La Mitrailleuse
When I look at this piece I think of darkness and loneliness. I look at the straight lines forming men, and I think that they are robots. I look at the colors, so rich and strong, and I think of how it must have been to be in this position. This painting symbolizes so much of the war without words. It shows these men, and it shows how "the painting translates the mechanical aspect of modern warfare where man and machine combine to form a single force of nature."
The point that Christopher Nevinson was trying to get across in his painting was that man becomes machine in war. As you can see in the painting above, the lines from he soldiers arm and hand continues fluently to and through the machine gun. This symbolizes that there is no distinction between the soldiers in the war and their weapons. Think about the soldiers' situation. They were put into a war, some were forced through the draft, and they were forced to kill other human beings. It was either the other man or them. They had no choice but to kill. Their weapons became not a safety precaution, but it became a necessity for survival. They became so reliant on their weapons that their was no distinction between the man and he machine. They were both mechanized. The weapon followed orders to fire from the soldiers. The soldiers fired their guns because they too were acting under orders. They were following instructions from their country and conscience. As one critic said, "the hard lines of the machinery dictate those of the robotized soldiers who become as one with the killing machine."
In the heat of battle many things can happen without us ever realizing how or why. The soldiers in the war didn't really realize what they were doing when they were in battle. They just did what they had to do to survive. They were just doing what they were supposed to do; stay alive. This is simliar to the weapons they used. They just did what they were supposed to do; kill.