Reading...
Play button
Play button
Use LEFT and RIGHT arrow keys to navigate between flashcards;
Use UP and DOWN arrow keys to flip the card;
H to show hint;
A reads text to speech;
23 Cards in this Set
- Front
- Back
|
WAR
|
We did not think of ourselves as soldiers but only two French town boys in uniform. And I had not yet killed anybody.
|
|
|
WAR
|
…not like the war movies at the Plymouth, nobody displaying heroics or bravado.
|
|
|
WAR
|
…my bursts of gunfire killed the soldiers quickly… I saw how young they were, boys with apple cheeks, too young to shave. Like me.
|
|
|
FOR THE VETERANS
|
This is the pause between one life and another Soldiers were dying with honour on battlefields all over the world. Noble deaths. The deaths of heroes. How could I die by leaping from a steeple?
|
|
|
For the Veterans
|
Soldiers were dying with honour on battlefields all over the world. Noble deaths. The deaths of heroes. How could I die by leaping from a steeple?
|
|
|
HERO?
|
I am not a hero. I am not the hero he thinks I am, not like the other veterans here in the St Jude Club.
|
|
|
HERO?
|
There are lots of medals for outstanding service but only the Silver Star is for heroism.
|
|
|
Arthur Rivier
|
Nobody talks about the war … I want to talk about it, my war … The scared war…We were not heroes. We were only there…
|
|
|
What is a hero?
|
‘I do not know what a hero is any more, Nicole…’ ‘Write about it, Francis. Maybe you can find the answer that way.’
|
|
|
APPEARANCE v REALITY (Identity / Disguise) 1
|
I have no face. … the scarf and the bandage were working in two ways: not only to hide the ugliness of what used to be my face, but to hide my identity.
|
|
|
APPEARANCE v REALITY (Identity / Disguise) – 2
|
I feel like a spy in disguise as I walk the streets of French town.
|
|
|
APPEARANCE v REALITY (Identity / Disguise) – 3
|
Now in French town, my face is healing…When I study myself in the mirror, I do not see me any more but a stranger slowly taking shape.
|
|
|
NICOLE (LOVE, BETRAYAL AND FORGIVENESS)- 1
|
I knelt there like a knight at her feet, her sword having touched my shoulder. I silently pledged her my love and loyalty for ever. ‘
|
|
|
NICOLE (LOVE, BETRAYAL AND FORGIVENESS)- 2
|
‘Dont go,’ Nicole whispered into my ear. But Larry LaSalle had told me to go.
|
|
|
NICOLE (LOVE, BETRAYAL AND FORGIVENESS)- 3
|
‘I have got to go,’ I told her. ‘You and Larry stay. One last dance…’ The words sounded false as I said them and I realized they were Larrys words, not mine.
|
|
|
NICOLE (LOVE, BETRAYAL AND FORGIVENESS)- 4 Betrayal
|
I recognised in her eyes what I could not deny: betrayal. My betrayal of her in her eyes. ‘You didn’t do anything.’ The accusation in her voice was worse than the harshness … ‘Why did you not do something?…’
|
|
|
NICOLE TO FRANCIS
|
…You were not to blame for what happened. She looks at me with affection. But affection is not love.
|
|
|
THE ENDING – HOPE? (The novel ends with:
|
Maybe …I should write about them Maybe I should buy a typewriter Maybe I should… I should … I think …
|
|
|
Larry. 1
|
‘You are all stars,’ Larry LaSalle always told us. Rumours told us that Larry LaSalle had also been a star. …there were dark hints that he had ‘gotten into trouble’ in New York City.
|
|
|
Larry 2
|
Dazzled by his talent and his energy, He tamed the notorious schoolyard bully … ‘But he still beats up kids in the schoolyard,’ Joey LeBlanc observed. ‘My hero from the war,’ Joey LeBlanc called out, clowning, of course, but ... he had been a hero to us long before he went to war.
|
|
|
Larry 3
|
I am not supposed to play favourites, Francis, but you and Nicole are special to me.’ He is pale, eyes sunken into the sockets …and he seems fragile now, as if caught in an old photograph that has faded and yellowed with age. ‘Oh, Francis…You couldn’t have stopped me…You were just a child.’ ‘The sweet young things…Even their heat is sweet…'
|
|
|
Revenge
|
Larry LaSalle has returned to French town. And I know where to find him. The gun is like a tumour on my thigh. What’s one more death after the others in the villages and fields of France? The innocent faces of two young Germans appear in my mind. But Larry LaSalle is not innocent.
|
|
|
Sin and Religion
|
‘Everybody sins, Francis. The terrible thing is that we love our sins. We love the thing that makes us evil. I love the sweet young things.’ ‘Does that one sin of mine wipe away all the good things?’
|
