"Carlo's self-censorship of the account of Francesco's death is one way of dealing with the experience of war.".
Using an examination of Chapter 19 as your starting point explore the varied ways in which Louis De Bernieres presents the experience of World War II.
Throughout the novel "Captain Corelli's Mandolin", De Bernieres presents the experience of World War II on the various characters in many different ways. Thnarrative points of view helps to make the story more believable and interesting to us.
In chapter 4, we see the character of Carlo who is a homosexual full of romantic notions about love and war. However, during the war in Albania he experiences the true horrors of war and the pain of loving his beloved Francisco. He is traumatised by this horrible experience. He is unable to tell Francisco's mother the truth about her son's death. Instead he decides to censor it as a mechanism of coping with his own sufferings during the war. He also losses his innocence in the war and realises that "war is wonderful until someone is killed". the use of first person narrative for the character of Carlo makes his story seem more personal since the reader can understand the feelings of torment and misery he goes through.
When Francesco's mother asks when her son died, Carlo lies that "he died on a fine day with the sun shining and the birds singing" instead of telling the truth that he "died on a day when the snow was melting together with thousands of other broken corpses". He also lies that Francesco died quickly without any pain when the truth was that he suffered for two hours before dying. It may be possible that Carlo felt a need to protect his lover's mother from the horrible details of her son's death to spare her some pain by making her believe her son died a happy and fulfilled man.
Mandras too changes after his experiences at war. When he returns for first time no one recognises him except the cat.