Trenches

Alfa lives in the trenches of the battlefields of World War I. As he carries Mademba back from the battlefield to be buried, he compared the trench to "the slightly parted lips of an immense woman's sex. A woman, open, offering herself to war, to the bombshells, and to us, the soldiers" (9). This analogy shows how Alfa understands life in the trenches; an all-consuming, all-subsuming, monstrous way of life, devouring manhood with disgusting, greedy bites. They smell like death and have an air of hopelessness. Though Mademba "lived like the others, I drank, I ate like the others. Sometimes I sang, like the others" in the trench, he understands that the trench is a place exempt from the rules of normal life (13). Any attempt to politicize, to bring order to, or to civilize life in the trenches is futile. For Alfa, it is only a place of despair...