Good-Bye to All That

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Good-Bye to All That, an autobiography by Robert Graves, first appeared in print in 1929. It expressed Graves' desire to say "Good-Bye to All That", "All That" being an England dominated by middle-class morality. Graves first wrote the work in his thirties, when he had a long and eventful life ahead of him; the book deals mainly with his childhood, youth and military service.

A large part of the book is taken up by his experiences of the First World War, where he gives a detailed description of trench warfare, including the tragic incompetences of the Battle of Loos. Many readers will be interested in his description of the killing of German prisoners of war by British troops; although he had not witnessed any incidents himself and knew of no large-scale massacres, he knew of a number of incidents where prisoners had been killed individually or in small groups, and he believed that a large proportion of Germans who surrendered never made it to prisoner-of-war camps.

Graves heavily revised Good-Bye to All That and re-published it in 1957 with many significant events and figures either excised or added.

Edmund Blunden and Siegfried Sassoon, deeply suspicious of the work, famously savaged a copy (now housed in the Royal Welch Fusiliers archive in Caernarfon).

[edit] Themes

One of the primary themes is the coming of age. This happens when Graves moves off to school and is able to develop independently. As he moves to other boarding schools, his individualism and independence continues to grow.<ref>Sources used included Goodbye to All That and themes of Goodbye to All That.</ref>