Greenmantle · Chapter
Dedication explained
The author dedicates the tale to Caroline Grosvenor, explaining that it was written in odd moments during an active year and that the war has made even the most improbable events seem realistic.
What happens
The author dedicates the tale to Caroline Grosvenor, explaining that it was written in odd moments during an active year and that the war has made even the most improbable events seem realistic. He notes that the characters are based on real people: Sandy, Richard Hannay, John S. Blenkiron, and Peter Pienaar, each now engaged in war-related roles.
Themes in this chapter
Friendship and Comradeship
The author mentions the fates of his characters, highlighting their continued service and bonds even as they are scattered across different theaters of war.
The Chaos of War
The dedication reflects on how the war has made the improbable commonplace, with coincidences and melodrama becoming everyday reality.
Characters to notice
- Sandy Arbuthnot
Last heard of at Basra, occupying the post that once was Harry Bullivant’s.
- Richard Hannay
Commanding his battalion on the ugliest bit of front in the West.
- John S. Blenkiron
Full of honour and wholly cured of dyspepsia, returned to the States after trying to take Peter with him.
- Peter Pienaar
Has shaved his beard and joined the Flying Corps, attaining the height of his ambition.
Key passages
“Let no man or woman call its events improbable. The war has driven that word from our vocabulary, and melodrama has become the prosiest realism.”
Do not dismiss the story's events as unlikely; the war has made the extraordinary seem ordinary, and what once seemed melodramatic is now everyday reality.
The author defends the plausibility of his tale by pointing to the unprecedented events of the war.
“Coincidence, like some new Briareus, stretches a hundred long arms hourly across the earth.”
Coincidence now reaches everywhere, like a hundred-armed giant, touching every part of the world every hour.
The author uses a mythological allusion to emphasize the prevalence of coincidence in wartime.