
Colonel Garrett commands the battalion containing both Barton and Hilliard.
Key characteristics
Garrett appears stressed and overstretched, with physical signs like yellow fingers and a whisky bottle suggesting coping through alcohol.
Unlike Franklin, Garrett is critical of higher command, calling his battalion "absolute bloody chaos." This honesty distinguishes him from more detached authority figures.
He is notably human, weary, and candid in his assessments. Unlike Franklin's cold severity, Garrett openly acknowledges the futility and horror of their situation.
Garrett's character provides an important nuance to Hill's portrayal of military authority. Not all officers are cold and detached like Franklin – some, like Garrett, recognise the horror and futility whilst still having to perform their duties. This makes his position particularly tragic.
Narrative function
Garrett provides a rare honest voice amongst senior officers. His willingness to acknowledge chaos and futility contrasts with official propaganda and rigid hierarchy.
He embodies the emotional burden placed on those responsible for younger men's lives. He must send soldiers into danger whilst recognising the waste and horror of it all.
Beth Hilliard (Mrs Henry Partington)
Beth is John's sister, appearing briefly in the novel's home visit scenes.
Character significance
She represents domestic life continuing despite the war. Normal patterns of courtship and marriage proceed as if the trenches existed in another world entirely.
Her potential marriage to Henry Partington emphasises John's sense of distance from his own family and former life. He cannot participate meaningfully in these civilian concerns when his mind remains trapped in wartime trauma.
Her interactions with John further underscore his alienation from home, demonstrating how completely war has separated him from peacetime existence.
Henry Partington
Henry Partington is Beth's fiancé, a lawyer with a secure career path ahead.
Character significance
He serves as a symbol of the safe civilian future denied to men like John. Whilst John faces death and trauma, Henry enjoys security and normalcy.
His secure, orderly career path stands in painful contrast with John's psychological wreckage. Henry represents the life John might have had without the war.
He embodies normality – something John can no longer reach. The gap between them highlights how thoroughly combat has transformed John's existence.
Crawford
Crawford is the military doctor treating Hilliard in hospital.
Character significance
Crawford is professional, distant, and efficient in his medical duties. He treats soldiers but maintains emotional detachment.
He represents the medical system attempting to patch up traumatised soldiers so they can be sent back to continue fighting. This system prioritises military needs over individual wellbeing.
His presence highlights the physical and psychological toll of trench warfare. The medical facilities are overwhelmed with casualties both seen and unseen.
Character relationships and contrasts
Understanding how characters relate to one another deepens appreciation of Hill's themes. The relationship between Hilliard and Barton forms the emotional heart of the novel, whilst contrasts between characters highlight different responses to war.
The Central Relationship: Hilliard and Barton
The bond between Hilliard and Barton is the novel's emotional and thematic centre. Their relationship demonstrates several crucial points:
- Hilliard's trauma meets Barton's innocence, creating mutual support and understanding
- This connection offers Hilliard his only source of warmth and hope in a bleak environment
- The relationship proves that human connection can survive even in war's dehumanising conditions
- Its tragic end reinforces the novel's anti-war message about senseless loss
Without this relationship, the novel's emotional impact would be significantly diminished.
The contrast between warm characters (Hilliard, Barton, Garrett) and cold authority figures (Franklin, Crawford) emphasises how institutional structures can become detached from human suffering. Some individuals retain compassion despite war's horrors, whilst others retreat into rigid roles.
The divide between soldiers and civilians (represented through Constance, Beth, and Henry) demonstrates how completely war separates combatants from those at home. No amount of good intentions can bridge the experiential gap between trenches and civilian life.
When analysing character relationships in exam responses, focus on how these relationships serve Hill's thematic purposes. Don't just describe what happens – explain what these interactions reveal about war's impact on human connection, institutional callousness, or the soldier-civilian divide.
Key Points to Remember:
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Hilliard is the traumatised protagonist whose withdrawn, introspective nature embodies the broken generation of WWI veterans unable to reconnect with peacetime life. His perspective provides the novel's psychological centre.
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Barton represents innocence and hope entering the war – his warmth and openness provide emotional contrast to Hilliard's damage, and his death delivers the novel's devastating anti-heroic conclusion.
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Minor characters serve specific thematic functions:
- Constance and Beth show civilian disconnection
- Franklin represents callous authority
- Coulter embodies naïve enthusiasm destroyed by reality
- Harris demonstrates extreme psychological trauma
- Garrett offers rare honesty about war's futility
- Henry symbolises normal life denied to soldiers
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Character relationships reveal central themes: the bond between Hilliard and Barton creates the emotional arc; contrasts between individuals highlight different responses to war; the soldier-civilian divide emphasises combat's alienating effects.
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For exam success, practise linking character analysis to broader themes of trauma, loss, futility, and the psychological cost of war. Use specific character examples to support arguments about Hill's anti-war message.